Now a separate entity from the DxOMark camera equipment testing lab, DxO has long been among the most dynamic photo editing software makers. PhotoLab 5 continues DxO’s tradition of automatic lens and camera body-based image correction, unmatched noise reduction, and other innovative image tools. The software incorporates Nik U Point local selection technology for some excellent local adjustment tools. For the latest version, DxO updates U Point with more control, speeds up DeepPrime noise reduction, includes more keyword and metadata management tools, and adds support for Fujifilm X-Trans cameras. The software deserves a place in every serious shooter’s digital photography toolbox, though we wish it were stronger at workflow.
How Much Does DxO PhotoLab Cost?
PhotoLab is available at two pricing levels, neither of which requires a subscription, Essential ($139) and Elite ($219). Attractive introductory pricing of $109.99 and $164.99 for those two levels is available temporarily at the time of this writing. Upgrading from PhotoLab 3 or 4 costs $54.99 for Essential and $79.99 for Elite.
To get some of DxO PhotoLab’s coolest features, such as Prime de-noising and ClearView, you need the Elite version, which is what we tested for this review. That version also includes some pro features, such as the ability to manage camera-calibrated ICC profiles, custom palettes, and editable presets. Essential still gets you the excellent raw conversion, Smart Lighting, the Spot-Weighted mode, the Microcontrast tool, and local adjustment features. You can see details of what’s in each edition on this PhotoLab support page.
Requirements and Startup
PhotoLab is available for up-to-date versions of Windows 10, Windows 11 (64-bit), and macOS 10.15.7 (Catalina) or later. The installer weighs in at 810MB, which isn’t outrageous when you consider that Lightroom Classic is about 2GB. Speaking of Adobe’s app, at installation, you can choose to install the DxO software as a plug-in for Lightroom Classic (the newer version of Lightroom for nonprofessionals doesn’t support plug-ins, so it’s only available for Classic).
What’s New for Version 5?
For DxO veterans, below is a cheat sheet of what’s new for the latest version 5 update. It’s not quite as extensive a list as some previous updates, but the speed improvement for DeepPrime noise reduction is particularly notable.
U Point Updates. You can now use control lines for U Point local edit selection and you can adjust the sensitivity for both control lines and control points.
New Metadata Tools. A keyword tree lets you organize your keywords hierarchically. So for example, you can have a mammal keyword with primate below it and chimpanzee below that. You can also now transfer IPTC and EXIF data between PhotoLab and other programs.
DeepPrime Gets a Lot Faster. According to DxO, the super-duper noise reduction is now “up to 4 times faster for Apple Silicon Mac users and 1.5 times faster on the best Windows architectures.” It’s still slower than other programs’ de-noising, but the results are unparalleled.
Support for Fujifilm X-Trans Sensor. This update is only relevant to people who shoot with a camera that uses a Fujifilm X-Trans Sensor, but it’s an accomplishment nonetheless because the sensor use a completely different arrangement of pixels than other brands. PhotoLab now supports the Fujifilm X-E4, X-S10, X-T4, and X100V through X-E2 and X-70—18 models in all.
The previous update debuted the impressive DeepPrime noise reduction and made the interface more customizable by letting you hide tools you don’t use. It also added batch renaming, an advanced history panel, watermarking, local adjustment mask improvements, and an HSL color wheel.
The DxO PhotoLab Interface
The dark gray interface of PhotoLab has a clean, subdued look. The program interface has two modes: PhotoLibrary and Customize. The latter is where you do all your editing and tuning. That’s really all you need, but Adobe’s Lightroom Classic offers more flexibility with modes for sharing, printing, maps, and books, as well. Fortunately, DxO makes Lightroom round-tripping an option in PhotoLab.
I like DxO’s top button-bar options—one click for full image-size viewing, fit on screen view, full-screen view, and side-by-side comparison views. A key button here is Compare, which shows you what your photo looks like without DxO’s corrections. It’s key because the software automatically applies the fixes as soon as you load a photo. An option on first run has you choose between Standard, Optical Corrections, and No Corrections, with a sample image to show the result of each choice. The Standard option adjusts tonality and noise as well as lens optics, while the Optical option only adjusts the lens issues, leaving the rest up to you.
In Customize mode there are also buttons for cropping, forcing parallel lines, and a neutral color picker. Across the bottom of the program window is a filmstrip view of the images you’re currently working with, replete with subtle icons indicating whether the photo has been processed, whether camera and lens modules are installed for the image, and a star rating. (You don’t get similarly helpful clues in Adobe Lightroom, though you do in Lightroom Classic.) Each time you open a folder containing images, the program detects the camera and lens used for the photos therein, and it prompts you to download a module for the combination so that PhotoLab can optimize the image based on the equipment used.
You can search for adjustment tools, and you can limit your search to favorite tools (those you’ve marked with a star) or tools that you’ve already worked with.
One thing I miss in the interface is simple image-rotation buttons, though you can rotate photos via a right-click menu or keyboard shortcut. There’s also no mouse wheel functionality for scrolling sliders. I do like that double clicking on a slider sets it back to the default value, however.
A History panel like the one long present in Photoshop lets you step back to any point in your edits. But it goes even further, showing you the actual setting number you adjusted to. Along with the history panel and Ctrl-Z for undo, there is a persistent Reset button. The program makes good use of keyboard shortcuts, like Ctrl-J for creating a virtual copy of your photo. I also like how the mouse wheel zooms you in and out without requiring you to use a key combo.
The interface is customizable in other ways, too: You can adjust the interface border color from the default dark gray to anywhere from full white to full black. The full-screen view, summoned with F12 or a button in the top toolbar, lets you browse through images with the arrow keys and use hideable, discreet rating and EXIF panels. You can also detach the image browser for full viewing on a second screen, keeping all controls on the first screen.
Organizing With PhotoLibrary
PhotoLab has made some progress in the organization department in the PhotoLibrary mode, though it still falls short of Lightroom Classic in this area. The program indexes folders containing photos to let you search by shot settings. That means you can enter a date, focal length, f-stop, and even ISO setting. It’s even possible to combine any of these in a search. You can now also search based on the lens shot with, which is helpful for when you’re looking for, for example, wildlife photos vs. landscapes. Lightroom lets you search by camera but not settings, while Lightroom Classic offers all the above.
PhotoLab still doesn’t have an import function, you just add folders to the PhotoLibrary, and metadata is created for images in those folders. This obviously means you can’t view all photos from a specific import session, a feature I find quite useful, and one that is offered by Apple Photos, both Lightroom versions, and Cyberlink PhotoDirector. Another thing those apps support but DxO doesn’t is the HEIC file format used by iPhones, though unless you specifically set up the iPhone to export HEIC, you’ll get JPGs from that phone anyway. You can get raw files from an iPhone in DNG format if you shoot with an app that supports them, such as VSCO, Halide, or ProCam.
Instead of importing photos to DxO, you simply open images from a card or folder shown in PhotoLibrary’s folder tree. You do get star ratings, and even Pick and Reject buttons for organizing your photos. You can also use keyword tags and apply them to multiple selected images in the Customize view’s Metadata panel. The program now lets you edit metadata in the EXIF and IPTC sections.
Keywords show up in the pop-ups that appear when you hover the cursor over a thumbnail. When you go to add a keyword to another photo, recently used ones are available, and now you can create your keyword sets, as you can in Lightroom and PhotoDirector, but you don’t get suggested keywords and prefab sets for common uses such as Wedding Photography, like those in Lightroom.
Forget about using geotagged maps, and face recognition—DxO doesn’t offer them. If those things are important to you, you’re better off using DxO PhotoLab as a plug-in for Lightroom Classic, a perfectly viable setup. The program does let you organize photos into Projects, in which you bring together pictures you want to work with as a group from various sources.
Image Corrections in DxO PhotoLab
DxO is different from most photo software in that it starts you with its best-guess correction for your photo, based on the lens, camera, and exposure settings used. DxO Labs actually shoots thousands of shots on test patterns at different lighting conditions to create lens and camera profiles for each camera and lens supported to tune these corrections. The profiles include DSLR camera body and lens combinations, as well as smartphone cameras, but unfortunately my Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra—which I bought for its unrivaled camera—doesn’t have a profile in PhotoLab.
The auto-correction is far better than what you see in most photo software, and it’s often all you need. I did find that Phase One’s Capture One software does a slightly better job of rendering raw camera files than PhotoLab, but DxO’s presets bar offers, in addition to the standard DxO auto correction, choices for neutral colors, black and white, portraits, and landscapes. You can also dig down into other presets like HDR (high dynamic range) and Atmospheres, which produces some effective colorizations.
PhotoLab supports DCP color profiles, which are newer than the previously supported ICC profiles, and they’re used by Adobe. So, if your workflow involves using Lightroom or Photoshop, this option produces the same color rendering. Third-party utilities like those from X-Rite let you create your own profiles with a color target board. Below, you can see how to apply a DCP color profile to your image.
If the auto correction doesn’t quite hit the mark, the program’s Customize mode lets you change exposure compensation, contrast, colors, detail, and more. In addition to the standard exposure slider, you can use DxO’s Smart Lighting slider, which can brighten shadowy areas without punching out whites. Cranking this all the way up creates a decent single-shot HDR effect, but for more drastic HDR effects, check out CyberLink PhotoDirector. Preset choices include Slight, Medium, and Strong; choose Custom to adjust the slider to taste. I appreciate that double-clicking on a slider resets it.
Under the standard Contrast slider, the Microcontrast tool can add serious sharpness to images without adding the typical distorted edges sharpening can cause. A magic wand button automatically sets the microcontrast for the current image. In my tests, its results were impressive in sharpening photos, though it’s not something you’d want to use for face shots or noisy images.
Speaking of sharpness, DxO’s Lens Sharpness tool impresses. Based on particular lens profiles for the equipment used, the tool can noticeably improve the detail in your shots. Finally, the Unsharp Mask tool offers a more traditional type of sharpening.
Smart Lighting uses face detection and spot-weighted correction. Note that the face detection isn’t for organizing and retrieving images with faces, but just for lighting correction. The tool can bring a face out of obscurity in cases where there’s a bright background. It does an even better job at this than the Shadows tool, which can tend to wash out images. Lightroom lets you get about the same result with some tweaking, and DxO’s tool doesn’t find faces in profile. No worries: You can select the face or any other object to meter on manually. It works the way spot metering in a camera works, but lets you apply it after the shot.
DxO PhotoLab’s red-eye tool works completely automatically, and nearly perfectly if the red areas are clearly delineated and the faces not obscured.
DxO Prime and DeepPrime
Probabilistic Raw IMage Enhancement (Prime) is a noise-reduction tool in PhotoLab that the company claims will add an extra stop of exposure to your digital photos. A newer form called DeepPrime uses machine-learning AI to get even cleaner results in a shorter time. As the acronym implies, Prime only works on raw camera images. This means you can shoot in low light or at higher ISO and still retain sharpness and detail. The deal with Prime is that it lets the program take as long as it needs to analyze and correct digital noise. The technology is now reasonably fast, even for high-ISO shots. In fact, speeding it up was a key goal of PhotoLab 5.
Above you can see samples of the default HQ (left), Prime (middle), and DeepPrime (right) noise reduction. Note the sand at the bottom in particular, which gets progressively more natural looking as you go from left to right.
Most noise correction just compares nearby pixels to determine which represent noise, but DxO examines a much larger area to make this determination, which should remove more noise while leaving more detail. When you choose Prime or DeepPrime noise reduction, you won’t be able to see its effect on the full image view, just on a small area you select. The only way to apply Prime to the whole image is to export it. This previously took over a minute, but with subsequent program updates it now takes 23 seconds on a test shot. This means that getting this unequaled noise reduction doesn’t interrupt your photo editing workflow so much anymore.
Once you hit Export for a photo for which you selected Prime noise reduction, you see an icon in the photo’s thumbnail that it’s being processed, and a tiny progress bar that you can click to enlarge and view a countdown timer.
The example above shows how the noise on the dark gray bench has been impressively cleared up in the right side after Prime processing. It’s basically taken an unusable mess and made it clear and natural.
The result is stunning. In testing, more noise was removed, and more detail was preserved than I could achieve in Lightroom’s noise reducer or with Capture One Pro. For initial raw file conversion, however, Capture One still beats DxO, getting more detail out of raw image files in my test images. If you’re not completely satisfied with the results, you can tune the amount of correction with the Luminance slider, and even dig into Chrominance, Low Frequency, and Dead Pixel corrections. That last correction is a lifesaver for me, since my backup Canon T1i has a hot pixel that always shows in pictures up as bright red at 100 percent magnification.
The bottom line on this tool? DxO Prime means some shots are usable, whereas they wouldn’t have been without this correction. If this is the only feature you’re looking for, you can get it in the highly recommended DxO PureRAW, which also includes the lens corrections, but not the entire photo editing feature set of PhotoLab, and is super simple to use.
ClearView Plus
ClearView can effectively remove the haze from a landscape shot. The feature saves you from having to create masks for different areas of an image to adjust them independently. It determines distance in the photo and adjusts the black level accordingly. In my test landscapes, ClearView, which is completely automatic (though you can adjust its intensity), did a bang-up job of retrieving detail from distant regions in the photos. I was unable, in testing, to achieve as good a result by adjusting black and highlight levels using the standard tools.
The sample image above shows a hazy original photo detail on the left, with DxO PhotoLab ClearView Plus applied in the middle, and Adobe Lightroom’s Dehaze on the right. Note that these results are only using the respective haze-removal tools. You can get a better image in both programs by applying other adjustments on top of the autocorrection. But it does show the natural detail that DxO’s software can restore. Another example below, with DxO on the left and Lightroom on the right, shows the Adobe Dehaze tool applying a strong blue color cast, while DxO ClearView Plus leaves the colors more natural.
Local Adjustments With DxO
Since its acquisition of Nik Software, DxO’s software includes a Brush and other tools for making local adjustments, several of them coming thanks to the U Point tool. The Brush tool is clearly accessible from the big Local adjustments button at the top of the Customize mode. It’s powerful. You can adjust its width and feathering. The Equalizer control has sliders for adjusting Exposure, Contrast, Microcontrast, Clearview (see next section), Vibrancy, Saturation, Temperature, Tint, Sharpness, and Blur. The last can even add bokeh iris circles if you crank it up enough. Its Feathering, Flow, and Opacity sliders let you control the transition from the effect to the unaffected areas, as well as, obviously, the effect’s transparency.
Right-clicking while the brush tool is active shows the circular (or radial) menu that lets you switch among the software’s other local adjustment tools, including Graduated Filter, Mask, Eraser, Auto-mask, Control Point, and the new Control Line. The Auto-mask isn’t fully automatic, as Photoshop’s Magic Wand is, but rather gives you a brush with edge detection. The graduated filter is a typical gradient tool, useful for things like the faux tilt-shift effect or intensifying skies. It lets you adjust the effect area with a line you can grab, extend, or rotate with the mouse cursor.
The last tool, Control Point, applies the correction to all pixels in the selected area of the same color and brightness value as the point. It selects a circular area for its effects, with feathering at the edges. This is where the U-Point technology comes in, and it’s similar to Lightroom Classic’s Range Masking tool for color- and tone-based selection for local adjustments. The DxO tools offer fun and powerful ways to alter images, for example intensifying a sky or changing a shirt’s color. I like how in this mode you get a split-screen view that lets you slide a divider back and forth in the image to show before and after adjustments.
New U-Point capabilities for version 5 let you adjust the sensitivity of control points and use a linear as well as oval selector. It took me a while to figure out how to use the U-Point lines (I recommend this video by PhotoJoseph for help). In the screenshot above you can see the before view on the image with the line applied. The area between the dotted line and the solid line with the control point in the middle is a gradient, and past that line you get a 100% adjustment strength. Note that you can set how much of the selection is based on light (luma) versus color (chroma) from the panel on the right. You can also use an eyedropper tool to choose the point you want to base the selection’s luma and chroma on.
Lightroom’s similar Graduated Filter decides all that for you, without giving you control over the sensitivity of selection. One of the coolest things about this tool is that you can see adjustments change as you move the selection area around with the control point. You can also use a negative line selection tool to remove your adjustments from an area.
A mask panel under Local Adjustments shows you previously applied local adjustment masks. Clicking on an entry takes you to the mask in the image. You can also use the Opacity slider and the Invert option, which looks like two arrows pointing in opposite directions. The panel is a helpful addition for working with local adjustments.
HSL Adjustments
This version update to PhotoLab adds a color wheel HSL (hue-saturation-luminance) adjustment tool. When enabled, you can change colors without having to select them. There are eight basic colors, and you can change the selected range on the color wheel. I do wish that it had an eyedropper tool for selecting a color range on your image, but you can do some nifty color replacements nevertheless, and you can use the tools mentioned in the previous section for that. The HSL tool’s Uniformity slider works well on skin tones, so that a person’s visage looks consistent. The right side has HSL Uniformity applied, for a more consistent appearance.
One thing missing is layers, but you can actually add multiple masks from a choice in the radial menu. Capture One, in its last update, made a big push with layers of late, letting you see, for example, a mask layer. Truth be told, I’m not a huge layer fan, and I suspect there are other photographers like me in this regard, but there are certainly times when you may want to be to see or disable a layer, particularly if you’re working with multiple masks.
Automatic Repair Tool
The Repair tool is similar to Photoshop‘s Content Aware Fill tool, letting you remove an undesired or distracting object from a scene and replacing it with nearby material. As with all similar tools, Repair only works if there’s a consistent texture around the object you want to remove. But it works very well in the right circumstances. I even found myself panning through a photo that I’d removed an extraneous head from, forgetting that I’d done so. I couldn’t even tell where it had been!
The tool lets you select the source area and has two modes: Clone and Repair. Note the red area in the screenshot above is the source; I had to move it to the pavement from the automatically selected source, which included another pedestrian. The blue overlaid area is where the eliminated person was before the fix. You can still see his shadow, which you’d probably remove in a second repair operation.
Geometry Correction
Another DxO product, ViewPoint, tackles a rather intractable issue of photography: volume anamorphism, where objects like human heads become distorted when they’re at the edge of a wide-angle image. PhotoLab does camera and lens-profile based geometry correction for barrel, fisheye, and pincushion distortion automatically, also letting you fine-tune.
A basic geometry correction, cropping, is well handled and available from PhotoLab’s always-present top toolbar, but I wish it remembered your aspect ratio choice: I usually prefer Unconstrained, but the program always switches me back to Preserve aspect ratio. And the horizon-leveling tool does the job, though not automatically the way Lightroom does. Finally, the program also can correct moiré, vignette, and chromatic aberration. As in previous versions, DxO PhotoLab does a remarkable job of removing chromatic aberration.
Watermarking
DxO includes a watermarking feature, something of importance to pro photogs who want to spread their brand or simply protect images. The tool lets you use either text or an image as your watermark. You get a good selection of fonts, and you can adjust the opacity, scaling, and color. Unfortunately, you can’t drag the text’s position, you can just choose center, bottom, and so on, along with alignment. Save your watermark as a preset if you plan to use it on more pictures.
Output and Sharing
Once you’ve perfected your image in PhotoLab, the blue bar at bottom-right lets you output directly to disk, to another photo editor, to Facebook (though only on macOS), to Flickr, or to Lightroom Classic. The Facebook exporter lets you choose a target album, but not privacy level or tagging. The Flickr export has better control, letting you choose an album, add keyword tags, and set privacy. It even pulls in your previously used tags and albums and offers them as selections.
One sharing option that’s lacking is via email. Lightroom Classic lets you quickly send any image onscreen via email by right-clicking. The lightweight Lightroom CC, however, is far more restricted in export options. You can’t even choose a new filename.
When exporting to disk, you can choose multiple outputs at once. Unfortunately, you can’t choose a DCP profile on export, only an ICC profile. When exporting to Lightroom, too, I noticed the file size was nearly doubled. On a more basic level, I wish all photo editing programs would simply use the standard Windows share feature, which would ease exporting and sharing in general.
PhotoLab includes basic printing capabilities, accessible from a permanent button next to the Export button. You can choose a grid size for multiple images, apply sharpening, and add a caption in the font style of your choice. But for more layout options (included savable custom layouts) and soft proofing (which lets you see colors in the photo not supported by the printer) look to Lightroom Classic.
Get More From Your Photos With DxO
Though it’s not a complete photo workflow solution, DxO PhotoLab gives you a real edge when it comes to refining images. DxO’s lens and camera-calibrated corrections achieve results that can be hard to accomplish in other software, and it often does so automatically. Its unique DeepPrime noise-reduction, U Point local adjustments, Lens Sharpness, and ClearView Plus tools bring us close to photography nirvana. All these cutting-edge tools combine to make DxO PhotoLab a PCMag Editors’ Choice-winning photography app.
