Last month, DxO released PhotoLab 5 and introduced a major new feature: support for Fujifilm X-Trans files. If you shoot at high ISO levels, you might want to check out what this software can do when it comes to removing noise and increasing detail.
Most of Fujifilm’s APS-C cameras use the company’s own X-Trans filter in front of the sensor, replacing the classic Bayer filter found in most cameras and providing a few advantages and disadvantages. Fujifilm claims that it creates extra detail and does away with the need for an anti-aliasing filter, but the more complex mosaic means that processing the raw files is more challenging and many software manufacturers — Adobe included — have run into issues in the past.
DxO’s new DeepPRIME technology seems to produce some excellent results, as this video demonstrates, deploying deep learning to process the raw data in order to remove a fair chunk of the noise produced when shooting at high ISO levels. DxO provides a free trial of PhotoLab 5, and you can purchase the ELITE version for €219 ($250).
Have you tried PhotoLab 5 for your X-Trans files? Let us know how you found the results in the comments below.
I’ve found capture ones noise reduction to do a very good job at cleaning up high ISO files, there are a couple of examples in my gallery where I shot a cathedral interior handheld and the results are clean and sharp.
For normal ISO, DxO 5 Beta just doesn’t hold a candle to Capture One’s X-Trans processing. DxO is muddy and lacks any detail, it almost looks like a massively upscaled JPG. It’s still beta but for me, it is unusable in its current state. However, I’m glad they’re finally supporting X-Trans and the quality will improve over time.
Yet another advert 'article', great ... €200 for noise reduction?? No thanks.
Noise reduction that enables shooting at one ISO stop higher is a heckuva lot cheaper than buying new cameras or huge large-aperture lenses. I paid $80 for the upgrade and called it the best money spent on photo gear EVER.
20-year corporate event shooter here. With DeepPRIME and bright primes on my a7RIII, I'm getting very clean results at ISO 25,600 in truly dark environments, letting me work without flash while still delivering the image quality my clients expect. This combo is amazingly liberating for low-light work. And, on my $999 M1 MacBook Air or $1099 Mac mini, PhotoLab 5 Elite does noise reduction processing 6x-8x faster than I experienced just one year ago on my fire-breathing custom-upgraded 8-core $5000 cylinder Mac Pro, outputting 42MP JPEGs in 10 seconds each. This speedup has been transformative for my high-volume tight-deadline workflow. And, unlike some other apps, applying DeepPRIME is a one-click batch operation - no tweaking needed. Super-powerful AND super-easy to use. And, if you need what it does, it's super-cheap, too. To get the same results via hardware upgrades would cost me many thousands of dollars. $80 for the upgrade, or even $200 for first purchase, is a pittance for the capabilities it offers.
Not everyone needs DeepPRIME, but if you shoot a lot at high ISO and really need to squeeze the best IQ out of every file, it's a no-brainer.
The image below looked at least one stop darker to the naked eye. It was shot on a7RIII @ ISO 25,600 f1.4 1/200.
Same here. I use up to ISO 12,800 on my A7 III for dinners, where continually using flashes would be disruptive. DXO is just phenomenal, not just in grain reduction/removal, but in color restoration. There's no way to get the level of color detail DXO brings back with any traditional NR. I export to DNG, using NR, lens correction, and lens sharpening, to edit in LR. All settings saved in a single preset that fits all ISOs perfectly.
If all you want is the denoise tech in photolab you can save some cash buy just purchasing DXO's Pure Raw. it has the same Denoise tech but with out all the extra raw processing features. You can batch your images in pure raw too. Be wary though, larger files will take for ever to finish. I used Pure Raw on 80+ Fuji GFX100s files and it took about 4 hours to process them all on a mostly beefy PC. The denoise does work pretty damn amazing though.
Thanks, Chris! Just to add for anyone following these comments: I don't believe PureRAW processes X-Trans files, though that may change in the future.
Yeah no probs! good lookin out on the Xtrans. That's something i didn't know!