DXO changes my exposure

DxO PureRAW
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Just purchased last night. I tried to denoised an edited RAW files. It seems like it also changes my exposure

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You need to give much more detail if you want help.

1 Like
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PhotoLab applies a default preset which could appear to change your exposure. Look at the manual about presets for more information.

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@ jonjon . . . I’m assuming you are referring only to PureRaw, and not PhotoLab.

If you mean that the photos appear ‘darker’, it’s something PureRAW does that I don’t like. However, it’s not the exposure that’s at fault, at least I don’t think so.

I shoot Nikon, and my camera is set to return “flat” images. I’m referring to the color modes (Landscape, Portrait, Standard, Vivid, etc.)

When the processed files from PureRAW are returned to Lightroom, they are set to Adobe Color. That’s perceptually ‘darker’ (think of it as increasing a combination of contrast, saturation, clarity, dehazing, shadow, and darks to give the photo more visual punch).

Color modes are just different starting points for editing RAW files. You can change this in Lightroom for the original without affecting any of the adjusting sliders; they are just different ‘looks’ for rendering the RAW file. Note that it will affect how it appears even if viewing the file with a Windows viewer (it renders the file based on the settings contained in the RAW file), and, I assume, the same for iOS.

However, when output from PureRaw, not only is it not returning the same color mode, but they’re also NOT set to the camera matching equivalents. Camera Matching color settings are different than the Adobe settings with the same names (Adobe doesn’t have a “Flat” setting and I believe their “Color” setting is meant to be the equivalent of the “Standard” setting for my Nikon).

Depending on the original, this perceptual change can appear quite drastic, to where you lose significant detail in the shadows and dark portions of the photos. This is even more pronounced in low-light photos (cloudy, rainy days photos).

Edited to add: I assume the color mode is not the only culprit and doesn’t account for the totality of the effect. other processing PureRAW may doing (we don’t know all that it does) can also affect the look of the end result.

If you choose to output JPG from PureRaw, then you lose the ability to recover from this, or at least, won’t be able to recover without reintroducing some noise.

The manual says that if you output DNG, PureRAW “Generates a linear DNG file that retains the characteristics and reversibility of the original RAW file.”

Practically, this is very difficult without knowing what PureRAW has changed. You can certainly get close.

Bottom line, PureRAW is making output choices that you need to be aware of, the color mode being a big one.

I don’t know why they choose not to retain the information of the original, but I still like the program as a first pass on many of my photos, mostly when I shoot in high ISO. It does a better job of cleaning up the noise and retaining details than other programs (although, Topaz DeNoise AI is very close). I now shoot with impunity even at very high ISO values.

For low-ISO images with little or no noise, I don’t see PureRAW as offering any advantages over Lightroom unless there are some specific lens and/or camera issues you want to address.

ejd