One of the options within the menu system of the Canon 90D is Digital Lens Optimisation (DLO). It is ‘on’ by default. I know what DLO is, it corrects for known lens aberrations. I also know that DLO is a feature available within Canon’s own software, DPP, where it behaves a bit like Photolab’s lens corrections, in that a lens profile is downloaded and applied during post-processing.
What I’ve not been able to figure out, despite extensive Googling, is whether or not using in-camera DLO adds the lens correction data to the RAW file and, more importantly, if it does, how third party software like Photolab (or Adobe’s Camera Raw) handles that extra DLO data within the RAW file.
I assume using in-camera DLO will add the lens corrections to the RAW file but that only Canon’s own software (DPP) can read/use these corrections. In other words, I assume Photolab cannot read/ignores any in-camera DLO lens corrections when it opens the RAW file and instead applies it’s own lens correction magic.
Please can a member of DXO staff clarify how Photolab handles Canon’s in-camera DLO?
Let’s think about this logically. DPP writes DLO lens adjustment data to Canon raw files, but this data is ONLY available for use in DPP. Assuming Canon’s 90D also writes DLO data to its raw files, chances are it writes it to the same place as DPP does, and would therefore only be usable in DPP. While I don’t know for certain I would suspect that processing DLO data in camera allows it to be applied directly to jpegs straight out of the camera, bypassing the need to apply the lens adjustments in DPP. It is highly unlikely PhotoLab will even see DLO data in raw files, much less know what to do with it.
on JPG files DLO are applied by the camera. If you use JPG images then you have to chose between correction by the camera or correction by DxO Optics modules because they will do the same job and you don’t want it applied twice. If you let DLO on then you will have to deactivate distorsion, chormatic aberration and vignetting correction in PhotoLab.
on RAW files DLO are not applied but information about settings are recorded in Metadata and DPP can then apply the same DLO as the camera. PhotoLab will just ignore it and there won’t be any problem with DxO Optics modules correction.
You could also use DPP to create tiff files including DLO lens corrections and edit them in PhotoLab. That would be preferable to using jpegs, However, Marie’s comments with regard to the optics module, distortion, CA, and vignetting would still be relevant.
I could (I realise TIFFs are lossless, unlike JPEGs) but if DPP is used as the RAW converter, then while you can open the TIFF in PL, you can’t then use PL’s PRIME NR, which, after it’s excellent lens corrections, has to be one of PL’s top features.
Once I’ve converted a RAW to a TIFF in PL, I switch to either an ancient version of PS or Affinity Photo for any further post-proc.
