DxO Photolab 4 noise reduction

snakebunk

I've never liked the noise reduction in LR, I rather have a little bit of noise than use it, but the demosaicing and deep prime noise reduction in DxO Photolab 4 is something completely different. I've started to do demosaicing, lens corrections (lens sharpness) and deep prime in photolab, export the images back to LR as dng-files and continue from there, and I am really happy with the result.

Is anyone else doing this or have you found another way to improve on the image quality in LR?

This is a description of what I do: https://www.squarepixel.photography/article/dxo-photolab-4s-second-best-new-feature

snakebunk

PS. For an example, see these Wood Duck images shot with a D810 and ISO around 4000. The noise is almost gone and I think the colors and details have improved: http://www.snakebunk.com/animalia/aves/anseriformes/aix/#aix_sponsa

spraynpray

Can you post the original shot so we can compare please? The feathers on the wood duck seem to lack detail and I would like to see how much was there in the first place.

snakebunk

@spraynpray: Check the link again, I added a LR only version below the first image. I think the lack of detail is because the bird was really close and part of it is simply out of focus. I cannot see any lack of detail in the in focus area around the eye.

retread

I open my shots in photolab 4 and export as a 16 bit .tiff to capture one 21. Deep prime works great when I have a high ISO image.

snakebunk

Nice.

spraynpray

Thanks for adding the LR version snakebunk. It does show that the result is much better than LR only for sure.

snakebunk

Yes, I think it is rather amazing. I could of course work more with the noise reduction in LR to make it a little better, but I would loose detail and get that strange plastic look.

daveznspace

Love dxo. All high iso images go thru there.

Since I didn't go along with topaz labs extortion attempt (the refunded all my money thank god) I don't use their Denise ai either.

What I kept was https://projects-software.com/denoise Pro 3. It's way different and I love it. If you join the mailing list just about everyday they do a huge drop on an apps price, like Denise pro 3 went from $99 to $29.

It's good stuff and no one really knows them