I’ve been using DxO Optics Pro for about a month now and have fallen in love with it.

I’ve been a happy Lightroom (LR) user.  My workflow consisted of dropping my CF card into a reader and using LR to convert the Canon RAW CR2 file into a Digital Negative (DNG) file.

I was happy with this workflow.  Lightroom was fast and is my primary library of photographs.  Importing is quick and painless and I could do all my metadata & tagging upon import.

I never really thought much about the quality of the CR2 to DNG conversion until I started using my Canon 7D.  There was something about the files that I just didn’t like.   After conversion and post-processing (95% of my files had to be post-processed), I was happier with the converted DNG but something was still missing.

True happiness?

While surfing the web one day, I ran across an article about DxO Optics Pro (DxOP).  The article (sadly I don’t remember which one it was) described the various benefits of DxOP including excellent noise reduction, sharpening and lens corrections.

I downloaded the demo version of DxO Optics Pro for Mac to try it out.   I chose some RAW files that had already been run through Lightroom and ran them through DxOP as a test.

You know what? There was really no comparison.

The DxO Optics Pro converted DNG was so much cleaner, sharper and more vibrant than the LR converted DNG.  That said, DxOP does much more to the photo thanLightroomdoes when converting… DxOP applies sharpening, color correction and noise reduction automatically.

One can argue that the DxOP DNG is a much different photo than the Lightroom DNG.  And I would agree.  They are different photos but I think that’s a good thing…the DxO DNG is a much better photograph in my experience.  Keep reading and I’ll show you what I mean.

Happiness at a cost

I’m happy with the results of DxOP.  Really happy.

But that happiness comes at a cost of something that’s extremely precious: Time.

To show the difference in conversion & import times, I ran a test. I went out earlier this week with my Canon 7D & my Canon 400mm 5.6 L and shot some birds at Spring Creek Forest Preserve. I filled up an 8GB CF card with photos…turns out to be 321 photos.

I decided to run all the files through both DxO Optics Pro and LR to compare conversion times and converted files.

Both DxO and Lightroom were set to convert the files to DNG using the ‘default’ settings.  DxOP applied color correction, sharpening and noise reduction to each file while Lightroom did not.

A summary of the results are below.

Number of files: 321

• DxO Optics Pro Conversion & Corrections:  4.5 hours
• Lightroom Conversion to DNG: 1.5 hours

After conversion and corrections in DxO, I had to import the files into Lightroom using the “import from disk” option and adding the converted DNG files to the library without any conversions. This process took only 1 minute to complete.

DxO Optics Pro took 3 hours longer than Lightroom but the photos provided out of DxO were much better photos (sharper, better color, etc) when compared to lightroom.

So…to get the same photo in lightroom, I would need to go through each photo and apply sharpening, color corrections, tone correction and other types of corrections…which could conceivably take 3 hours (or more).

So how good is DxO Optics Pro versus Lightroom?  Let’s take a look.

An Example

I used one of my favorite recent photographs as a test.  The female cardinal below is the final product out of DxO + some minor edits (crop, sharpening, etc) in Lightroom.

Female Cardinal - Converted and Corrected using DxO Optics Pro

Great photo if I may say so

As I said, this photo was converted to DNG using DxO Optics Pro on the default settings.   The photo below was converted from Canon RAW to DNG using Lightroom. The same settings (sharpening, color, crop, etc) were copied from the above photo and applied to the Lightroom Converted photo below.

Female Cardinal - Converted using Lightroom

Quite a big difference between the two photos isn’t there?

Let’s take a look at both photos close-up…and you’ll see where DxO Optics really shines.

The first photo is a side-by-side comparison of the female cardinal’s head and shoulder.

Side-by-side comparison of Dxo (left) vs Lightroom (right) - click for larger image

Bit of a difference isn’t there? Better color and a clearer photo IMO.

Let’s take a look at another comparison – this time a body shot of the same female cardinal.

Side-by-side comparison of Dxo (left) vs Lightroom (right) - Click for larger image

Conclusion

Have I performed a scientific test and proved anything significant? Nope.

But I have run a few thousand photos through DxO Optics Pro and say that I definitely prefer the files output from it over those from Lightroom.

Is the difference in image quality worth a processing time 3 times longer?  When I think of it taking 4.5 hours to convert & correct 321 files in DxO Optics Pro, I get a little antsy…that’s a long time.  But…those 321 files are ready to publish (for the most part) after DxO conversion whereas the 1.5 hour conversion process in Lightroom requires a significant time investment to fully post-process the files.

To me the additional post-processing time is worth it.

Buy DxO Optics Pro

There are two versions of DxO Optics Pro available: Standard ($169) and Elite ($299). The difference in the versions is based on your camera(s) and lens combinations.   Go here to find which version you’d need.

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2. Scott Kelby’s Lightroom 2 for Digital Photographers Book Review
3. Richard Earney’s Inside Lightroom 2 Book Review
4. From a Snapshot to a Photograph