DPReview reviews DXO for Fuji

I’ve decided not to read any work product on dpreview any longer as they aren’t nice anymore.

What was the conclusion?

I think the gap between Deep PRIME and XD is greater for X-Trans sensors than for Bayer sensors.

Mike Tompkins did not mention it, but XD treated images are always smaller in size at the same JPEG quality settings. Due to less noise? However as you can see in the article, XD often shows better detail than regular Deep PRIME.

I don’t think so. But thanks for the brief conclusion. I’ll stick with what I have.

I have been playing with DX0 Photo Lab Elite Verson 6 and I must say, I have been REALLY impressed with the Deep PRIME and XD noise reduction. I even ran some old files through it from a Nikon Coolpix A along with files from my XE4 and XPro3. I did find there was no support for my Nikon D1H, D2H and D2X files. Of course there is NIK integration. The problem with DXO is that Fuji recipes are lost on the RAW files but then again, this could be an oversite on my part thus far. I have only played around with it for a short time. I am still testing things out. I have do have PS 24 and Capture One 23 and seeing how DXO works into a RAW file workflow.

The article puts the noise reduction for Fuji files in the best possible light (no pun intended). Having trialed DXO products off and on several times over the years, I get that the processing formulations have vastly improved. At the same time, the rudimentary controls remain a problem. It seems that the DXO engineers want most of the control, user input not necessary. That doesn't work for me because the art in photography involves personal choices. In some instances, I want to retain some noise and control over the contrast that appears to be a bit over-the-top in DXO's execution.

And then there is the color shift problem.... why shoot Fuji if DXO still doesn't have a clue about color management?

PhotoLab (since version 4 or before) has a wide selection of color renderings. The one that usually comes closest to out-of-camera JPEG is "Generic Rendering - DxO Camera profile." Astia, Provia, Velvia, Ektachrome, and Kodachrome emulations are also provided.

Despite the colour shift, I thought it was pretty amazing.

Yeah, I should have referenced DXO PureRaw as my specific concern regarding lack of flexibility. For PhotoLab (with full Filmpack), having very recently trialed, not an option for me. The colors simply aren't anywhere near the right starting points... and even with work the yellow shifts in natural green tones are very difficult to get right - at least in my fairly extensive efforts. My strong preference is for the quick precision provided by a full spectrum color wheel. Just easier for my workflow.

Don't get me wrong... I'd love to have the NR capabilities provided by DXO as a plug or standalone finisher, but I'd need to have good intensity controls that give me real time preview. It really is a shame that DXO has come close, but for me still falls short of what works in my workflow.

Topaz is combining their products (noise reduction, sharpening and upsampling) into a new single product Topaz Photo AI. It integrates nicely with C1. In fact if you click "Edit With" Topaz is the top option. The after the processing it integrates the dng into C1 and you can do follow on with C1. When I picked up Topaz Photo AI about a month ago, it could produce some color shifts. However, after multiple updates to the database driving the AI - that has been fixed.

Topaz Photo AI works really well on XTrans images and is integrated nicely with Capture One.

I haven't tried Topaz on an RAF file in awhile because of that problem, but I use it on all my output images and it works great that way as a finishing step.

Would you please provide examples with your claim?
I think you did not select the correct settings in "Color Rendering" or even a correct white balance. Is it that difficult to get green right?

Example where green and yellow are correct:

Which one besides Denoising does not give you "real-time" preview?

DeNoise AI or Photo AI?

Pretty far off topic when you consider OM-5 wouldn't have Fuji colors in the first place, right? Keep in mind, the Fuji color management is complex and involves many factors relating to how shadows and highlights are treated - not just basic white balance and color rendering variables. I always found that I could pretty quickly do those adjustments with Canon and Pentax files in LR, but it is more complex with Fuji - especially so with the newer simulations such as Nostalgic Neg and Classic Chrome.

You're making assumptions that I don't know how to familiarize myself with the basics... and I have done so with numerous raw conversion programs over decades.

When I do the analysis, I'm generally looking at what the OOC JPEG produces and work on what I'd like to improve upon. In natural light especially, this was very difficult to do with the DXO filmpack defaults (Fuji files)... they were so far off compared to LR and particularly so compared to C1.

All of this is a matter of preferred aesthetics. Your image's coloration, I'm sure, is exactly what you want - and that's fine. For me, I'd find the green-yellow area in the neck area very unnaturally distracting - even if it somewhat reflects what comes off of the neon carpeting (also distracting to my eyes), and light bluish underbelly would seem a bit off, as well. There's no absolute "right" look, but to me this would be distracting contrast extremes. To each their own.

I am sorry that there are people in the world who would rather be a frog in the well than to truly discuss, to the point they register in a forum to deny discussions, and resort to bad-mouthing others and make unfounded accusations without proof, support, or an example.

I think this is a discussion of issues on DxO, and I do not expect much differences in rendering with different cameras. If DxO is just so poor at supporting Fuji, I think it would be easy to show with an example to a rendering or a raw file. Apparently this is not the case here.

I would not disturb you further. Rather I hope this forum would one day apply some kind of AI to filter out unfounded accusations.