Software progresses and PhotoLab 3 does some things better than PhotoLab 2 (which you mention in your posts) and PhotoLab 8 will be much better still - whenever it may be available…Īll you can do is see what you can do with both apps in regard to noise (and all the other features) and I suppose that the number of tests you need to do is rather above 100 than below 10. If money does not matter to you, use them both and see which tool serves which purpose best. Have you compared noise on images that you exported or on screen? What are the differences? Do you lose detail or does everything look like it was made from plastic? What is the quality you’re after and what are the criteria that define this quality?Ĭomparing NR of Lightroom and PhotoLab feels like picking cherries out of two baskets filled with many delicacies… PhotoLab and Lightroom can do marvellous things in capable hands and both products offer things that make life easier - or more complicated, because each basket has a set of goodies, but neither has them all. Anyone here use DXO Photolab 2 and found it on a par or better than LightRoom? I’m just not seeing it though., at least with my equipment. The PhotoLab version was blotchy with that classic color noise look, and this is after the auto or max correction was applied.ĭXO’s PhotoLab 2 is promoted as being really special for noise reduction. 12800 is never going to give you an excellent outcome, but the result was mote than reasonable considering. The LightRoom edits looked very reasonable. I then developed the same shot in LightRoom, and compared the exported jpegs from each side by side. I went with Prime NR on DXO with different settings, plus auto. I kept the edits to a minimum outside of lens correction and noise reduction.

I watched another demo on YouTube tonight and it looked great, so I downloaded a trial again, shot ISO 12800 RAW on my Canon R, and then processed it in PhotoLab 2 and LightRoom. I’ve moved on since to Canon full frame bodies and I recently received a “special offer” email from DXO for PhotoLab 2 Elite edition. When I tested the trial version with some of my RAWs however, it was not any better than LightRoom, and in some cases seemed worse. I took a look at a demo of DXO PhotoLab some time ago when I shot with a four thirds body, because I was getting frustrated with the noise at high ISOs and the YouTube demos looked amazing with the Prime noise reduction.

Dxo photolab 2 vs lightroom