New user coming from LR - workflow advice, please

Been a user of LR for a good while and had recently incorporated PureRaw 2 into my workflow. So RAW, processed in PR2, resultant dng tweaked in LR. I was so impressed with PR2 that I then tried out PL6, dumped my LR subscription and have fully moved to DXO. I haven’t been using it for very long and just jumped right in to adjusting what I knew from LR, applying DeepPRIME on export to jpg.
I’m now wondering if there is a better workflow since I can’t always tell what the final image will look like following export. With LR I was already tweaking a denoised and distortion-corrected image, so I pretty much knew what the jpg would look like.
With PL6 would I be better processing my selected files through DeepPRIME first and exporting them as dng, then continuing to tweak the dng files to get all my colours/shading/etc the way I want them?
If that’s a better route, what would be the optimum dng export settings? I shoot with a Canon R7, so I do end up with pretty big files, but I work from a NAS so storage isn’t a major issue.
Any advice and guidance gratefully received.
Thanks,
John

You can do that with PL6, retaining the full control over adjustments that PR doesn’t give you. Just export to DNG from PL6 with the desired options in the export dialog window selected. Then use PL6 to edit the DNG file, which has the denoise and optical adjustments you made “baked in.”

This is the way that I always work. Please be advised however that there is currently a bug in the latest PL release PL6.1.0 that you can read about HERE. DxO is aware of the bug and is working to repair it but it might take a while.

And me - though I bulk process using Pure Raw 2 in the majority of cases.

Note of caution however, you lose the ability to work with the new colour gamut as it is not supported for RGB images yet

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I keep it simple and do all my editing then look at noise reduction and use the appropriate NR type as required. With PL6 you do need to look at soft proofing if you have highly saturated colors in your photo and you are using the high gamut working color space.

I have being using PL since version 1.

Soft proofing as such does not necessarily help, unless one tries to bring colours into gamut (which can suck the juice out of an image) or leave them as is, in which case it’s not necessary to engage soft proofing… One thing though: With softproofing, you can check, which areas might look different on a print or if looked at on a different screen.

Let me clarify my statement:

If you have highly saturated colors they may look quite different when exported than they did on screen while editing. You should check with Soft Proofing and adjust if necessary.

I personally find that simply having the Protect Saturated Colors (PSC) algorithm applied on output gives me very acceptable color and detail rendition in my export.

Be aware that PL6.1 has changed things quite a bit and the PSC algorithm may not be applied in some circumstances.

Thanks for all the responses folks. That’s been really helpful, especially the heads-up about the current bug.
A passing question - am I overlooking a setting or something somewhere? When I export to DNG, I can only set the resolution to 72ppi but I don’t have any such restriction on TIFF or JPG.

I’m in a very similar situation coming from Lr.
I did consider working this way but thought it would be too slow.

Is there a way to batch process a chunk of images using Deepprime XD?
If it is possible could anyone give a walk-through on how to do it?

It is not set to 72ppi, it is greyed out. Resolution changes to DNG files are not an option.

Mark

Hi,
First if you have the elite version your capable of creating Partial Presets.
Step1.
Set your required tools on the wanted strenght/setting.
Step 2 right mouse(windows) select make preset from present settings.
Step 3 go to preset editor and turn off every tool you don’t want to be active/effecting your images.
Step 4 rename preset.
Select in filmstrip on iso and then select per iso the desired partial preset.
Then use export to produce your dng’s.

One note: Even the rawdng’s does have problems with CA alignments when you change Whitebalance alot. (CA is done in pre-demosiacing in fact in the proces of demosiacing but dxo is recalibrating CA values after every change of whitebalance.)
Tiffs has less problems with that but more loss of colorspace.

So i would test some settings in to extreme values and export DNG to see if it can be redirect/changed back in the loaded DNG.
If so fine
If not. Set that tool/setting as active in partial preset and adjust to your likeing before export.

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I do have that version and that sounds like a good way to make use of it. Thanks for the tip.

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If you just want to set DeepPrime XD for those images without changing anything else then you simply select all the images you want to change and then set DeepPrime XD. Any changes you make will be applied to all selected images.

OK, thanks. I did wonder.

DxO is currently working on resolving the DNG bug introduced in PhotoLab 5.6 and PhotoLab 6.1.
I believe this only impacts the Windows versions. Hopefully it will be resolved very quickly.

Mark

Thanks for that you’ve saved me a bit of time. I was sort of heading gown that thought process. I’ve just been running the images thru with “Standard” corrections"…does a decent job too.