He pointed out that DXO is not a comprehensive rival to Adobe but that there is some collaboration between the two market leaders. He did, however, venture that Pure Raw (a DXO product) is even better at de-noising than Lightroom’s impressive ‘denoise’ function.

Whilst many prefer Adobe Lightroom for its added ability to tag and catalogue photographs, Michael pointed out that ‘Excire’ was a great alternative. Excire utilises AI to keyword all the photos on your hard drive(s), something which you have to do manually in Lightroom. The AI will also learn from your own tagging and recognise and label faces. it is also available as a plug-in for Lightroom if your tagging has fallen a bit behind.

Michael recommends ALWAYS adjusting the exposure of your photo to light or to dark, primarily to discover just what’s happening in the shadows. Modern digital files contain much detail in the RAW file and you might be surprised. Suddenly the rivets under Blackfriars Bridge sing out from the dark or the coloured planks of the underside of Brighton Pier reveal themselves.

Michael demonstrated DXO’s excellent and surprisingly intuitive selection tool (clicking on a person, immediately selected them as separate from their background). He therefore advocated the use of multiple masks, liberating you to consider different levels of exposure, depending on what you wish to highlight. This is the modern/digital equivalent of the instructions to dodge or burn areas of a photo which would be made by dark room technicians. See Magnum’s website and books for some famous examples of ‘classic’ photographs with such markings, such as the photo of James Dean, which Michael displayed.

With regard to masking, Michael pointed out that DXO’s Chroma and Luma tools allow for better sky adjustment than Lightroom’s blanket selection. Particularly as these keys allow you to see the sky through the tree foliage, without any frustrating colour bleeding .

Michael argued the benefit of setting white balance off auto and instead to daylight, in order to maintain for more consistent colours.

Michael recommended ‘Viewpoint’ for those who need to fix the verticals in their architectural photography. His tip was to purchase it on Black Friday!

Finally, the thorny issue of pricing for post production software was considered. Adobe famously are pay monthly...FOREVER! The plus is that they are constantly innovating and upgrading, as the likes of DXO continue to keep them on their toes. You might prefer DXO’s one-off price and not wish to be locked into a particular suite. My advice is to do some research and have a ‘play’ - I suspect you will find one is simply more intuitive for you.

Final Thought

I think there can be a strange sense of guilt felt by some photographers that they have somehow failed if they resort to post production software. There is more than a little bit of, dare I say it, snobbery in the claim, “I prefer to get things right ‘in camera’”. Of course, we should all try to take the photograph we wish to produce ‘in camera’ but you are honestly fooling yourself if you imagine ‘the Greats’ of analogue photography didn’t alter their photos in ‘post production’ (in their case, the physical dark room). Indeed, Magnum’s dark room technicians were legendary for their skills and some of the best photographs ever taken benefitted from a little of their dodging and burning. Just because we now have access to a digital dark room with Lightroom or DXO does not make us cheats! Even a little exposure adjustment can transform a photograph because there is such an extraordinary amount of data held in a raw file - so please don’t be afraid to use post production software and certainly don’t beat yourself up about using it!

Return to Previous Page