DxO Photolab 4 a denoise monster

Last month, DxO released Photolab 4. The new version offers a number of new features, but above all a new, improved denoising function.

DxO Photolab 4 is released less than 1 year after Photolab 3, which I have also presented here before. Version 4 now brings some enhancements and improvements. Most importantly, Photolab is making a name for itself with the Deep Prime function as a denoising tool. But more about that later.

If you want to have the denoising function and some of the other new features you have to go for the Elite version, which is available for both Mac and Windows for 149,00 €.

I have recorded the following video:

The overview

Nothing significant has changed in the overview, from my point of view there are still missing the meta data (only shown with CRTL-I or when moving the mouse over it) and a kind of grid window.

Complete meta data, e.g. with GPS data, is only shown in development mode, and there without a map.

Here you can access the batchrenaming tool by right-clicking. With this tool all selected images can be renamed according to a certain scheme. For example, instead of using the prefix IMG, you can replace it with the job name and assign a consecutive number to the images. This is a nice tool, but whether it is reserved for the expensive Elite version is questionable.

The development module

The comparison view is also unchanged:

Here come the most important changes, that you can create your own workspace with the different development options and of course save it. The histogram has now moved to the right side.

New is a button in the upper right corner, with which all adjustments already made to the image can be displayed. And there is now an improved history of the performed development steps. This also includes adjustments through presets or copying of development settings.  These are displayed in one line, but you can expand the area and see all development settings in detail. A very good solution.

Instant Watermarks

DxO Photolab 4 now allows you to apply watermarks both as text and as an image that are immediately visible. They are of course preserved during export and are also displayed in the display window.

Both image and text can be placed anywhere, and you can adjust the opacity of the watermark in the settings.

VIt is also planned to create a preset out of it, which you can then use much easier. According to the German manual, you should use either JPG or PNG formats for the images. PNG should be preferred here because of the transparent background. But I had problems with my standard logo. DxO reported me wrong format or resolution, although it is a PNG file.

Deep Prime

The new denoising function is also only available in the Elite version and, as far as we can tell, has been improved once again. It is only applied to RAW files and only when exporting e.g. to 16-bit Tiff. With a magnifying glass you can only display a small area in real time, and only approximately.

As you can see from my review of the last DxO version and Denoise AI, I have developed and denoised several images of the Lumix G9 with default settings in both tools.

DxO is ahead, but in my opinion less than expected. But I had a different problem. Despite GPU acceleration the export of such an image still takes 5-8 seconds. But on most attempts I got an error message when GPU acceleration was activated, so I made most comparisons here only with the CPU. But then the export takes more than 1 minute.

Conclusion

DxO Photolab 4 is an all-round success, even if, compared to Lightroom, for example, it lacks a few management features. However, DxO should perhaps create a bug fix, because the problem with both the watermarks and the denoising tool seem to be well known there.

ciao tuxoche