DxO Optics Pro V4
DxO
Reference Manual
Optics Pro V4
Reference manual V4 - V3.55
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DxO Optics Pro V4
Reference Manual
Contents
Introduction
4
Introducing DxO Optics Pro V4
Chapter 1
7
A typical image enhancement session from A to Z Selecting images to create a project Organizing your project Enhancing the images in your project Processing a batch of images Viewing the results! Common actions Note for users of previous versions
Chapter 2
9
Select your photos from various sources The thumbnails and their buttons Star-ranking Adding images Fully automatic operation
Chapter 3
12
Organize your images on an electronic light-table The big picture Adapt your workspace
Chapter 4
15
Enhance your images using DxO Optics Pro Tools Corrections Palette Guided or Expert? Eight corrections palettes
Chapter 5
18
Process as many images as you want with just one click Process the stars Define output formats
Chapter 6
20
View the results of your work (with a little help from DxO)
Chapter 7
21
How to go further Your workflow
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Chapter 8
22
DxO Optics Pro V4 Menus
Chapter 9
28
Using Auto, Guided and Expert modes
Chapter 10
31
Generic Tools
Chapter 11
34
DxO Optics Tools
Chapter 12
40
Sharpness Tools
Chapter 13
43
DxO Noise Tools
Chapter 14
45
White balance and Exposure
Chapter 15
49
DxO Color tools
Chapter 16
54
DxO Lighting tools
Chapter 17
57
Geometry Tools
Chapter 18
62
Stacking, ranking and Output formats
67
DxO Optics Pro V3.55 User Manual
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Reference Manual
Introduction Welcome to the exciting world of DxO Optics Pro digital image enhancement! This powerful, ground-breaking software is going to improve the quality of your digital images in a way you would never have believed possible. DxO Optics Pro’s precise, calibrated corrections are based on unique algorithms derived from actual measurements made on real camera bodies and lenses. Thousands of test measurements are made on each body and lens combination, with every permutation of shooting parameters. This is why the whole DxO Optics Pro system operates using what are called ‘Correction Modules’, each unique and specific to a particular body / lens combination; for this reason, you need to make sure you have the right module(s) for the bodies and/or lenses you use. All this means that DxO Optics Pro produces extremely accurate actual corrections of measured phenomena, instead of just subjective (and often impossibly time-consuming) manual approximations. In addition, this new version 4 of the software also includes a number of corrections that are not camera-specific, so you can make the most of other images too, and some adjustments, going beyond purely correction, that you can perform manually for creative effect. A simple workflow The way the DxO Optics Pro workflow is organized is perhaps worth explaining briefly. You start off by creating a new ‘project’, which you can name and save, and into which you will assemble the pictures you wish to process at this time. You can then click on the “Process Now” button to start processing the images with DxO automatic presets. Alternatively, you can work on preview images to define your own corrections or adjustments. And it’s worth underlining at this point that your original image files are left untouched, they are never altered in any way, deleted, or overwritten, so your precious originals are 100% safe at all times! Making DxO Optics Pro even more powerful and ergonomic, some or all of your chosen settings can be saved as one or more ‘presets’ that can be applied across a whole series of images — still leaving you the possibility of making further manual adjustments too, of course! Even without the use of any manual settings at all, DxO Optics Pro can process your images fully automatically, for guaranteed improved results every time! ©DxO Labs 2006
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You choose between three different working modes: Auto is the most straightforward, since you will only use the automatic enhancement settings provided by DxO Optics Pro. Guided gives you access to the Enhancement tab, where you can decide which global setting (as “Portrait”, “Landscape”, etc) to use; and Expert gives you the possibility of overriding every option of all the corrections performed by DxO Optics Pro. The choice you made at the first launch of the software can be changed anytime in the Preferences (Edit Menu). Upfront in your workflow! DxO Optics Pro is designed to be at the very beginning of the workflow, at the point images are copied from the card reader or camera, to correct images straight out of your camera. Please note that if your image has been previously processed using other software, or is missing the EXIF data, certain of the DxO corrections will be unavailable. Please check the on-line FAQ at http://support.dxo.com/ for the most recent updates related to this requirement. DxO Optics Pro strives to leave as much as possible of the metadata (EXIF, MakerNote, IPTC, XMP) untouched. This means that you should be able to use your other image processing/editing software even after the images have been processed by DxO Optics Pro. DxO Optics Pro automatically rotates the images if you use the autorotate facility of your camera. There is no need for additional software for this particular step.
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Chapter 8
22
DxO Optics Pro V4 Menus
Chapter 9
28
Using Auto, Guided and Expert modes
Chapter 10
31
Generic Tools
Chapter 11
34
DxO Optics Tools
Chapter 12
40
Sharpness Tools
Chapter 13
43
DxO Noise Tools
Chapter 14
45
White balance and Exposure
Chapter 15
49
DxO Color tools
Chapter 16
54
DxO Lighting tools
Chapter 17
57
Geometry Tools
Chapter 18
62
Stacking, ranking and Output formats
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feedback from the application to keep you continually informed as to progress. Once underway, this processing stage is inherently ‘hands-off’. Viewing the results! Naturally enough, once processing is finished, you will want to view your images, and the simple-to-use viewer facility lets you compare your pictures before and after correction. Of course, if you think you could do even better, there’s nothing at all to stop you re-processing one or more images so that you can apply subtly different settings etc. We’ve described a logical linear flow for a typical image enhancement session, but of course the software has been designed in such a way that in actual practice you can move around more or less at will between the steps in any order you like — so for example, at the adjustment stage you might want to go back and add extra images (you can discard images from your project at any step), or you might even want to interrupt processing to go back and make some changes to your settings.
Common actions There are some actions that are common to many functions within the application, so we’ll describe them here. Many settings use two different ways of making manual adjustments: there is a slider that you can drag with your mouse. Clicking on either side of a slider will move it in large increments in that direction, and clicking on the + and – buttons at either end of the slider increment or decrement the value by single steps. Alternatively, there’s a data entry box where you can type in an appropriate figure — to do so, you need to select the default value already in the box, delete it, type in your new value, and lastly press ‘Enter’ for it to take effect. At various points, there are tabs that take you between the different screens of the user interface, and you will also find a number of drop-downs that let you select from lists of options. Virtually all commands are accessible in three ways, to suit your preferred way of working: you can either select them with the mouse from the traditional drop-down menus at the top of the screen, click on a toolbar icon, or use a keyboard shortcut. Within functions, there are additional context-sensitive mini-toolbars that offer icons appropriate to the task in hand. Most commands have an explanatory ‘tool tip’ that you can read by hovering the mouse over them.
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Whenever an image is displayed zoomed bigger than the available window, you can shift the image around in that window just by grabbing it with the ‘hand’ tool, accessible either from the workspace buttons, or by just holding down the space bar while you drag the image around. As usual, Shift + click allows you to select a range of adjacent items, while Ctrl + click allows you to pick multiple selections. Across the top of your screen are drop-down menus that are common across the whole application, though obviously some commands may or may not be available, depending on what you are doing at any given moment. Here are the six menus, and you can click on any of these links for details of the commands under that menu: File (commands to let you save and manage your session, referred to here as a ‘project’) Edit (the usual editing commands, plus selection of DxO Optics Pro preferences and language) View (commands for the user interface display and file filtering) Workflow (alternative access to the five main session steps, plus start processing) Image (options for displaying, and ranking and stacking currently selected images) Help (local and online help file, updating, information about DxO Optics Pro and modules)
Now let’s take a closer look at all this. We’re going to follow the same linear path sketched out above, and by clicking on any of the hot links within the text, you can find out more detailed information about any of the steps. In the next five sections, we’ll be following a logical progression to describe the windows accessed via the five main tabs that appear at the top of your working window — note that only ‘Select’ will be highlighted (i.e. active) until there is at least one image in your project. Note for users of previous versions Users of previous versions of DxO Optics Pro will notice that, although the underlying correction principle has not been changed, the introduction of this logical, sequential approach represents a fundamental change to the presentation of your workflow, and has resulted in an even more ergonomic and flexible user interface. You will find it well worth the effort to read through this user guide in order to better appreciate the logic of this new presentation.
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Chapter 2— Select your photos from various sources
When you first launch the application, the ‘Select’ tab is the only one that is active (highlighted), and your workspace displays a familiar Windows Explorerstyle browser where the top two panes (resizable) allow you to navigate around the files on your disk or accessible externally. As usual, in the righthand file pane you can click on a column header to organize files according to that criterion, and a click on the column header will select ascending or descending sort order. Adding images This initial ‘Select’ stage involves adding the photos you want to process to the project pane, which will remain in the lower part of the window throughout all five stages (from Select to View). As you add images, they are displayed as thumbnails in the bottom pane, which you can resize if necessary to fit in a useful number. Besides using the mouse to drag the dividers to resize these panes, they each have rather discreet and buttons, to fully open or close a pane, and a button to regain mouse control. ©DxO Labs 2006
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The header strip for the project pane at the bottom of the screen has four buttons at the far right. The first two let you change between viewing as thumbnails or as a classic ‘details’ file list; the last two select respectively filters you can use to organize your thumbnail display, and which parameters are displayed in ‘list’ mode. The same buttons appear at the top left of the right-hand ‘files’ pane, where they perform the same functions. Star-ranking Also on the project pane, tucked away discreetly at the bottom right, is a small slider, with a button at each end; dragging this to the right, or clicking the right-hand end button, increases the thumbnail size displayed, while dragging it to the left or clicking the left-hand button reduces the size back down to the default. You can choose to ‘rank’ your images, in order to set their priority for processing, and also, to save clutter, you can create a ‘stack’ of perhaps related images, or images to which you want to apply the same set of corrections. Both these commands are accessed under the ‘Image’ drop-down menu. In addition, to rank your images for processing priority, you can simply click on the appropriate number of stars displayed above each thumbnail (this works in any of the workspaces, except of course ‘View’). On the left of the project pane header bar are three more buttons, for managing your project; your project name is displayed just to the right of them. The
button lets you create a new project, the
an existing project (provided any exist, of course), and rename a project.
one lets you open lets you save and/or
At the bottom of the right-hand ‘files’ pane are three important buttons — ‘Add images’, ‘Add images and Quick settings’, and ‘Process now’. Note that these buttons will be grayed-out and inactive until you have at least one image selected (in the case of the first two), or at least one image in your project (for the last one). ‘Add images’ will add one or more images selected in the file pane — the usual selection shortcuts apply: Shift + click to select a whole range and Ctrl + click to make multiple selections — into your project. ‘Add images and Quick settings’ does the same, except that it allows you to choose ‘presets’ to be associated with particular images. The simplest way of adding images is just to drag them down from the file pane into the Project pane. This does not, of course, work if you want to associate a preset with the image.
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The thumbnails and their buttons To remove one or more images from your project, you simply click on the orange
icon displayed in the centre below each thumbnail; if multiple
images are selected, clicking the on any one of them will delete the entire selection in one go. You can select a group of adjacent images by dragging a ‘rubber-band’ box around them with the mouse, or by holding down the Shift key as you click on the first and last images in a series. Multiple non-adjacent images can be selected by holding down the Ctrl key while you click on them. The buttons associated with each thumbnail offer the following functions: to remove the image from the current project to rotate the image for correct viewing orientation to create a stack (active on the last-selected image of a multiple selection) unstacks a stack of images (active when a stack is selected) Above each image, only visible on mouse-over, are a line of stars ✮✮✮✮✮ (grayed out at start-up) to indicate the selected ranking of this image for processing — you can click these stars on or off at any time. In addition to these buttons, certain icons may appear above each thumbnail — follow the link to discover the meanings of these, as they give important information about each image. The color of the frame surrounding the thumbnail also has a significance. Fully automatic operation Once you’ve selected and added to your project all the images you want to process, if you have no need to make any manual adjustments to your images, you can simply press the ‘Process now’ button, and processing will take place automatically. You will only be asked to intervene manually to input particular data in the event of certain corrections where DxO does not have enough information to process correctly.
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Chapter 3— Organize your images on an electronic light-table
Once you have a Project established (either by re-opening an existing one, or by creating a new one), you can use the ‘Organize’ workspace to organize your images and their subsequent processing. If you only have a few images to process, you may be able to skip this stage completely, but it is extremely helpful where your workflow involves much larger numbers of images! In the ‘Organize’ workspace, the top half of the screen (as always, resizable) is available as a sort of ‘light table’ to display one or more images selected for preview. You can transfer any image to the preview window simply by leftclicking once on the relevant thumbnail. You can select multiple images to preview at the same time, and if for any reason you want to empty the preview screen, you just have to click on a blank area of the thumbnail pane. The big picture As soon as there is an image in preview, the icon buttons originally associated with its thumbnail appear at the bottom right of the workspace, along with the current filename on the left. At the left-hand end is a ‘thumbtack’ button that will ‘stick down’ the preview image; this means you can move around between ©DxO Labs 2006
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the thumbnail images in your project pane, without the preview pane continually refreshing. At the top of the workspace is a header bar. On the left-hand end of it are two buttons: a ‘hand’ tool that lets you grab and drag a zoomed-in preview image so as to be able to examine any part of it; has no effect in ‘Zoom-to-fit’ mode. Next to it is a magnifying glass tool that lets you to zoom in to any part of the image by successively clicking on it; holding down Shift as you click turns it into a zoom out tool. In all cases, the minimum zoom size is ‘Zoom to fit’ (i.e. determined by the size you have set your preview pane to), and the maximum is 200%. Alternatively, over on the right-hand side, a drop-down list lets you choose the zoom ratio of the preview image — ‘zoom to fit’ will show you the whole image, resized according to the format of the image and the screen space available, while the various other ratios allow you to examine part of the image in greater detail; as an alternative to selecting from the drop-down menu, you can use the ‘zoom in’ and ‘zoom out’ buttons. There is also an button that toggles on/off the display of image EXIF data on the left-hand side of the preview screen. Adapt your workspace Also on the right is a little icon you can click to active a ‘background brightness’ slider, allowing you to set the background visible around the image anywhere you like between black and white (at start-up, the default is around 18% gray). This is helpful as a neutral reference when assessing or adjusting the color balance of your images. If you have a large number of images to process, you will find the ‘Organize’ workspace very useful in allowing you to examine and organize your images in this way, and from the ones you have loaded, make a second, finer selection using the larger ‘light table’; you may well want to reject certain images and discard them from your project, stack them, and/or assign a processing priority by ranking your images — later, at the processing stage, you will be able to choose which ranks to process, or not. Both these commands are accessed under the ‘Image’ drop-down menu, or via the thumbnails themselves. Once you have had this chance to compare and organize your images, you can of course start automatic processing right away (‘Start Processing’ command from ‘Workflow’ menu, or keyboard shortcut Ctrl + R) — but it’s more than likely that you’ll want to move onto the next step, which is to make manual adjustments to some of the correction parameters, or apply some preset corrections to your images.
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Chapter 4 — Enhance your images using DxO Optics Pro tools
Tools palette
Corrections palette
In the ‘Enhance’ workspace, you will immediately notice that some things change. For a start, on the right-hand side of the screen, a palette area appears, which is where you will find all the correction and adjustment tools. We’ll come back to look more closely at that in just a moment, but for the time being, let’s just make a quick tour of the other new items on this workspace. As always, the familiar project pane occupies the lower part of the window. The header bar carries on the right the same information, zoom, and background brightness buttons as for the Organize workspace, and on the left the ‘hand’ tool that lets you grab and drag a zoomed-in preview image so as to be able to examine any part of it; has no effect in ‘Zoom-to-fit’ mode. Next to it is a tool that lets you to zoom in to any part of the image by successively clicking on it; holding down Shift as you click turns it into a zoom out tool. In all cases, the minimum zoom size is ‘Zoom to fit’ (i.e. determined by the size you have set your preview pane to), and the maximum is 200%. Note that some corrections cannot be previsualized with zoom factors below 75% (this is the case for the Chromatic Aberration, DxO Lens softness, DxO Noise and
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Unsharp Mask corrections). You’ll find two buttons that specify the way your preview image is displayed: display both ‘before’ and ‘after’ images in preview window display ‘after’ image in preview window; the “before” image will replace it while you maintain the left mouse button pressed on it. But there’s also a whole new group of four buttons, whose functions will be described later as we go through the tools palette. Corrections Palette Now let’s go and take a closer look at the corrections and adjustments that are accessible via the palette on the right-hand side. Don’t forget, in the description that follows, just like everywhere else in this Guide, you can click on the links indicated to obtain further details about a particular topic. Throughout the tools palette, you can click on the title bar to expand or shrink each tab at will; the title of opened tabs is shown in bold, to help you find your way around more easily. At the top comes the tools palette with four basic tabs: Zoomhas a small window that indicates the visible part of the image with a green box that represents the assigned size of the preview area. As you would expect, the more you ‘zoom in’, the smaller the green box appears (you are looking more closely at a smaller part of the image). You can grab the box with the mouse to drag it round the screen in order to examine specific parts of an image. The button on the left hand end of the header bar lets you grab the main preview image to move it around when zoomed in. There’s the same zoom slider as before, together with small zoom in/out buttons at either end. Maximum zoom in all cases is 200%, while the minimum zoom size depends on the size you have set the preview pane to. The is another way of zooming in and out.
button in the header bar
Histogram gives a graphical representation of the distribution of the relative brightness levels in the image, across the red, green, and blue color channels. A very useful tool, you will probably find yourself leaving this open a lot of the time while you are adjusting color and exposure! EXIF Editor brings up a tab with two text fields, where you can enter specific information that will be added to the EXIF header. They concern the author and the copyright information of the picture. Presets opens a small window with a list of available presets you can apply to your image — you can apply all of the settings from a selected preset, or select which particular corrections you wish to adopt. Of course, there is nothing to ©DxO Labs 2006
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stop you from adjusting these same parameters manually later, in which case the preset values will just be over-ridden for this particular image. Here, you can also perform elementary preset management operations. Guided or Expert? Immediately below these four tool tabs, there are two large buttons for ‘Guided settings’ and ‘Expert settings’. ‘Guided settings’ replaces the full corrections palette with a list of the four main correction groups: Optics, Sharpness, Color, and Lighting. Alongside each of these is a drop-down menu where, in addition to the default ‘As shot’ (effectively, ‘automatic’), you can select from a list of any custom presets you may have saved. In this way, you might choose, for example, to apply the Lighting corrections stored in one preset, and the Color corrections stored in a different one. ‘Expert settings’ opens a ‘palette’ with access to the full range of corrections and adjustments, as detailed below. First comes a strip with eight buttons that open the eight corrections panels below. If the tab you want to open is hidden off screen because of other open tabs, these buttons are useful in letting you go straight to the panel you want, closing any others that are open. You can also open and close any panel just by clicking on its title bar tab. Eight Correction palettes Then come the eight principal tabs for the main groups of corrections. Note that under each tab certain corrections may not be available, depending on the images and correction modules you have loaded — the title of available corrections is shown white in bold, whereas de-activated corrections are grayed and not bold. DxO Optics — the corrections for geometric distortion, chromatic aberration, purple fringing, and vignetting Sharpen — DxO lens softness correction to correct for measured characteristics of lenses, and unsharp mask, to provide intelligent overall sharpening for images where no lens-specific module is available. DxO Noise — noise reduction, minimizing both general and impulse noise White balance and Exposure — white balance lets you adjust the overall color balance of your images, either to correct for lighting color balance, or perhaps to create a specific effect. Exposure control with highlight recovery allows postshooting exposure adjustment, as well as offering the possibility of recovering apparently ‘lost’ highlight detail (with Raw format images only). You will use here the White Balance Tool ©DxO Labs 2006
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DxO Color — enables you to adjust your colors in the Hue / Saturation / Lightness domain, which although not always the easiest or most intuitive to use, has the advantage of allowing you to enter numeric (and hence repeatable) values very easily. Here you also have access to a powerful tonecurve manipulation function that lets you adjust both the overall master tone curve and the individual color channel curves, for absolute maximum flexibility. Two brand new features here are Color rendering and Color matching. The former lets you apply a specific ‘look’ to your images, starting right from the very ‘look’ of specific camera bodies, along with preset contrast and color saturation options, and some special presets: portrait and landscape, together with black & white and sepia effects. Color matching is a sophisticated way of achieving exact color matching between shots, even where a neutral color reference is missing. The system allows you to pick up to four colors and set the color they are each meant to reproduce as, and then DxO Optics Pro will make a best-compromise calculation to adjust the color balance of the entire image — what’s more, it can do this across a whole string of images, making it is easier than ever before to match critical colors between different shots. The Multi-Point Color Balance tool
is located on the left top of the window.
DxO Lighting — corrects image contrast in an intelligent, adaptive way, using global and local contrast adjustment to bring out shadow, mid-tone or highlight detail that might otherwise be lost. A ‘Fine settings’ button within this panel accesses additional controls for even more precise adjustment. Geometry — corrections for Volume Anamorphosis Correction and Keystoning / Horizon. The former is a lens-dependent correction that is related to geometric distortion. Being subject-matter dependent, this adjustment requires manual setting of the type and amount of correction. The remaining corrections provide adjustments to compensate for keystoning in both vertical and horizontal planes, image rotation (horizon correction), scaling (image sizing) and H/V ratio (stretching / squeezing of horizontal / vertical proportions). Clearly, these are entirely image-dependent and so do need to be set manually, with the help of the Keystoning – Horizon tool
located on top of the window.
Crop — last but not least, here you can edit the composition of your image, with the option to constrain the proportions to those of the original shot or certain preset formats, or to allow unrestricted cropping to custom formats. Click on the Crop Tool (top of the main window) to access this function. When you have finished making any manual adjustments and/or applying any presets, the next logical step will be to start processing your images. You can click on Ctrl + R at any time, or select the Start Processing… command from the Workflow menu, but more than likely, you’ll want to move onto the next step by clicking on the ‘Process’ tab to select the appropriate workspace. ©DxO Labs 2006
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Chapter 5 — Process as many images as you want with just one click
The top part of the ‘Process’ workspace is divided into three areas, plus the familiar Project pane at the bottom. In the left-hand area ‘1 SELECTION’, you can implement the ‘star ranking’ you set earlier (and can still do in this workspace, since the thumbnails are still available); this is where you select which rank of images to process. There is a button for ‘All’, or you can again click to activate 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5 ✮ (individually, or in combination). Process the stars You can select a higher-ranking star alone to specifically exclude lower rankings; so ✮✩✮✮✮ will process only those images ranked ✩✩. You can also make multiple selections, just by clicking on the corresponding stars; so for example ✮✩✮✩✮, will process only images ranked either ✩✩✩✩ or ✩✩. To process all images ranked up to ✩✩✩, you need to select ✩✩✩✮✮. Minithumbnails of the selected images will appear in the column below. Alongside the star buttons is another button, which allows you to select only unranked images for processing. ©DxO Labs 2006
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The centre area ‘2 OPTIONS’, under ‘Destination directory’, has radio buttons for using either the default project directory, or a specific directory — the browse button to the right opens a browser window where you can select an existing directory, or create a new one. Define output formats Below this are three buttons for adding and/or selecting one or more output image formats. Each button (JPEG, TIFF, DNG) opens a dialog box with settings appropriate to that format. A summary of all available formats is shown, and you can click onor to enable or disable them for this batch. You must have at least one output format active for processing to commence, otherwise you will see an error message when you press ‘Start’. The right-hand area ‘3 PROCESSING’ has a big Start button, and gives status information about the progress of your project, along with controls to either ‘pause’ or ‘stop’ (i.e. abort) processing. As soon as you click on ‘Start’, if you have not already saved your project since the last changes were made, you will be prompted to save it before proceeding. You are kept informed of progress in processing your project by means of two progress bars, the top one showing the overall progress of the project as a whole, and the lower one indicating progress on the current image. During processing, upper ‘Pause’ and ‘Stop’ buttons allow you to halt processing temporarily, or abort it altogether. Lower buttons similarly allow you to ‘Pause’ processing of the current image, or ‘Skip’ it altogether. While processing is under way, the thumbnails of all images included for processing carry a [two cogs] icon. Once processing is completed, these change to a indicating that processing has been successful.
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Chapter 6 — View the results of your work (with a little help from DxO)
The ‘View’ workspace has the now-familiar three resizable panes; the top lefthand pane shows before/after pair thumbnails of all your processed images, with buttons to skip to ‘Last batch’ and ‘All batches’. The image pair being viewed has a highlighted background. The header bar in this workspace has, on the left-hand side, a [projector] button that gives access to the options for running a slide show of the processed images. To the right of this is shown the (original) filename of the image displayed. To the right-hand end of the header bar are nine buttons, plus the usual group of zoom controls. Here’s what they do: and
display previous / next image
and display next / previous output image — if you have selected more than one output format for a given image, lets you view the JPEG / TIFF / DNG images in turn. When you have reached one end or the other of the image series, the relevant button will be grayed out. ©DxO Labs 2006
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Chapter 7— How to go further
After going through a full typical session, you may want to explore more options. The powerful new DxO tools bring you many functions, that you can fine tune in your own way. In the following chapters (that you’ll find only in the electronic version of this user guide), you can discover the various settings that can be applied to your photos, and how you manipulate the corresponding palettes. Remember that your original picture is never modified: you can always create a new project, along with different settings applied to the same image or group of images. Your workflow Another point of interest concerns the way you integrate DxO Optics Pro to your personal workflow. You may use an image management software to download, index and preview your photographs. You may also invest in some heavyweight treatment and correction software, whose name begins for instance with photo and finishes by shop. DxO Optics Pro must be used ahead of the latter, whose importance will be greatly reduced; and concerning the database software, you should make sure that the EXIF information stored in the image file has remained untouched. In the opposite case, you’ll prefer running your pictures through DOP before managing them with another package.
Thank you for using DxO Optics Pro V4! You will find more information on the pdf version of this user guide, and in the Frequently Asked Questions available on DxO’s website: www.dxo.com
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Chap 8 DxO Optics Pro V4 Menus
File / Edit / View / Workflow Image Menus
The File menu includes commands to :
Create a new project [Ctrl + N] Open an existing saved project [Ctrl + O] Save the current project [Ctrl + S] Save the current project under another filename Along with a list of the most recently used projects Exit is also available from this menu [Alt + F4] It’s important to note that a ‘project’ saves all the current settings of your user interface, along with the list of images selected and the Output formats settings, but does not save duplicate copies of these images. So saving a project is fast, and does not use up a significant amount of disk space. It is very handy to be able to keep all your settings and come back to them later.
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The Edit menu
A very useful pair of commands, Undo [Ctrl + Z] and Redo [Ctrl + Y] apply to the last action you’ve performed. The classic Cut [Ctrl + X], Copy [Ctrl + C], and Paste [Ctrl + V] commands allow you to edit certain items like numerical values, names etc. The Copy settings [Ctrl + Alt + C] and Paste settings [Ctrl + Alt + V] commands allow you to copy all the correction settings from a given image onto another image or group of images. The ‘Preferences’ command accesses adjustments to certain overall working parameters, via three tabs:
General tab Here you can select the working language, choose whether you prefer to use metric or imperial units for measurements, and select if you want the camera shutter sound to play at start-up. You can also select / deselect automatic checks for software updates. ©DxO Labs 2006
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Processing Mode Radio buttons here allow you to choose which mode of processing best suits your way of working, if necessary changing the choice you may have made at the time of installation. Please refer to the description of these three modes given earlier. Changes made here only come into effect the next time you start the program, so if you want them to take effect immediately, you will need to exit and restart the program.
Performance tab Settings for optimizing performance during batch processing. A slider lets you choose between maximum reactivity or fastest processing speed, with a checkbox to allow the setting to be determined automatically for your particular machine.
Module ambiguities tab Under certain circumstances, it may happen that an image’s EXIF data doesn’t contain enough lens information for DxO Optics Pro to determine the right Correction Module to ©DxO Labs 2006
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use for this image. This will normally be flagged up at the time of adding images to your project, and you will be asked to tell DxO Optics Pro exactly which lens was used for a particular shot, so as to pick the correct module. You can also resolve such ambiguities via this tab under Preferences. Where ambiguities exist, the offending modules will be listed, and you can choose the one you’re actually using. You are given the option of choosing based on one particular image, or on one particular processing batch, or it may be that you will want to always assign this particular module in this way—depending of course on the specific combinations of bodies and lenses that you habitually use. View
The View menu offers the option of switching between displaying thumbnails [Ctrl + Shift + I] or a list of file details [Ctrl + Shift + R] — in the ‘Select’ workspace, this applies to either the right-hand ‘file’ pane or the bottom ‘project’ pane, depending on which one you click before using the command. In the other workspaces, it will of course only affect the display in the bottom ‘project’ pane. You can also check the options to display Raw files, RGB files, or corrected files; unchecking an option means that files of this type will not be displayed; do note that it is not possible to uncheck all three file types at once, and the system will not allow you to select a single file type alone if there are no files of this type in your current project. Status bar toggles on and off the status bar at the bottom of the screen. Split gives direct mouse control of the project pane divider — this is very useful for bringing it back on screen quickly if you have minimized the project pane to enlarge the preview pane, for example. ©DxO Labs 2006
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Play slide show [F11] brings up a little control panel so that you can display an automatic, full-screen preview sequence of all the images in your current project. The Workflow menu includes commands for switching directly between the five workspaces (exactly the same effect as the tabs):
Select [Alt + 1] Organize [Alt + 2] Enhance [Alt + 3] Process [Alt + 4] View [Alt + 5] You can select these at any time, and your workspace layout changes to suit. If you have already selected ‘Auto’ mode (Edit > Preferences), you cannot access the Enhance tab, which will disappear, and the Enhance command here will be grayed out. This setting can be changed in Preferences, under the Edit menu. In addition, there is Start processing [Ctrl + R], which you can use in the event of fully automatic processing of a particular batch of images. Image Menu The Image menu offers the possibility of rotating your image left (counterclockwise) or right (clockwise) in order to be able to view portrait images with the correct orientation.
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Likewise, you can use the commands here to ‘rank’ a selected image or group of images according to a rating of one to five ‘stars’; when you get to the processing stage, you can select which images you wish to process in a given batch according to your defined star ratings. If you have at least two images selected, the Create stack command becomes available, and will make a stack of the selected images; likewise, if you select an existing stack, you can use the reverse command, Unstack images, to open out the stack again into its individual images. The ‘Display information’ command has the same effect as the button on the toolbar, toggling on/off the display of the EXIF and thumbnail information in the preview window — this command is only applicable in the ‘Organize’ and ‘Enhance’ workspaces, and so is disabled in the other three.
The Help menu offers access to the complete help file (i.e. this User Manual) [F1], and an About DxO Optics Pro… information screen containing information about the exact software version, important if you need to contact DxO Technical Support. There are also direct links to the general DxO website, and the software update and technical support pages.
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Chap 9 Using Auto, Guided and Expert modes Processing mode The first time you run the program after installation, you will see this screen:
Here you are prompted to choose the processing mode that is most suited to your preferred way of working: Auto mode DxO Optics Pro will determine automatically the optimum correction settings for your images, and the only input required from you will be to fill in certain information where EXIF data is missing or insufficient. In this mode, the 'Enhance' step is disabled (its tab will be grayed out), and after selecting and organizing your images, you will move straight on to process them automatically.
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Guided mode In this mode, the ‘Enhance’ step will be available, but instead of having access to the full set of manual correction adjustments, you will be offered the choice of applying the four main groups of corrections according to drop-down lists of preset choices, including of course access to your own saved presets. You will be able to switch over to ‘Expert Settings’ mode at any time via the button available under the ‘Enhance’ tab. Expert mode As you might expect, this mode gives you access to all the manual and automatic correction settings. The ‘Enhance’ tab will be enabled, and the full range of correction tabs will be accessible. You will be able to switch over to ‘Guided Settings’ mode at any time via the button available under the ‘Enhance’ tab. By default, the ‘Expert’ mode is selected, and once the application has been run for the first time, you can always change the settings again in the future under Edit > Preferences > General. Open a project window When you launch DxO Optics Pro for the first time, you will see the following screen:
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(To avoid seeing this screen each time you launch the application, uncheck “Always show this dialog box”) ‘Open a recent project’ lists the five most recent projects, for fast access to your work in progress. ‘Open a new project’ lets you start a fresh project, and prompts you to name and save it, before you start your actual image enhancement session. And lastly, ‘Open an existing project’ opens a browser window where you can locate and open an existing saved project.
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Chap 10 Generic tools
Zoom The Zoom tab, on top of the Tool Palette, shows a thumbnail of the image. The green box indicates the section of this image currently displayed in the preview on the left. The usual two buttons (bigger on the right, smaller on the left) surround a slider that can help you to fine-tune the zoom factor. Two other
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buttons propose a shortcut for the full view (“Fit”) and the 100% view, when every pixel of the picture is represented by one pixel of your screen. It’s important not to forget that the normal preview image only shows an approximation of some of the corrections to be applied (White Balance, Exposure, rough Demosaicing, Distortion, Vignetting, Tone Curve, Lighting, Hue/Saturation/Luminance), whilst other key corrections like noise reduction, lateral chromatic aberration, true demosaicing, and sharpness processing are not always previewed; especially when displaying at zoom factors less than 75%. While editing the Settings, you will probably frequently zoom in to check the effects of your corrections, and zoom out to control the global image. Note that a mouse thumbwheel (when available) will act as a zoom in/out control, within the same limits as the standard zoom controls. Histogram You’ll no doubt already be familiar with the histogram display — it’s a graph showing the number of pixels for each tonal value in the three color channels, with black on the left and white on the right. You’ll almost certainly find it very helpful to keep the Histogram tab open while you’re working with the other tools, since it very often gives you a good idea of exactly what’s going on. Below the histogram graph itself are three buttons [ ] Highlight clipping / [ ] No clipping / [ ] Shadow clipping. These activate the special clipping display described later. EXIF Editor The EXIF editor tab enables you enter and/or modify Artist and Copyright data for the currently-selected image(s). Presets This is where you can save (and manage) your presets for subsequent reuse on other images. Presets are a powerful feature of DxO Optics Pro. Basically, all the settings you’ve carefully prepared associated with a certain image can be saved as a preset, which can then be applied to other images—most often, similar images from a same batch. More powerful still, you can choose which parameters to include or not in your preset, and manually override any preset settings at any time. So you can very speedily apply your preferred global settings to achieve the kind of ‘look’ you want, and then work on each image individually to finetune some corrections and adjustments that perhaps need to be done on an image-by-image basis. It’s probably good practice to start off by saving most of your settings as presets, in case you want to apply similar settings again later to other images, as it is much less work than to laboriously go through trying to reproduce settings you’ve used before. It’s worth pointing out here ©DxO Labs 2006
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that all your settings are saved in a ‘side-car file’ alongside each of your original image files, so if at any time you return to an image, it is possible to find out what settings were last used to process it. At start-up, there is a list of any available existing presets, and also below it five buttons, only the left-hand one of which is available right away: Create preset. This enables you to save the current preset, and once you have a selection of presets saved, you can Copy or Delete them. The two larger, right-hand buttons enable you to Edit the name of a preset and enter a brief description of it, and also, to apply a selected preset to the currently selected image(s).
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Chap 11 DxO Optics tools Correction tabs At start-up, all the correction tools appear as tabs stacked in the correction palette. When you left-click once on a tab, it turns bold and the relevant panel opens. As each correction panel is self-contained and independent, you will usually find it best to close each panel as you finish with it before opening the next, to avoid screen clutter. A scroll bar on the right enables you to move up and down in the palette to gain access to tabs that might not be visible, depending on the size of your preview pane. Note that the entire palette of all tool/correction panels is now headed ‘Enhance’ and can be moved around the screen as an entity Let’s now go through all the correction panels one by one, in the order they appear in the palette. DxO Optics
There are four corrections under this tab. Note that certain of these will only be available if the appropriate lens correction module is loaded; where this is not the case, some of the corrections will appear grayed-out and be disabled. Distortion There is a check box to enable this correction, and if the check box is unchecked (correction disabled), the correction will remain grayed out. Geometric distortion may be pincushion, barrel — or even for some lenses a mixture of the two! In each case, the analytical measurements carried out by DxO Labs make it possible to correct the distortion in such a way that straight ©DxO Labs 2006
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lines in the original scene are correctly reproduced as straight lines in the photo. The Distortion tab has just one slider for the degree of distortion correction; the range is 0 to 100 %. The default setting is 100 %, and you should only depart from this in special circumstances—either to avoid cropping of important detail near edges, or for creative reasons. TIP
Distortion correction involves a non-linear change in the magnification, which produces curved edges to the image and empty black spaces. To restore clean, straight edges and maintain the image’s original aspect ratio, some cropping of the image is inevitable; at very wide-angle (and especially with fish-eyes) this may be quite significant, so remember to make allowance for this when framing such shots.
There is a check box to enable or disable Max. image. Normally, during distortion correction, the corrected image is re-cropped back to the original aspect ratio; in certain cases, this may mean that the image is cropped tighter than is strictly necessary. Using Max. image releases this constraint on the aspect ratio, so the cropping is just the bare minimum required to straighten the edges of the image. You are then free to crop the image manually to suit your taste or requirements.
Chromatic aberration There are two controls for chromatic aberration; to the right of them are the usual check boxes for automatic setting, which have to be unchecked to enable the manual controls. The first slider / edit box, with a range from 0 to 200 %, adjusts the correction intensity for all types of chromatic aberration—it basically affects tiny colored transitions, which may generally be assumed to ©DxO Labs 2006
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be the result of aberration rather than actual picture content. The second, with a range from 0 to 12 in arbitrary units, adjusts the ‘size’ of the purple fringe that will be suppressed — this basically affects the way DxO Optics Pro decides what is considered to be chromatic aberration that needs correcting and what is wanted picture content. The Purple fringing correction just has a check box to enable or disable it — note that overall Chromatic aberration correction must be enabled in order for Purple fringing to become available. There is also a check box to enable Lateral chromatic aberration; note that this correction depends on the presence of the correct DxO Correction Module, otherwise it will be grayed out and unavailable.
Vignetting Again here, there is a check box to enable this correction; note that this too correction depends on the presence of the correct DxO Correction Module, otherwise it will be grayed out and unavailable. Vignetting correction takes place in two steps, both of which can be fine-tuned. First, from the lens data, focal length and aperture setting, the DxO Correction Module computes the attenuation factor for every pixel in the image, and each pixel’s RGB value is multiplied by the inverse of this factor. The correction intensity slider (range 0–100 %) allows you to decide how much of the vignetting should be removed from the whole image, independent of image content—in other words, all pixels will be multiplied by the scaled factor applicable to their position in the image field.
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Second, a filter is applied to avoid clipping in bright areas and noise increase in dark areas. This is done by limiting the value by which a pixel can be multiplied, depending on its luminance. The effect of this filter will be different, depending on image content. The Shadows/Highlight slider lets you fine-tune this second step, so as to give preference to preserving shadow and/or highlight areas; the range is Off – 100%. As usual, the normally-checked ‘Auto’ box must be unchecked in order to enable the manual control. If you want full correction of vignetting, you can set the value to 0 (Off). Shadow/highlight preservation restricts the amount of exposure correction applied by the vignetting corrector at both ends of the tonal range, so as to avoid either crushing in the shadows, or clipping in the highlights. So, for example, if you want to limit the luminance increase (which may reveal unwanted noise) in rather dark image corners because you shot at high ISO, shadow preservation limits the degree of correction being applied. Likewise, because of the vignetting, the camera may have incorrectly exposed a cloud in the sky; the highlight preservation filter allows you apply as much vignetting correction as possible, while still retaining wanted highlight detail. We recommend you do not depart from the default 100 %, as the shadows preservation slider is often more effective than the correction intensity slider in preventing the undesirable effects of vignetting correction. Note that only vignetting caused by the lens or sensor are corrected. Mechanical vignetting, caused for example by too narrow a lens shade, cannot be corrected.
Values missing For various reasons, certain images may be missing some elements from the EXIF data, or certain cameras may not store all the data correctly. As a result, certain of the corrections (distortion, lateral chromatic aberration, lens
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softness) that rely on this data may not be able to be applied at optimum accuracy.
When an image is selected for which this is the case, its thumbnail is marked with a !, and a matching new button and tab appear in the corrections palette, giving you the opportunity to fill in the missing information. When you open this panel, you will be invited to enter any one or more of the following items of information. Focusing distance Certain lens correction modules need focusing distance information to optimize optical corrections. Some cameras do not store the focusing distance in the EXIF data; if this is the case, the focusing distance panel will be displayed, and you should manually enter the focusing distance used for the shot, as accurately as you are able to. A check box is provided to enable the input, and a combo box allows you to select various distance ranges, while within each range the slider lets you set the distance precisely, or alternatively, enter the figures in the edit box to the right. Do note that the slider may allow you to enter a focusing distance that is not actually covered by your lens; in this case, DxO will use the minimum focusing distance applicable for your lens. Note that the units for focusing distance (feet & inches or meters) can be changed in the ‘General’ tab under the ‘Preferences’ menu, accessible via the Edit pull-down. Focal length Likewise, in order to optimize optical corrections, a small number of zoom lens correction modules need more precise focal length information over certain specific parts of their range than is available from the camera’s EXIF file; if this is the case, the focal length panel will be displayed, with a check box to enable the input, and you should manually enter the focal length the lens was set at for the shot, as accurately as you are able to. The slider lets you set the distance precisely, and will be calibrated for the range of focal lengths across which ambiguity exists for the particular lens in question. Alternatively, you can enter the figures in the edit box to the right. Camera orientation Although we recommend you always use DxO Optics Pro to rotate your image automatically using the information from the EXIF orientation tag, you may have images that have been already rotated. In this case, and in this case only, the Camera orientation panel appears; it will never appear if DxO Optics Pro rotates your images automatically .
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It allows you to specify in which orientation the shot was taken. You have three options. The first is to indicate which way the camera was turned when the image was taken (to the right or to the left). The second option is to select “I don’t know. Do your best.”, in which case DxO Optics Pro will apply a default. In the extremely unlikely event of the results proving unacceptable, as a last resort you can click the third “Do not correct distortion and lateral chromatic aberration” button.
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Chap 12 Sharpness tools Sharpness DxO can correct only for certain kinds of softness—the lens + camera combination’s inherent inability to reproduce fine detail (commonly referred to as “optical blur”). Other kinds of softness caused by inaccurate focusing, insufficient depth of field or motion blur, for example, cannot be corrected.
Remember that these corrections will not be visible in the main preview image below 75%: use the Zoom tool. DxO Lens Softness This forms part of Optics Pro’s optical corrections, and as such, is lens- / bodydependent. As a result, this panel will only be enabled (i.e. its title bar highlighted) for images for which the appropriate correction module is installed. Here again, there is a check box to enable this correction. The DxO Lens Softness slider allows you to manually set the overall level of sharpness required for a particular usage. Remember that this tool is intending to reach an identical level of sharpness for all the image: it will automatically apply a stronger correction on the weak aeras. The sharpness level you choose to apply will of course depend on questions like personal taste, final resolution and type of output (print, web, etc). The slider / edit box range is in arbitrary units from –2.0 to +2.0, from Softer to Sharper, with a default setting of 0. Moving the slider to the left or entering negative values will give a softer, smoother image, while moving it to the right or entering positive values will give a sharper image. The value –1 is the equivalent of “Gaussian Blur” in Adobe Photoshop®. The value +1 is not a simple unsharp mask. The sharpening applied in DxO Optics Pro is intelligent, in that it depends on the image content. Areas with noise are sharpened less than areas containing detail. For each area in the image, the amount of sharpening will also depend, for example, on the ISO—less sharpening is automatically applied at high ISO than low ISO, to avoid increasing the noise in the image. ©DxO Labs 2006
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Note that because this sharpness correction is specifically tailored for your camera’s optics, and may well vary across the image field (to allow for lens performance shortcomings), it is usually preferable to perform as much of your sharpening as possible using this Lens Softness correction, allowing lighter use of the Unsharp Mask (USM), which although a sophisticated and adaptive tool, is a nonetheless a more generalized process. Of course, for images where the appropriate DxO Correction Module is not installed, all sharpening has to be done in the USM. Unsharp Mask Once again here, there is a check box to enable this correction, and if the check box is unchecked (correction disabled), the title bar and controls will be grayed out. The Amount slider / edit box obviously sets the degree of sharpening correction applied, with a range from 0 to 5.00. The Radius slider / edit box has a range in arbitrary units from 0.10 to 5.00. This control affects the fineness of the correction zone surrounding image detail; low values give very subtle correction, whilst over-use of high values can lead to the formation of haloes. The Threshold slider / edit box has a range from 0 to 255, and adjusts how far up the tonal range sharpness correction commences. To avoid noise increase in lowlights, which may not contain much wanted detail, the threshold can be raised so that sharpness correction starts at a higher gray level. Take a look at these images to see the effect of these controls:
DxO Lens Softness
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Unsharp Mask
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Chap 13 DxO Noise tools DxO Noise tab DxO Noise is a calibrated correction, in other words, the correction algorithm is specifically tailored for each camera, and so this correction will only be performed for images from cameras that have been calibrated by DxO.
Remember that these corrections will not be visible in the main preview image, but only by using the Zoom tool. Once again here, there is a check box to enable this correction, and if the check box is unchecked (correction disabled), the entire panel will be grayed out. All five controls under this tab have individual ‘Auto’ boxes to their right that have to be unchecked in order to enable the manual controls; there are Uncheck all (= all manual) and Check all (= all automatic) buttons at the top that can be used to uncheck / check all the controls at the same time. In order to judge the effect of your noise adjustments, it is essential to use the Zoom tool, which gives an accurate preview of final image quality. Choose an area of your image where you can best assess the noise to make your adjustments, and then if necessary move the zoom area around in order to examine other critical areas. The degree of Luminance noise correction can be set using the slider / edit box, with a range from 0 to 100 %. Although DxO Optics Pro’s luminance noise reduction is intelligent and discreet, it is still advisable to use the minimum amount of correction that produces acceptable results, to avoid any danger of unwanted effects on fine detail. To minimize such effects, there is a ‘Fine detail’ slider / edit box, with a range from 0 to 100 %. The default value is 0, but you can increase this setting in situations where you might need to restore some of the fine detail that can be attenuated during strong luminance noise reduction, creating an undesirable ‘plastic’ or waxwork look.
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The degree of Chrominance noise correction can be set using the slider / edit box, with a range from 0 to 100 %. This is useful for reducing or eliminating colored noise—to which the eye is particularly sensitive—and you can usually safely use quite high settings with little risk of unwanted side-effects. Impulse noise correction can be added using the slider / edit box, again with a range from 0 to 100 %. It offers very effective reduction of impulse-type noise (which only affects certain specific cameras), but should be used judiciously, because of the slightly greater risk of its having a visible effect on wanted picture detail. Note that when processing Raw images this control is not available (it will be grayed out), as this correction is applied automatically as part of the Raw conversion process. The Gray equalizer slider / box has a range from 0 to 100 %. This makes it possible to ‘clean up’ unwanted colored noise from midtones, and has the effect of slightly desaturating neutral tones around mid-gray, to minimize spurious color effects in these sensitive areas. You will probably be able to leave it at the default setting, unless you notice the effect it can have of desaturating certain pastel tones. Look at the pictures below, which illustrate the effect of this noise reduction, particularly visible in the shadow areas.
Original image
Lighting activated
DxO Noise activated
Fine details
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Chap 14 White balance and Exposure Under this tab you’ll find two panels for this group of related correction controls: RAW White Balance / JPEG White Balance Note that there are two different groups of controls, depending on whether you want to process a raw or RGB (i.e. JPEG/TIFF) format image. In the case of raw images, true white balance adjustment is possible, whereas in processing the other image formats, the white balance adjustment is achieved slightly differently. For a given image of either type, the unwanted group of controls will be grayed-out and disabled.
At the top of the RAW White Balance panel is a combo box, offering ‘As shot’ (i.e. uses the values read from the image file’s EXIF header), a series of presets for ‘standard’ lighting conditions (Daylight / Cloudy / Tungsten / Fluorescent / Flash / Shade), and a ‘Manual temp.’ position that allows use of the sliders (any adjustment to the sliders automatically selects an ‘As shot (Custom)’ setting). The top slider adjusts the color temperature—basically, it swings the balance of the red and blue channels, whilst leaving the green untouched. Moving the slider to the right increases the color temperature, moving it to the left decreases it. The same result can be achieved by typing in a figure for the color temperature and pressing ‘Enter’. The range is from 2,000 K to 20,000 K. Note that the effect on the image is to make it warmer with increasing color temperature, and cooler with decreasing; although this might at first appear counter-intuitive, we need to remember that this is correcting the color balance as if the picture had been shot with this color temperature lighting in the first place. Imagine, for example, that a picture has been taken by tungsten artificial light, but with the camera accidentally set to ‘daylight’; the resulting image will appear too orange. Moving the slider to the left, towards a
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lower K value more appropriate for the artificial light actually used, will cool the image, correcting the orange cast. The lower slider adjusts the ‘tint’—in this case, swinging the color balance between blue and green, leaving the red untouched. Moving the slider to the left (or entering a negative number) makes the image greener, moving it to the right or entering a positive number makes it bluer. The range runs from +100 to –100. Let’s take a look at the operation of these two controls using some actual pictures (in this case, raw images). Here in the middle is the picture as shot, and to the left and right, the effects of shifting the color temperature slider left and right respectively:
And here is the same picture, this time with the tint control adjusted :
At the left of the header bar is a button to activate an eye-dropper tool that lets you pick a neutral area of the image to be taken as a white reference. This should be a fairly light grey tone, but avoid clipped highlights, as the results can be very unpredictable! Clicking this button displays two preview images side by side, the left-hand one being the original image, and the right-hand ©DxO Labs 2006
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one showing the effect of adjusting the white balance according to the reference point chosen. Note that the eye-dropper ‘looks’ at the average of a number of screen pixels, so you should also avoid transition areas that might yield unwanted errors. Simply position the pointer over the required area, and left-click to white balance for this point; at any time, you can re-select ‘As shot’ (on ‘White balance and Exposure’ panel) in order to cancel the changes and revert to the original white balance. Immediately you click on a gray point to adjust the white balance, the combo box selection automatically changes to ‘As shot (Custom)’. The eye-dropper tool can be temporarily disabled using the Alt key (toggles); as soon as you right-click anywhere in the image, it comes back (but without changing the white balance, or if you left click, it comes back and changes the white balance at the same time). Note that if you zoom in during this twin-image white-balance display, the eyedropper tool then prevents you from being able to move the images around with the hand tool. The way to do so is to open the Zoom tool and use the green box to move the zoom window around within the image. TIP The way the software performs White Balance adjustment differs slightly between processing raw and RGB images (JPEG and TIFF). Using raw images allows greatest freedom of white balance adjustment, but you need to exercise care when correcting RGB files, as large amounts of correction can lead to undesirable artifacts (banding in high-key areas / posterization in Ifshadows). the image selected is an already-converted RGB file, you will need to use the JPEG White balance panel. This has just a single slider to adjust the overall balance of the image—cooler to the left, warmer to the right—or an edit box to enter a color temperature value, with arbitrary units from 0–100. Extreme settings in this RGB mode need to be used with care, in order to avoid artifacts that are the result of limitations in the RGB formats themselves. As before, clicking on a gray point in the image using the eye-dropper tool will adjust the overall white balance so as to make this point neutral, and the selection in the combo box will change automatically, this time to ‘Click point’. DxO’s powerful tone curve, lighting correction and noise reduction features mean you’ll be able to recover an astonishing amount of shadow detail that in conventional photography would likely have been lost. But these corrections are most effective when processing Raw images, which is why the Raw format is to be preferred whenever possible for images to be processed. Exposure compensation This slider works just as you might expect—moving it to the right (or entering a positive Ev number into the edit box) increases the exposure, to the left (or a negative Ev number) reduces it. The range is from +4.00 Ev to –4.00 Ev. ©DxO Labs 2006
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During exposure adjustments, you may well find it helpful to use the highlight / shadow clipping display, available via the buttons beneath the Histogram display. These displays are intended to give a temporary pictorial indication of those parts of an image that are ‘clipped’ (i.e. dark areas that have reached minimum black level or light areas that have reached maximum white level); clicking on the ‘highlight clipping’ button displays a picture that is mainly black (= areas with no clipping), in which certain small areas will display as white (= highlights where all three color channels are at maximum) or as different colors (= only one or two color channels are at maximum). This enables you to spot at once precisely which parts of your picture are clipping, and hence make a more informed decision as to what corrections to apply. The exact converse is true for the shadow clipping button—in this case, the picture displayed is mainly white, with small black or colored areas indicating clipping. The middle button restores the normal display. It’s important to note that shadow and highlight clipping displays are computed in the final output color space, and hence these displays, and any adjustments performed based on them, will be affected if the output color space is subsequently changed. Highlight recovery is only available for raw images (is disabled when working on an RGB [JPEG] image). A drop-down menu offers the choice of None / Slight / Medium / Strong intensities of correction. On this image, note how checking the ‘Highlight recovery’ box produces a slight reduction in exposure and retrieves highlight detail that had appeared to be ‘lost’; this is one of the great advantages of working with raw images, since with an RGB image, once highlights are ‘blown’, there is no possibility of rescuing the lost detail.
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Chap 15 DxO Color tools Color adjustment Color rendering
Color rendering lets you apply a specific ‘look’ to your Raw images, starting right from the very ‘look’ of specific camera bodies, referred to here as ‘color rendition profiles’. As usual, there is a check box to enable this function, and a combo box lets you choose between ‘Original’, Neutral’, and ‘Realistic’, along with specific color rendition profiles for 7 families of cameras currently supported by DxO Optics Pro. Realistic is the “flat” color rendition profile, without any interpretation, with a gamma valued at 2.2. Neutral has the same color rendition, but with a contrast slightly increased. The implication of this is far-reaching; it means you can shoot with multiple bodies from different stables, and yet always produce results with consistent color rendition. You can apply the color rendition profile of Brand X to a camera from Brand Y, so all your pictures look as if they were taken using your Brand ©DxO Labs 2006
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X. Alternatively, the two more neutral settings cancel out even these tiny variations between cameras, to produce a technically precise, neutral result. Color modes Offers you three combo boxes where you can make some preset and repeatable choices about the overall look of your image. These color modes are available for both Raw and JPEG images. Choices of high / medium-high / medium-low / low are offered for both contrast and saturation. Special offers original, two ‘style’ presets: portrait and landscape, together with black & white and sepia effects. ’Portrait’ and ‘landscape’ each apply a fairly subtle color/contrast preset that has been developed to be generally suitable for these two broad types of picture; these are extremely convenient as a quick and repeatable solution for those who do not need or wish to make individual corrections of these parameters for each individual image. As their names imply, ‘B&W’ removes all the color from the image, while ‘sepia’ tones the whole image with a pleasing sepia effect. Multi-point color balance One of the brand new features in DxO Optics Pro version 4, this offers a sophisticated way of achieving exact color matching between shots, even where a neutral color reference is missing. The system allows you to pick up to four colors and set the color you want each of these to be reproduced as, and then DxO Optics Pro will make a best-compromise calculation to adjust the color balance of the entire image — what’s more, it can do this across a whole string of images, making it is easier than ever before to match critical colors between different shots. The operating principle is simple enough, though tricky to explain! To use this function, you first need to click on the appropriate button on the left-hand side of the ‘Enhance’ header bar; this will open the DxO Color correction panel and check the Multi-Point Color Balance enable box, if it isn’t already. It will also put the preview display into twin-image mode (before and after correction). On the MPCB panel, you have four pairs of color patches labeled 1–4; these will show the color points you pick in your image, and beneath each of them there is an X to delete them. There are also corresponding Edit RGB boxes where you’ll be able to directly enter numeric red / green / blue values. As soon as you left click on the left-hand image, you will select a color to go in the top (‘before’) color patch, and a color wheel will appear on your image, like
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this:
Drag this point to adjust slider
The centre of the color wheel corresponds to the point you have selected, its size (from 1 to 4 pixels) set by the ‘Sample radius’ slider / edit box on the MPCB panel. Now you can use the mouse to drag the cursor in order to set the color you would like this first point to reproduce as. Dragging the cursor in and out radially reduces of increases the saturation, and dragging it in an angular direction changes the hue. The saturation is displayed alongside the color wheel as a value from 0 to 100 %. If you right-click on the cursor, a drop down offers you ‘No lock / Lock hue / Lock saturation’—checking the appropriate one will enable you to lock either hue or saturation to stop them moving while you adjust the alternate parameter, or else allow you to unlock both together. You can also temporarily lock the hue by holding down the Ctrl key as you drag with the mouse, or the saturation by holding down the Shift key. The result of your color adjustment will be previewed in the right-hand ‘after adjustment’ image, and the new color (‘after’) will be shown in the lower patch. If you want to select further points for balancing, you can just click again; as you do so, the previous color wheel will collapse to a small circle with its number beside it. You can revisit an earlier color point at any moment by clicking right in the centre of it, and you can move it around by grabbing it at any point other than the cursor itself and just dragging it to where you want it. You can delete any color point at any time just by clicking on the X button beneath its color patches. Also on the MPCB panel are two sliders / edit boxes for Sample radius (range 1 to 4 pixels) which sets the size of the point around the cursor that is averaged, and Strength (0–100 %), which enables you to adjust the flexibility around the clicked point—and a check box for ‘Preserve white balance’. From the points you set, DxO Optics Pro calculates the color adjustments that need to be made to achieve the balance you require. If there is a conflict between the points you have set, then it will make the best compromise it can between them all. If you check the box to enable ‘Preserve white balance’, then DxO Optics Pro will calculate the compromises in such a way as to maintain the neutrality of the ©DxO Labs 2006
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image as far as possible. With this mode enabled, attempting to force a color cast onto an originally neutral point is clearly likely to produce unpredictable results Note: the MPCB and HSL color adjustment modes are mutually exclusive; so if you have made adjustments in one mode, and then attempt to change over and make adjustments in the other, you will receive a warning message saying that your earlier settings will be lost, and asking you to confirm that you want to continue. Hue / Saturation / Lightness As usual, this panel has a check box to enable the correction, and if unchecked (correction disabled), all the controls will be grayed out. Hue, saturation and lightness can all be adjusted for the master channel, and also separately for each of the three primary (Red, Green, Blue) and three secondary (Yellow, Cyan, Magenta) color axes, as selected in the combo box. As usual, the Hue slider can be moved to the right or left to change the hue, or a positive or negative figure can be entered in the edit box; the exact operation of this slider is naturally affected by which color channel(s) you have selected to adjust. The slider and box values range from +180 to –180.
Likewise for Saturation, the slider can be moved to the right to increase, or to the left to decrease, the color saturation (overall, or any of the six color axes), or a positive or negative figure can be entered. The slider and box values range from +100 to –100. The same goes for the Lightness slider: to the right (or enter a positive figure) to lighten, to the left (or enter a negative figure) to darken. These slider and box values can be from +100 to –100. The action of this slider is slightly interesting, and you’ll probably find it easiest to understand if you look at the result on the Histogram display. Effectively, moving the slider to the right or entering a positive figure lifts the black level towards white, compressing the ©DxO Labs 2006
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tonal range into the upper half of the scale. Conversely, moving the slider to the left or entering a negative number brings down the white level towards black, compressing the tonal range into the lower half of the scale. And also as usual, the ‘As shot’ button cancels any HSL correction. Tone curve Once again, the panel has a check box to enable this correction, and if the check box is unchecked (correction disabled), the panel controls will be grayed out.
The tone curve is a very powerful tool, but is not at first all that easy to comprehend. The graphic indicates the relationship between tonal values into the tool (across the x axis) and out of it (up the y axis). The tone curve represents the transfer characteristic—the way in which input tones are mapped onto output tones. The initial straight line indicates that output tonal values are exactly the same as input values over the whole tonal range. In order to adjust tone mapping for correction or creative purposes, the straight line is manipulated so as to alter this input/output relationship. In traditional photographic terms, this means altering the gamma of the image, and this graphical approach allows a great deal of flexibility. Note first that the combo box at the top lets you choose to adjust either the Master channel—i.e. all three colors together—or any of the three Red, Green, Blue channels individually. The buttons to the right enable you to reset either the single curve you are working on, or reset all three of them together, back to the default straight line. Probably the first step in your manipulation will be to add points to the line, which you do simply by left-clicking on it. As soon as a point is created, you can drag it around, and the line will follow, the curve ‘splining’ as you do so—and you can watch the result live on the preview image. You can create as ©DxO Labs 2006
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many points as you need to in order to generate the curve you want. To move a point, simply click on it; the active point is shown filled in black, and inactive ones as hollow white. Likewise, you can delete the active point using the Delete key. An alternative to drawing a made-to-measure line is to make a numerical entry of the gamma value; the box at bottom center is set by default to a gamma of 1.00, and you can enter any figure between 0.05 and 6.00. As you would expect, a gamma value higher than 1 tends to bring up detail out of the shadows, whilst a value lower than 1 crushes it down into the blacks. The input and output black and white points can likewise be set, either by dragging-&-dropping the relevant points with your mouse, or entering numerical values in the 4 entry boxes—from 0 (black) to 255 (white). The Tone curve adjustment is probably the hardest to explain in words, but certainly one of the most useful features in terms of tonal control of your images.
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Chap 16 DxO Lighting tools
This DxO Optics Pro feature merits a little explanation. Natural scenes rarely exhibit ideal lighting conditions; light sources are often directional and sometimes quite harsh. What’s more, when taking pictures we are often more concerned about capturing the right moment, and pay little attention to potential lighting problems. To compound the problem, the dynamic range of sensors can’t compete with that of our eyes. All this can result in some shots exhibiting under-exposed, dark or shadowed regions with missing details. To a certain extent—basically, when the wanted image signal is sufficiently above the noise level—lighting problems can be corrected afterwards, given appropriate image processing. Pixel-precise image segmentation technology lies at the heart of DxO Lighting, to deliver automatic local contrast adjustment and thereby reveal hidden detail in dark areas. Simply put, DxO Lighting first breaks the image down into a number of areas in which luminance values have a certain range; it then processes each of these areas in the most appropriate manner to reveal detail. In general terms, lightness and tone curve slope are slightly increased in dark areas to bring out detail, yet avoid the signal clipping that could occur if the overall gamma were adjusted. ©DxO Labs 2006
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Auto settings intensity Slight / Medium / Strong There’s a simple check box on the right for Auto, which has to be unchecked to enable the slider for Strength—as usual, the slider is disabled until the Auto box is unchecked. Slider range is from 0 to 150 %, and there’s also an edit box for direct entry of the correction value. Look at the effect on the four pictures below:
Original image
Lighting “slight”
Lighting medium
lighting strong
There is the same basic check box for Auto or manual, and the slider for Correction strength—the slider is disabled until the Auto box is unchecked. Slider range is from 0 to 150 %, and there’s also an edit box for direct entry. Checking the ‘Fine controls’ box opens up a sub-panel with a whole new group of controls. First come the buttons for Manual / As shot / Auto that uncheck / check all of the ‘Auto’ boxes at the same time, and a central ‘As shot’ button that resets all sliders to their default positions—very useful! ©DxO Labs 2006
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The White and Black point sliders operate in a complementary fashion; each has a range from 0 to 255, or you can enter a whole number in the edit boxes instead. These controls have the effect of stretching the image’s lower tonal range up towards white, or vice-versa: stretching the upper range down towards black. This is similar in many ways to what might be achieved using a tone curve adjustment, and is probably easiest to visualize in conjunction with the Histogram display. Selecting or deselecting ‘Auto’ for either automatically selects / deselects it for the other too. The Brightness adjustment acts basically like an overall gamma control, the slider and entry box having a default setting of 1.00, with a range from 0.50 to 5.00. The Preserve shadow feature (checked by default) operates at higher positive gamma settings, where shadows tend to become washed-out, and intelligently decides to what extent the darker tones should be ‘held back’ as shadows. The Radius slider / edit box affects the way DxO Lighting makes its decisions about what areas represent shadow or not, and how to apply the gamma locally in the image; it has a range from 0 (entirely global) to 15 (fully localized). And last but by no means least comes the pair of sliders / edit boxes for Local contrast (range from 0 to 100 %) and Global contrast (range from +50 to –50 %). As you might expect, the Global contrast control uses an S-curve to affect the overall contrast of the image, with a useful bi-directional range allowing both contrast enhancement for slightly flat images, and reduction for contrasty ones. The Local contrast control, on the other hand, is more subtle in its effect, altering the contrast in a spatially-determined way that takes account of the area around each pixel, having something of the feel of dodging-and-burning.
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Chap 17 Geometry tools Volume anamorphosis correction
There is a fundamental problem when capturing a picture of our threedimensional world onto a two-dimensional image, governed by the basic laws of optics. When converted into a flat image, the shapes of certain threedimensional objects seem distorted, so they do not correspond to what our eyes and brain expect to see. This is referred to as ‘volume anamorphosis’, and is most noticeable and objectionable when using wide-angle lenses, and when it affects foreground objects close to the camera. One of the biggest problems when trying to correct for this distortion is that it is entirely picture-content dependent, and because of the trade-offs involved, it is of necessity a subjective, artistic decision that needs to be made by the user.
The distortion is most evident with three-dimensional objects near the camera, and the correction required depends on their underlying shape. Basically cylindrical objects (for example, columns or full-length human figures) need correction along one axis more than another, which we refer to as cylindrical ©DxO Labs 2006
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correction (in a sense that may be either horizontal or vertical), whereas inherently spherical objects (e.g. a human head) need correction on both axes at once; we refer to this as spherical correction, and it is actually calculated along a radius from the centre of the picture. Both of these corrections are dependent on the focal length of the taking lens. The VAC panel provides radio buttons for selecting either spherical or cylindrical correction, with a single slider for the former, and a pair of horizontal and vertical correction sliders for the latter. All three sliders and edit boxes can take values from 0–200 %. VAC correction is only possible when geometric distortion (under DxO Optics) is available and applied, so checking the VAC check box will automatically check the geometric distortion box too; conversely, if the appropriate module is not available to enable geometric distortion correction, then VAC will be disabled too. To adjust these controls, you need first of all to examine the image and decide what type of correction is required. Choose the appropriate type of correction for the picture content that most needs correcting, and then apply as little correction as possible to render the residual distortion acceptable. Overcorrection will start to re-introduce unwanted geometric distortion, and you may have to find the best compromise. Keystoning / Horizon (a check box enables correction) The pair of Up/Down and Left/Right sliders / edit boxes for adjusting respectively vertical or horizontal keystoning correction both have a range of +100 to –100. The Horizon slider has a range from –180° to +180°, enabling the image to be rotated completely upside down at either extremity of the scale. Equally useful, of course, for correcting leaning verticals. Associated with the Keystoning / Horizon corrections is a button on the top left of the header bar that accesses a drop down menu with four special tools: Note that defining your geometric corrections in this way will override any other settings you may have entered via the sliders and/or edit boxes, so you are warned of this and asked if you want to continue. Also note that each of these corrections cancels out the others, so they are effectively mutually exclusive. Level horizon In the first case, selecting this option lets you define a line in the picture that you want to correct so as to be horizontal. To do this, you first stick down one ©DxO Labs 2006
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end point with the mouse, then set another end point to define your line, shown by a bright green line on the preview image. As soon as you click the second point, the image will rotate in such a way as to make your chosen line horizontal. If you make a mess of it the first time, you can click on Undo [Ctrl + Z] and then reset your second end point. All the remaining three options change the display into twin, side-by-side images, showing the original preview image on the left and the result of your correction on the right. Once the defining points have been set, three new buttons appear at the bottom left: Check, Accept, Reset. In each case, click on the Check button to check the effect in the right-hand preview image, and then either Accept the correction, or click on Reset to go back to the original settings and try again. These three modes also have a check box for ‘Keep image centered’, which can be helpful when shooting architectural pictures, for example.
Force parallel (vertical) Force parallel (horizontal) Force rectangle The first two keystoning correction options Force vertical / horizontal act in a similar way, except that in these cases you are asked to define a pair of vertical / horizontal lines that you wish to be parallel, and hence, you need to define two pairs of start and end points. It doesn’t matter if you define the lines in the same or reverse sense, the end result doesn’t change. Only the relative angles of the lines count—their lengths have no significance. If you define a pair of horizontal lines for vertical correction (or vice-versa), your image will be rotated to suit. If your picture contains both vertical and horizontal keystoning at the same time, you will need to use the fourth option, Force rectangle. This lets you define four points that form corners of a quadrilateral that you wish to correct to be rectangular. Note however that this is rather more powerful than a simple manual combination of both vertical and horizontal keystone correction, since it can also introduce an element of ‘skew’ into the correction. As the four corrections under this button are mutually exclusive, if by any chance your image contains both keystoning and a horizon that isn’t level, you will either have to first perform one of the corrections using the top left-hand buttons and then the other in the Geometry panel of the right-hand palette, or perform all your corrections using the panel controls. Since the Level horizon command only works with a horizontal line, if the problem with your picture is in fact a leaning vertical, it will make most sense to correct any keystoning first using the left-hand button, and only then go and correct the leaning vertical in the right-hand Geometry panel. Alternatively, you can cheat by using the Force rectangle tool, though this gets a bit fiddly!
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Scale The Scale slider / edit box lets you resize the image; the default value is of course 100 %, and you can reduce the size to 50 % or increase it to 200 %. Horiz. / Vert. Ratio The H / V ratio slider / edit box lets you stretch or squeeze the height of your image while keeping the width unchanged. The scale runs from –100 to +100, which represents from 50 % to 200 % of normal height. Crop To crop an image, you can either select the Crop button from the left of the header bar, or open the Crop panel in the right-hand corrections palette, where there is an Enable crop check box. If you have selected Crop from the left-hand buttons, the only way to escape from this is to uncheck the Enable crop button in the panel. Conversely, if you click the top left Crop button, this will automatically check the right-hand panel Enable crop button. Once Crop has been enabled, a rectangle appears with handles in the middle of each side and at each corner. By dragging these handles, you can move the borders of the rectangle around to adjust the cropping of your image. On the right-hand panel, there is a drop-down list from which you can choose the way the aspect ratio of the image is controlled in Crop. Unconstrained gives you completely free rein to reshape the crop in any way you like, otherwise a series of fixed ratios will constrain it to always maintain certain proportions, from 1:2 to 1:1, or maintaining the original, ‘as shot’ aspect ratio. A final option allows you to define a Custom ratio, handy if you need for example to crop a whole series of images to conform to a specific aspect ratio. Clicking on Custom opens a small window that invites you to enter numeric values for the ratio you want. These must be integers, but will accept a sufficiently wide range of values to enable any desired proportion to be achieved.
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Chap 18 Stacking, ranking and Output formats Stacking A ‘stack’ of images is a way of organizing your images into groups, which can not only help to save clutter on your workspace, but more importantly, enable you to apply various settings to a whole group of images together (without having to multi-select them each time). Any time you have a number of images that for some reason might require the same processing, you may want to consider stacking them. These might be a series of related images of the same subject, or a set of images taken under the same lighting conditions… the possibilities are endless. If one of these images subsequently needs individual settings, you must first unstack it in order to be able to adjust the settings for this particular image.
It is easy to create a stack, either by physically dragging-and-dropping thumbnail images (or filenames) on top of one another in the project pane of your workspace, or by selecting multiple images and then clicking the button of the last-selected image’s thumbnail, or then again by first selecting multiple images and then choosing the ‘Create stack’ command from the Images menu. Once a stack has been created, it ‘sticks together’ and can be handled and manipulated as if it were single image, until such time as you click on the thumbnail button to un-stack it, or select the ‘Unstack images’ command from the Images menu. The thumbnail for a stack of images appears with a light-gray border. You can expand the stack by double-clicking on the image, so you can check all pictures inside without unstacking them. To shrink the stack, double-click on the ‘top of stack’ (master) image: it’s the one outlined in blue. You can also change the master image—if the stack is expanded, by double-clicking on another image; or if it’s shrunk, by using the scroll wheel on your mouse.
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Ranking To help you organize your workflow most efficiently, there is a system of image ranking that uses stars to indicate the priority of images for processing. The reason for opting to rank images in this way is because processing times for large numbers of high-resolution images can become significant, and so it may sometimes be useful to process certain images before others, so that you can for example take decisions about lower-ranked images on the basis of viewing the final results from higher-ranked ones. Of course there is no absolute qualitative meaning to this ranking system, it is merely a convenient way of indicating some form of priority classification. Above each thumbnail image, only visible on mouse-over, are a line of stars ✮✮✮✮✮ (grayed out at start-up) to indicate the selected ranking of this image—you can click these stars on or off at any time and in any workspace. In the ‘Organize’ and ‘Enhance’ workspaces, these stars are also permanently accessible in the preview pane. If you click on the third star ✮✮✩✮✮ , the ones to the left of it will light up too, like this: ✩✩✩✮✮ Later, when you get to the processing stage, you can implement the ‘star ranking’ you set earlier; this is where you select which rank of images to process. There is a button for ‘All’, or again you can click to activate 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5 ✮(individually, or in combination). You can select a higher-ranking star alone to specifically exclude lower rankings; so ✮✮✩✮✮ will process only those images ranked ✩✩✩. You can also make multiple selections, just by clicking on the corresponding stars; so for example ✮✩✮✩✮ , will process only images ranked either ✩✩✩✩ or ✩✩ . To process all images ranked up to ✩✩✩, you need to select ✩✩✩✮✮. Minithumbnails of the selected images will appear in the column below. Alongside the star buttons is another button, which allows you to select only unranked images for processing.
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Output Format tab
One of DxO Optics Pro’s great time-saving features is the ability to save images in more than one format at a time. So, for example, you might want to archive processed images in a high-quality format like DNG (only available when originating from Raw images), while at the same time saving a JPEG copy for web-based publication (including destructive compression). What’s more, this new feature in version 4 enables you to create multiple output format settings within each format—so, for example, you might have one JPEG format configured for images destined for website use, and another for making prints. All of these configurations will be listed under the respective output formats, and you can check the box to enable one or more configurations in one or more output formats—so in a single processing batch you can produce multiple versions of the same image with different output format settings. The three buttons ‘Add JPEG’, ‘Add TIFF’ and ‘Add DNG’ each open a window where you can select some basic, and some format-specific options. All three windows carry an ‘Enable’ check box at the top left, so you can enable or disable any given output formats for any given images. This check box is duplicated alongside each output format in the list, and at least one output ©DxO Labs 2006
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format must be enabled in order for an image to be processed. If you attempt to start processing with no output formats enabled, you will be warned by an error message. Then a drop-down list lets you choose the intended size and use of your image, which will preset certain parameters like size and resolution. If you select the ‘Custom’ option, the next combo box is activated, which lets you specify an image size in either pixels [px], centimeters or inches. Correct syntax is [dimension]x[dimension], and it doesn’t matter whether you specify image height or width first. Next, the JPEG window (only) has a slider and edit box for ‘Quality’ that lets you select the degree of JPEG destructive compression, and hence file size, you wish to use. Obviously, you should use as high a setting as you can for maximum quality, unless file size considerations take precedence. Below this is another drop-down list lets you choose the resolution you want for your output images, and once again, selecting ‘Custom’ activates the next combo box, which lets you specify an image resolution in dpi (dots per inch). Finally (on the JPEG window) there is another drop-down list for selecting the output color space (ICC)—this function is for advanced users only, most of the time it can be left on the default setting of ‘As Shot’. If you select ‘Custom’, the browse button below is enabled and you can go off to locate any custom ICC color profile that you may have created. The TIFF window is similar to the JPEG one, except that there is no ‘Quality’ setting; instead, there are yes / No radio buttons for ‘Compress’ and ‘Force 8bit’—these are set to ‘Yes’ by default, and again, are settings that should only be changed by advanced users who wish to disable compression and/or use 16-bit encoding. The DNG window is simpler, having only the text box for setting the subdirectory where output format configuration files will be saved.
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DxO Optics Pro V4
Reference Manual
Each output format in the list also has a pencil button so you can modify the settings, and a [X] so you can delete it altogether. It is perhaps important to emphasize once again that once you have created a number of output format settings, you can apply one or more of them to any selected image(s). This will only marginally increase processing time, but can obviously lead to the generation of multiple output image files, which may have an impact on disk space.
©DxO Labs 2006
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All rights reserved
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DXO OPTICS PRO V3.5 USER MANUAL Table of Contents ADDENDUM TO DXO OPTICS PRO VERSION 3.5 USER GUIDE ........................................................... 3 SETTINGS PANELS................................................................................................................................ 3 BATCH PROCESSING ........................................................................................................................... 3 ADD IMAGES ..................................................................................................................................... 4 MODE COMMAND WIZARD ................................................................................................................. 5 PREFERENCES COMMAND .................................................................................................................... 5 DEFAULT PRESET.................................................................................................................................. 7 OVERVIEW................................................................................................................................... 8 GETTING STARTED – OPERATING MODES...................................................................................... 10 ‘FULLY AUTOMATIC’ MODE.......................................................................................................... 13 WORKSPACE ANATOMY ....................................................................................................................... 14 TOOLBAR ......................................................................................................................................... 16 MENUS ............................................................................................................................................ 16 PREFERENCES.................................................................................................................................... 23 PROCESSING .................................................................................................................................... 28 DXO VIEWER WINDOW ANATOMY ........................................................................................................... 31 ‘KEY CONTROLS’ ........................................................................................................................ 35 WORKSPACE ANATOMY .................................................................................................................... 36 TOOLBARS....................................................................................................................................... 38 MENUS ........................................................................................................................................... 43 PREFERENCES................................................................................................................................... 49 KEY CONTROLS PALETTE .................................................................................................................... 53 PROCESSING ................................................................................................................................... 76 DXO VIEWER WINDOW ANATOMY ...................................................................................................... 78 ‘EXPERT CONTROLS’ ................................................................................................................... 82 WORKSPACE ANATOMY .................................................................................................................... 83 TOOLBARS....................................................................................................................................... 85 MENUS ........................................................................................................................................... 91 PREFERENCES................................................................................................................................... 97 EXPERT CONTROLS PALETTE .............................................................................................................. 101 PROCESSING ................................................................................................................................. 134 DXO VIEWER WINDOW ANATOMY .................................................................................................... 136 CREDITS AND PERMISSIONS ...................................................................................................... 140
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ADDENDUM TO DXO OPTICS PRO VERSION 3.5 USER GUIDE Settings panels Previously always floating, the option has now been added for the settings panels to be ‘docked’ on either the left or right of the screen (irrespective of the selected thumbnail position).
Docking and position can be set from the ‘View’ menu, via the three new commands added under ‘Layout’:
The same menu can be accessed via the
layout button on the main toolbar.
Batch processing Time remaining Once processing of a batch of images has been started, the progress screen now includes an estimate of the processing time remaining; various factors may affect this estimate, so it should be regarded as a guide only.
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Multiprocess operation
The control of the number of processes that can run in parallel is now implemented in the Mac OS version too (previously only under Windows). Multiprocessing is controlled by the amount of memory needed for processing an image. If the amount of memory required exceeds a certain limit + the amount of memory already booked by other images currently being processed, the batch waits until enough memory has been released (i.e. until processing of a previous image is finished) before retrying. Images are selected in such a way as to optimize the number of images being processed in parallel, which means that images will not necessarily be processed in order as selected. Processing raw files can take over twice as much memory as JPEG ones. A certain amount of memory is set aside for the operating system and any other applications that might be running. Managing processing in this way reduces processing time, and makes for more reliable operation.
Add images Thumbnail size can now be set in the ‘Add images’ window using the new thumbnail size button on the toolbar. Possible sizes are from 110 to 250 (nominal size of thumbnail bounding square in pixels). There is an edit box where you can enter the sizes (in whole tens), and clicking on the slider moves it in steps of 10.
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Mode command Wizard The re-designed wizard helps you choose the most appropriate Workspace mode for your needs:
‘Next’ takes you to new a second screen where you can choose between floating or docked settings panels (see first paragraph for description).
Preferences command Miscellaneous tab
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A new check box ‘Save sidecar file (.dxo) for all images’ now gives you the option of not saving these settings files alongside the original image files. Output settings tab
This new tab gives access to most of the Output settings that are still available from the ‘Output settings’ panel. Changes made here modify the contents of the default preset. These changes will be saved in the default preset, and so will be applied to all images subsequently added (unless they already have a sidecar settings file associated with them). A pair DxO Optics Pro v3.5
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of radio buttons mean you can also choose to apply any changes to the images already currently open in the application. Note that there are minor detail differences between the Output settings here under Preferences and those available from the image tools panel (crop enable and TIFF 8/16-bit selection have been left off). If any setting has been modified, one of these two prompts appears:
Browse button
When you click on the ‘Browse’ button to open the ‘Browse for folder’ window, a new ‘Make new folder’ button lets you create a new destination folder if required. Alternatively, you can just enter a name in the ‘Folder:’ box; if a folder with this name already exists, it will be selected, or if not a new folder will be created.
Default preset All three workspace modes now use the same ‘default’ preset. This means that it is now possible to modify the default preset in the ‘Expert Controls’ workspace for subsequent use in ‘Fully Automatic’ mode. The way this default preset works is slightly different under ‘Key Controls’, however, since those corrections that are not available in this mode are not applied when processing images in this mode (even though they might exist in a customized default preset).
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OVERVIEW Thank you for purchasing DxO Optics Pro v3.5. Our software is unique on the market in offering this range of facilities, with this quality of results, and with the very important feature of being fully automatic (though with manual overrides if desired) and fully batchable. Just like the earlier versions, v3.5 offers image enhancement through precise, intelligent correction of several of the major defects affecting images from modern digital camera/lens combinations. Without any input from the user, it can make radical improvements to the optical defects of geometric distortion and lateral chromatic aberration, vignetting, and lens softness, as well as white balance and exposure, and image processing defects associated with demosaicing and raw conversion. With a minimum of user input, to mitigate shortcomings in the EXIF data from some camera/body combinations, the corrections in these circumstances can be made with as great a precision as usual. What’s new in v3.5 (for v2 users) -
DxO Noise: 2-stop noise reduction algorithm for Raw or RGB (Jpeg and Tiff) images DxO Lighting: intelligent exposure control and dynamic range optimization (‘global’ and ‘local’ contrast). Choice of three operating modes: Fully Automatic, Key Controls, Expert Controls. Enhanced DxO Raw Engine for greater control of the Raw conversion process. Additional USM sharpening options—new features: dual control, ‘radius’ and ‘level’. Control of image Tone curve and HSL (Raw and RGB (Jpeg and Tiff)). Still able to operate fully automatically and give superb results, but now also gives access to (previously-restricted) internal adjustments for manual user over-rides. Possibility of storing, applying and managing user ‘presets’ (‘side-car’ files with all settings for a given image that can then be applied easily to other images). Output format option—possibility of saving in multiple formats
What’s new (for v3 users) -
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Unrestricted access to DxO Lens Modules DxO Optics Engine improvements: Noise and Sharpening—new algorithms help preserve more fine detail Chromatic aberration and color fringing—major changes to improve performance and extend correction Multiprocessing—offers the possibility of up to 100% increase in processing speed when using a multi-processor computer User interface improvements to make image selection and viewing easier, faster and more efficient: Add images—a whole new window to facilitate image selection Twin-pane workspace window—simultaneous display of both thumbnail and preview images Disk cache for faster previewing Improved workflow efficiency with new user-defined Crop feature Max frame—retain up to 40% more image area during distortion correction
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Because of all the added features, and the redesign of all the interfaces, it’s very important that you read this manual thoroughly, in order to get the most out of all the new functionalities—in addition to that easy-to-achieve quality of results that you’re already used to! This User Manual assumes you have already installed the software as per the installation instructions supplied with it. Please refer to the reference section at the end of this manual for comprehensive details of system requirements and of all the various functions—this part of the manual describes the various functions and explains how to use them, and will encourage you to explore and try out all DxO Optics Pro’s powerful features. System calibration To get the most out of DxO and ensure that the adjustments you make will be properly displayed, it’s very important that the monitor on which you are viewing your images is properly adjusted. Ideally, you should make sure it is calibrated according to the manufacturer’s instructions, and carry this calibration right through to your normal output device (printer, etc.). If you are not able, or don’t want, to go through a complete calibration process, you should at least make sure that your viewing angle is correct and that your monitor’s contrast and brightness are set correctly.
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GETTING STARTED – OPERATING MODES The very first time you run DxO Optics Pro, a wizard pops up to tell you about the three operating modes, to explain the differences between them, and to invite you to choose by means of radio buttons which mode you want to begin with. Don’t forget, though, that you can change modes at any moment later, even while you’re working.
Just like previous versions, v3.5 offers all the speed and convenience of “one-click correction” — which produces optimum results in the vast majority of cases, and in all cases, will result in improved images compared to the uncorrected versions. In ‘Fully Automatic’ mode, certain menu items are inactive, and all settings are automatic or pre-defined, so there is nothing for the user to do but select the images to process, and press ‘Start’. The ‘default’ preset will be applied to all images selected for processing (this ‘default preset’ can be edited in the ‘Expert Controls’ workspace, see later chapter). However, for more advanced users who require the ultimate control over every single aspect of the correction, all settings are available via the correction tools palette (available in the ‘Expert Controls’ workspace), and a simplified selection of them in the ‘Key Controls’ workspace, and you can choose which functions to adjust manually and which to leave automatic. What kind of user are you? To make it easier to use DxO Optics Pro in the way that best suits your needs, the User Interface or workspace can be displayed in 3 different layouts: Fully Automatic, Key Controls, and Expert Controls (you can change between them at will). All users are recommended to read carefully the first part of this guide, Getting started – ‘Fully Automatic’ workspace anatomy, where we describe the basic operation of the software in its simplest, most automatic and ‘hands-off’ form, ideal for first-time users. This contains basic information that will help when you move onto the more sophisticated workspaces.
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‘Fully Automatic’ Mode This unique mode can really be thought of as a PC-based camera and lens upgrade: every image (Jpeg/Tiff or Raw) is processed automatically with all available DxO image enhancement technologies without the need for any user intervention. Do note that the complete range of DxO corrections is only available for those bodies and lenses for which you have purchased the corresponding software correction module. This is ideal for the photographer who wants to take advantage of DxO Labs’ unique capabilities for outstanding results, yet spend the least possible time in front of their computer. It is also ideal if you’re a relative newcomer to digital photography, aware of some of the defects affecting your pictures, but not yet familiar with digital image processing. This is also the quickest way of processing a whole series of images for assessment purposes—remember, your original image file is not touched, so at any time you can revisit an image and apply manually-adjusted corrections. ‘Key Controls’ Mode This mode presents the essential controls that determine image rendition. It is especially useful for quickly fine-tuning the interpretation of an image, or for users who want control of their photos without being overwhelmed with choices. All other processing remains fully automatic. What’s more, ‘Key Controls’ mode allows you to apply presets that you’ve already defined in the ‘Expert Controls’ workspace, so if you’ve taken several series of photos under certain specific conditions (location, lighting, etc.), you can quickly and easily use DxO Optics Pro’s powerful preset features to apply one or more customized preset corrections to all your groups of images in one pass. ‘Expert Controls’ Mode The preferred operating mode for users who want to combine DxO Labs’ unique image enhancement technologies with their own interpretation and treatment. In particular, for Raw file development, the ‘Expert Controls’ mode offers a comprehensive set of adjustment options, presets, output choices, etc. All this flexibility and creative opportunity is covered in detail in the chapter on the ‘Expert Controls’ workspace, including of course the powerful feature of creating and managing various custom presets. It’s important to emphasize that DxO will not over-write your original image files, but saves your enhanced images as new files, in the same location as the original files (or any other location you can specify), with a suffix appended to the filename. Both the default suffix and the default location can be changed using settings in the ‘Expert Controls’ workspace, in the ‘Output file format’ tab of the ‘Workflow’ palette (see later ‘Expert Controls’ section). Do note that an error will be produced if your original files are located on a non-recordable medium (for example, a readonly CD-ROM) and DxO tries to save the corrected images to the same location. In this case, all you have to do is change the default directory for saving corrected files (see ‘Expert Controls’ section). Throughout this Manual, a * preceding a command indicates that it is available as a toolbar button.
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RAW AND JPEG IMAGE FORMATS ‘Raw’ refers to the type of unprocessed image files originated by most digital still cameras intended for serious photographers—it is not a single format, but rather a group of formats, since each manufacturer has their own way of handling these image files. On their own, they cannot be viewed, but have to be converted into one of the common graphics file formats such as JPEG or TIFF. DxO Optics Pro supports an ever-increasing number of manufacturers’ raw formats, and in general, processing raw image files can be expected to give better results than processing already-converted JPEG (or TIFF, etc.) files, since more data is available for subsequent processing. For large batch working, processing time for the larger files can also be a consideration, but this is largely addressed by the workflow flexibility and powerful batching facilities that DxO Optics Pro provides. If you prefer to use your own third-party raw conversion software, there’s no problem—you can use DxO Optics Pro to correct your image originating from a camera raw format, thus allowing you to take advantage of DxO’s optical corrections, for example, and then choose DNG as the output file format; in this way, you can then use your preferred raw converter to convert this DNG to JPEG etc. as required. DxO Optics Pro offers the same level of image correction features for both Raw and JPEG.
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‘FULLY AUTOMATIC ’ MODE In this chapter, we’re first going to take a look at the basic anatomy of the ‘Fully Automatic’ workspace, then quickly go through the menu commands, toolbar buttons and corresponding keyboard shortcuts, before finally taking a look at the DxO Viewer that allows you to see the final results of your corrections. The basic sequence for processing images is always the same: add the images you want to process onto your workspace (or drag-&-drop from other applications), and then in Fully Automatic mode all you have to do is click ‘start batch’ to begin processing. Once completed, you can use DxO Viewer to see the results. Some of the new features in version 3.5 do not apply to Fully Automatic mode, and so you will notice that certain toolbar or menu commands (accessed from the other modes) are always grayed out in Fully Automatic. Now let’s take a look at all this in a bit more detail… The underlying DxO Optics Pro workspace is the same for all 3 modes, except that in Fully Automatic mode there is no need for a preview image, so only the thumbnail display is available, and hence there is no twin-pane mode:
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Workspace anatomy
A toolbar…
Mac Version
…a workspace for handling images— the electronic equivalent of a light-box…
…and a status bar at the bottom of the screen, used for displaying various details of the current image and processing. WARNING This document describes the Windows version of DxO Optics Pro v3.5. The Mac version features the same functionalities and workflow, except for the menus that are slightly different.
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Windows Version
a toolbar…
Pull-down menus across the top…
…a workspace for handling images— the electronic equivalent of a light-box…
…and a status bar at the bottom of the screen, used for displaying various details of the current image and processing.
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Toolbar The buttons along the toolbar all relate to the most frequently-needed commands from the pull-down menus, and each button provides a tooltip explaining what it does when you roll the mouse over it. Menu commands that have a corresponding toolbar button are preceded by an * in the description below.
Let’s go through these buttons one by one and summarize their functions. Add Images — opens the ‘Add images’ browser window, where you can easily navigate around your files and folders. We’ll come back to this a bit later. Remove images — simply removes any selected image(s) from your current workspace Move to trash — actually deletes any selected image(s) from your disk (sends them to the recycle bin) Do Process — marks selected original image(s) for processing (even if they may have been processed previously, for example) Don’t Process — marks selected image(s) not to be processed (they will simply be skipped during batch processing) Remove ‘Don’t process’ — cleans out all images marked as ‘Don’t process’ from your workspace. In fact, it also cleans out any other images that cannot be processed—for example, corrected images that have already been processed by DxO. Rotate left & right — rotates any selected image(s) clockwise or counter-clockwise (portrait / landscape formats) Screen layout (this facility is not available in Fully Automatic mode, so the button is grayed-out) Filters — opens a sub-menu with check boxes allowing you to enable display of “Don’t process”, “Ready to process” and “Already processed” images. Very useful to avoid a cluttered workspace after initial viewing! Sort — opens a sub-menu offering options to either leave thumbnail images unsorted (i.e. in the order as loaded), or to sort them by file date or name, or group them by camera body or lens type. Viewer — opens the DxO Viewer (see separate description) for before/after viewing of corrected images. Note that an error message will be displayed if you attempt to open the Viewer before you have any corrected images for viewing! Start batch — once you have selected the images to be included in your batch, and made any settings and adjustments you want, this is the ‘Go’ button that will start the DxO processing of your batch. A processing progress window opens (see separate description later) to keep you informed of progress, but it is otherwise a ‘hands-off’ process from this moment on.
Menus Here’s what you’ll find under the six pull-down menus, with the associated toolbar buttons: The first two menus are common to all three workspaces. DxO Optics Pro v3.5
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The File menu includes commands to
*Add / * Remove images—the first step in any work session will always be to add the images you wish to preview for processing onto the workspace; the Add command [Ctrl + O] opens a browser window where you can select single or multiple images, and transfer them onto your workspace, where they appear as thumbnails. Remove image(s) [Ctrl + Del] is self-explanatory, and there is also * Remove “don’t process” images [Ctrl + Backspace] that allows you to automatically remove all images that you have selected not to process, in order to make your workspace less cluttered. Select all images [Ctrl + A] does just what you’d expect. The Delete files command sends unwanted files to the recycle bin. Exit is also available from this menu [Alt + F4] TIP Note that images loaded from a write-only CD-ROM drive will not be able to be saved after processing back to that same drive, so you will need either to copy them first into a working directory on your hard drive or CD-R/W drive, or change the destination path for output files to a recordable location using the ‘Output file format’ tab [under the ‘Output settings’ palette in ‘Key Controls’ mode (Ctrl + F4) or ‘Expert Controls’ mode (Ctrl + F9)]—see below. If you choose not to copy your files across before processing, note that the side-car settings file will not be able to be saved alongside the original image file. When you select the ‘Add images’ command (or use the keyboard shortcut or toolbar button), a whole new ‘Add images’ window opens to let you find and select the image file(s) you want to add. If you hover the mouse over a filename, a tooltip will be displayed giving certain key image properties. If you select multiple images to be added, a progress bar will appear at the bottom left of the status bar, along with a ‘Stop’ button to allow you to cancel loading of the images. This is one of the version 3.5 tools that is a real time saver, and makes workflow management that much easier. The ‘Add images’ browser window is divided into two resizable panes—the classic left-hand pane showing the tree structure of your disk, and the righthand pane showing the selected folder as either thumbnails of your images, or as the usual list of file details. Note that the Mac version is quite different, please refer to ‘Add images’ in the Expert controls chapter for a full description.
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On this ‘Add images’ toolbar (and the same commands are available from the ‘File’ and ‘View’ menus), you will find: Add selected image(s) to main workspace Delete selected image(s) — in fact, sends them to the recycle bin Select all images Sort — as in the main workspace, there’s a drop-down for sorting by filename, size, date or type Filters — again, as in the main workspace, a drop-down gives you the option to filter out images that have already been processed, RGB images and Raw images. These last two make it easy to pre-select images for adding to the main workspace. Display thumbnails / Display details—two mutually-canceling buttons to select the right-hand pane display mode. Return to main window—instead of closing / minimizing the ‘Add images’ window using the usual controls, you can use this button to toggle between the main workspace and ‘Add images’ window; handy if you want to come back and add further images later on, as it saves time by avoiding having to regenerate the thumbnails each time… A status bar at the bottom right of the window confirms the filter criteria in use. In ‘Fully Automatic’ mode, images you add will be displayed initially as a series of thumbnails on your ‘workspace’, and once you have added one or more images, you can select / deselect them with a single left-click [toggles]—selected images are shown with a heavier frame round them (as we’ll be seeing later, the color of this frame can be set under the Misc. tab of the ‘Preferences’ menu). As usual, Ctrl + left click lets you select multiple DxO Optics Pro v3.5
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images at the same time, while Shift + left click lets you select a range of adjacent images. You can drag-&-drop them to change the order around. For technical reasons, no corrections are applied to the thumbnail images. The image thumbnails will be displayed with various icons to indicate their status:
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Ready to be processed Already-processed image, but with at least one different setting Previously unprocessed image with no ambiguities Already-processed image where corrected file is missing
The image cannot be processed because it has already been processed using DxO Optics Pro—or because the image is a Raw file format that is not supported Either the image file is corrupted, or the format is unreadable; the image will not be processed In these last two cases, you will probably want to either remove these images from your workspace, or select them and choose “Don’t process” from the Workflow menu (see below), in which case the image will display the “Don’t process” icon in its top left-hand corner. “Don’t process” selected for this image Raw image, camera profile information is available, but not the lens correction module required: only raw conversion, noise reduction, DxO Lighting, USM sharpness and ICC color space are available, no optical corrections will be applied JPEG image, lens correction module is missing, but noise profile is available: only noise reduction, WB, Tone Curve, HSL, USM sharpness and DxO Lighting corrections are available JPEG image, lens correction module is missing, and noise profile is not available: WB, Tone Curve, USM sharpness and DxO Lighting are the only corrections available. Missing focus: you need to enter focusing distance in order to perform optical corrections; otherwise, one or more of the lens/camera-dependent optical corrections will not be performed ‘Are you Sure’ — image has been modified using third-party software, but it can be processed by DxO, with no performance guarantee. (Please refer to the ‘Tip’ at the end of this section) Below each thumbnail image is displayed its filename, together with the type of image (JPEG or Raw). Except in the case of corrupted, unreadable or “cannot be processed” files, the image will also be marked with a checkmark, indicating that the image is ready to be processed, or is an already processed image where at least one setting has been altered.
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IMPORTANT TIP It’s very important to understand that in ‘Fully Automatic’ mode, the settings applied when processing your images are those of the ‘User default’ preset; as delivered, this is set to be the same as the factory default preset (which cannot be altered), but you can modify these settings and save them as your own, personalized ‘User default’ in ‘Expert Controls’ mode. From then on, ‘Fully Automatic’ mode will use these settings for processing your images. Needless to say, you can always go back to ‘Expert Controls’ mode at any time to modify them as you see fit! Here is a summary of the factory defaults at delivery: Focusing distance: if missing, focus is set to infinity (in Fully Auto only; always asked in other modes) White balance: as shot Exposure: as shot, highlight recovery off Orientation: “don’t know” forces a 90° clockwise rotation (in Fully Auto only; always asked in other modes) Focal length: if ambiguous, set to EXIF data (in Fully Auto only; always asked in other modes) Color space: sRGB DxO Lightness: auto, at ‘medium’ strength setting, with Preserve Shadows ON DxO Lens Softness: auto Distortion: 100% Chromatic Aberration: ON, auto settings, except Purple Fringing setto O FF Vignetting: 100 %, Shadow/highlights preservation set to auto USM: OFF HSL: OFF Tone Curve: OFF DxO Noise: auto Output settings: No image zoom JPEG quality factor: 90 Destination directory (for both corrected image files and their ‘sidecar’ settings files): same as original At the end of processing, after viewing processed images in the DxO Viewer (described later), next time you return to your workspace, the thumbnail icons will be updated to reflect the images’ new status. The status bar at the bottom of the screen gives information about a selected image, or about any image if you hover the mouse over it. On the left is displayed the full path name for the image file, in the center are details of the camera and lens used to shoot the picture (where this information is available), or a note to the effect that it is an already-processed image. The Workflow menu too is basically the same as for the other two workspaces, except that only the first three commands are available (the others are grayed out):
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* Start batch [Ctrl + S] processing * Mark image as “process” [F12] / “don’t process” [F11] — enable you to skip processing of selected images. In common with the other two workspaces, the Workspace menu offers Mode select: the 3 workspace layout options: Fully Automatic / Key Controls / Expert Controls You can select these at any time, and the layout of your workspace changes to suit.
The Wizard offers an introductory text that helps you pick the right mode for your need by recapping on the uses of the three workspace modes, with a radio button for each. This wizard is displayed automatically once only, the very first time you run the program. The ‘Preferences’ command and shortcut [Ctrl + P] access adjustments to certain overall working parameters: version 3.5 has some additions here, please see dedicated paragraph later The Image menu offers the possibility to rotate your image * left (counter-clockwise) [Ctrl + L] or * right (clockwise) [Ctrl + R] in order to be able to view portrait images with the correct orientation.
In the ‘Fully Automatic’ workspace, version 3.5’s new View menu now offers direct access to the DxO Viewer (see later dedicated chapter for details)—also available via the toolbar button and the Ctrl + W shortcut, for before/after viewing of corrected images. Note that until processing has been completed, DxO Viewer will only be able to display alreadyprocessed images whose files still exist in the chosen output file location. An error message will be displayed if you attempt to open the Viewer before you have any corrected images for viewing!
Layout — this command is inactive in ‘Fully Automatic’ mode, since only the thumbnail view is possible in this mode.
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Filters — opens a sub-menu with check boxes allowing you to enable/disable display of “Don’t process”, “Ready to process” and “Already processed” images. Very useful to avoid a cluttered workspace after initial viewing!
Sort — opens a sub-menu offering options to either leave thumbnail images unsorted (i.e. in the order as loaded), or to sort them by file date or name, or group them by camera body or lens type.
The View menu also includes * Previous / * Next image commands, once again available as keyboard shortcuts: Ctrl + Æ for next and Ctrl + Å for previous. The Help menu offers access to the complete help file (i.e. this User Manual) [F1], plus details of the various module options installed [Ctrl + M], and an About… information screen containing information about the exact software version, important if you need to contact DxO Technical Support. There’s also a command you can click, and the software will check automatically for updates.
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TIP DxO Optics Pro is designed to correct images straight out of your camera. This means that images that have been previously corrected with other software will not be accepted by Optics Pro for correction. Please check the on-line FAQ at http://support.dxo.com/ for the most recent updates related to this requirement. DxO Optics Pro has been designed to be at the very beginning of the workflow, at the point images are copied from the card reader or camera. Any of the following circumstances will prevent images being accepted for DxO Optics Pro processing: – The image has been treated in other software programs; – The image has been modified and the MakerNote (manufacturer-specific part of the EXIF metadata) is missing; – The image does not carry any EXIF data. A new feature in version 3.5 is the ability to process images that have been previously processed by certain authorized third-party applications (so far, the list includes Picture Project® and Nikon Capture®) that leave the EXIF MakerNote intact. Such images can be processed by DxO Optics Pro, but the results performance cannot be guaranteed. For this reason, these ‘Are you sure?’ icon. images are marked with an DxO Optics Pro itself strives to leave as much as possible of the metadata (EXIF, MakerNote, IPTC, XMP) untouched. This means that you should be able to use your other image processing/editing software even after the images have been processed by DxO Optics Pro. DxO Optics Pro automatically rotates the images if you use the autorotate facility of your camera. There is no need for additional software for this particular step.
Preferences The ‘Workspace’ menu ‘Preferences’ command and shortcut [Ctrl + P] access adjustments to certain overall working parameters, by means of four tabs: Misc. tab
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Under this miscellaneous tab, combo-boxes let you select the sizes of both thumbnail and preview images, select the working language, go on line to check for availability of new DxO Correction Modules or software updates (with a check-box offering the option to do this automatically at each start-up), choose whether you prefer to use metric or imperial units for measurements, and disable the jingle that plays over the splash screen when the program starts. Changes made to language or preview size only come into effect the next time you start the program, so if you want them to take effect immediately, you will need to exit and restart the program. WORKSPACE TIP Depending on how many images you want to view in a given batch, you can adjust the size of the displayed thumbnails to fit as many as possible on the workspace, while keeping them as large as possible. Note that in twin-pane mode (i.e. split screen displaying both thumbnails and preview), the preview size will shrink automatically to fit, so the preview size selected here will only represent the maximum size possible. Appearance tab This tab allows you to choose your own colors for the workspace backgrounds, image outlines and various other display elements. Click on any item to display its current color, and then if you want to change it, click on the current color button; you will be presented with a typical Windows color palette to choose from, or the option to create a set of customized colors of your own.
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Viewer tab
Under the ‘Viewer’ tab, radio buttons let you choose to use the DxO Viewer (the default setting), or an external viewing utility. A combo box allows you to select the order in which you want DxO Viewer to present your images when it first opens, with the options of Input/Output (before/after) and Output/Input (after/before), as well as Output (after) alone. This only sets the initial presentation—once in Viewer, local commands enable you to toggle at will between the two versions of your images, unless of course you have selected ‘Output’ alone. Note that if a viewer other than the DxO Viewer is used, images will be previewed immediately after they are computed, whereas if DxO Viewer is used, preview of all images will be available only at the end of processing the whole batch. In practice, this is likely to save time when processing large batches of images. Multiprocessing tab DxO Optics Pro v3.5
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The multiprocessing tab offers some speed-up options for those with suitably-equipped computers. The multiprocessing combo box lets you select how many processing tasks you want to run simultaneously during batch processing and cache generation. The first figure shows how many processes to enable, while the second figure indicates how many (logical) processors your system has available. If your system has more than one logical processor, it makes sense to enable as many processes as there are processors available. But it is important to note that image processing uses up a lot of memory, especially with larger images (over 8 M pixels). The amount of RAM used will be around 10× the image size for JPEGs, and as much as 20× for raw images. Another speed-up feature is the disk cache, which allows DxO Viewer to pre-compute “before” raw images; this speeds up refresh time when using the Viewer to display before / after images. You can set here how much disk space to allocate to the cache, and the directory you’d like the system to use for it. The Browse button opens a browser window where you can choose an existing directory or create a new one.
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Processing That completes our tour of the Key Controls palette, so now you are ready to adjust the settings for your images, and then push the Start button (or use the Ctrl + S keyboard shortcut, or select the ‘Start batch’ command from the Workflow menu). Version 3.5 includes a multi-processing feature that can help speed up batch processing, if your computer is equipped with multiple (logical) processors. The configuration options for this new feature can be found under ‘Preferences’ (Workspace menu, or Ctrl + P). Here are a few general details about processing: At the start of processing, DxO first performs a number of checks on the batch images; at the end of these checks, it may be necessary for the user to respond to one or more questions before processing proper can commence; for example, if there are images for which the focusing distance has not been set, a dialog box pops up, asking whether you want to continue without correcting distortion and chromatic aberration, or cancel the batch to go back and set the focusing distance for these images. – To improve processing efficiency in the event of multiprocessing, images are always sorted before processing, so they will not necessarily be processed in thumbnail order – Depending on the number and size of your images, and the different corrections being applied, processing may take from just a few seconds to several minutes, or even longer in the case of slower computers. – If the disk cache has been enabled, raw images will be calculated immediately batch processing finishes, so that converted ‘Before’ images will already be available when Viewer is launched. Without the disk cache, ‘Before’ images cannot be calculated in advance, which slows down Viewer launch where large images are involved. This saves a lot of time at the review stage.
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During processing, a batch dialogue window opens to keep you informed about progress. It has a progress bar showing progress of the batch as a whole. The lower part
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of the window shows details of the image currently being processed, and its individual progress.
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The ‘Skip’ button allows you to skip a particular image, while the ‘Pause’ button lets you pause one or more processes (if multi-processing is enabled)—this allows you to temporarily free up CPU time if you need to run another application, for example. In this case, the images awaiting processing are simply shared out between the other processes still running. Where multi-processing is being used, the lower part of the screen shows progress information for each process running; up to 4 will be displayed at once—if more are being used, a vertical scroll bar will allow you to view the others. Once processing is finished, a log screen (common to all the workspaces) is displayed which will report any problems that might have been encountered, and offers ‘View’ and ‘Done’ buttons.
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– –
When Raw images have been processed and saved only in DNG format, they cannot be displayed in DxO Viewer, and so in this case the ‘View’ button will be grayed out. ‘Done’ terminates the current batch and returns you directly to the main DxO workspace, while ‘View’ opens the DxO Viewer, which makes it very easy to go through all your images and compare the corrected versions with the originals. Let’s take a look at that now…
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DxO Viewer window anatomy Mac Version
A toolbar…
…and a status bar at the bottom of the screen, used for displaying various image and zoom information
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Windows Version
Pull-down menus across the top…
a toolbar…
…and a status bar at the bottom of the screen, used for displaying various image and zoom information
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Just like the main DxO Optics Pro screen, the Viewer’s Image menu offers commands for * Rotate 90° counterclockwise (left) / clockwise (right) [Ctrl + L or R], along with a new command, * Delete results file(s), which enables you to delete the corrected file for the current image—for example, if after viewing you decide that you’d like to process an image again, or in cases where you have more than one output file format and want to eliminate one or more of them.
The Viewer’s View menu offers commands for * Next / Previous image [also available as keyboard shortcuts Æ or Ç and Å or È], as well as switching between * Before / After DxO images [Ctrl + D / Ctrl + F], and also for * Zoom in / out [Ctrl + + or -], * Fit to window [Ctrl + I], and * Actual size [Ctrl + 1] .
All these same Image and View menu functions are also available via the Toolbar buttons:
Zoom + / – functions, as well as two other view scaling options: Fit to window, and Actual size. Note that any zoom setting you use will be applied to both original and corrected images. Rotate 90° counterclockwise/ clockwise buttons enable you to change the orientation of your images. Screen layout — just as in the main workspace, opens a sub-menu where you can choose to view thumbnails or preview images alone on your workspace, or as 2 panes allowing you to view both at the same time—the last 4 menu options enable you to choose where the thumbnail pane is positioned with respect to the preview pane. Note that the thumbnails in the Viewer window bear the same icons as those in the Workspace window, so you can easily see at a glance if the relevant DxO Lens Module was used or not.
Previous / Next buttons allow you to navigate through your images. DxO Optics Pro v3.5
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A pair of After DxO / Before buttons enable you to toggle back and forth between the original (unprocessed) and corrected versions of your images — also available simply by right-clicking anywhere in the workspace to toggle between the two [Keyboard shortcuts: Ctrl + D / Ctrl + F]. The Delete results file(s) button allows you to delete selected results files—you might need to do this, for example, for certain images that you wish to correct again, or in cases where you have more than one output file format and want to eliminate one or more of them. The
button will close the Viewer window and return you to your DxO Optics Pro workspace.
The Help menu offers access to the complete help file (i.e. this User Manual) [F1], plus details of the various module options installed [Ctrl + M], and an About… information screen containing information about the exact software version, important if you need to contact DxO Technical Support. There’s also a command you can click, and the software will check automatically for updates.
The bottom status bar displays the filename currently being viewed in the center, and if you hover the mouse over it, a tooltip displays information about the corrections that have been applied. A legend in the bottom left-hand corner confirms whether you’re viewing the original or corrected image, and indicates if only partial correction has been applied. In some cases, it may not have been possible to apply all the corrections requested to an image, and those that have been applied will be indicated here. In the bottom right-hand corner, image magnification is indicated as a percentage. Note that if you have resized images as part of your processing, such images will show a difference in size between the original / corrected images in the Viewer. Normally, before / after images will appear with their centers aligned, and so will overlay correctly (unless you have resized them). However, in the specific case where an image corrected using the ‘Max frame’ feature yields a corrected image that extends outside the original image boundaries (even after any cropping), the before / after images will be displayed with their centers re-aligned, which may mean that the overlay is displaced. After viewing a newly-processed batch of images, when you return to your main DxO Optics Pro workspace, the thumbnails for that batch will be updated.
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‘KEY CONTROLS’ In this chapter, we’re first going to take a look at the basic anatomy of the ‘Key Controls’ workspace, then quickly go through the menu commands, toolbar buttons and corresponding keyboard shortcuts, before taking a look at the various control ‘palettes’, and finally, at the DxO Viewer that allows you to see the final results of your corrections. The basic sequence for processing images is always the same: add the images you want to process onto your workspace (or drag-&-drop from other applications), double-click on an image to access ‘preview’ mode and the control palettes to make your adjustments or select presets, move on if necessary to subsequent images, and then click ‘start batch’ to begin processing. Once completed, you can use DxO Viewer to see the results. Now let’s take a look at all this in a bit more detail… The ‘Key Controls’ workspace offers just as much simplicity in use as the ‘Fully Automatic’ mode, as all corrections can still be made fully automatically, but this mode also allows tweaking of a few of the most commonly-required settings.
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Workspace anatomy Mac Version
A toolbar…
…a workspace for handling images— the electronic equivalent of a light-box… …and a status bar at the bottom of the screen, used for displaying various details of the current image and processing. WARNING This document describes the Windows version of DxO Optics Pro v3.5. The Mac version features the same functionalities and workflow, except for the menus that are slightly different.
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Windows Version
a toolbar…
Pull-down menus across the top…
…a workspace for handling images— the electronic equivalent of a light-box…
…and a status bar at the bottom of the screen, used for displaying various details of the current image and processing.
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New in version 3.5, it is now possible to split the workspace window into two ‘panes’, so that the thumbnail images can be displayed alongside the main preview image. The various options for workspace layout are accessed using the ‘Layout’ button on the main toolbar, which opens a drop-down sub-menu (the same menu is also available from the ‘View’ menu); according to your individual preference, the thumbnail pane (re-sizable) can be located at the top or bottom of the screen, or on the left- or right-hand sides. Of course, the single-pane ‘thumbnails only’ and ‘preview only’ displays are still available, just as in previous versions. Do note that in the specific case of a multi-image selection, the preview pane will be empty. In the ‘Fully automatic’ workspace, the ‘Thumbnails only’ view alone is available (the other options are grayed-out in the menus).
Toolbars The buttons along the toolbars all relate to the most frequently-needed commands from the pulldown menus, and each button provides a tooltip explaining what it does when you roll the mouse over it. Menu commands that have a corresponding toolbar button are preceded by an * in the description below. There are two toolbars: the main one is displayed all the time, but the preview toolbar only appears when the preview screen is active. Main window toolbar
Let’s go through these buttons one by one and summarize their functions. Add Images — opens the ‘Add images’ browser window, where you can easily navigate around your files and folders. We’ll come back to this a bit later. Remove images — simply removes any selected image(s) from your current workspace Move to trash — actually deletes any selected image(s) from your disk (sends them to the recycle bin) Do Process — marks selected original image(s) for processing (even if they may have been processed previously, for example) Don’t Process — marks selected image(s) not to be processed (they will simply be skipped during batch processing) Remove ‘don’t process’ — cleans out all images marked as ‘Don’t process’ from your workspace. In fact, it also cleans out any other images that cannot be processed— for example, corrected images that have already been processed by DxO. Rotate left & right — rotates any selected image(s) clockwise or counter-clockwise (portrait / landscape formats) Screen layout — opens a sub-menu where you can choose to view thumbnails or preview images alone on your workspace, or as 2 panes allowing you to view both at the same time—the last 4 menu options enable you to choose where the thumbnail pane is positioned with respect to the preview pane. Do note that if multiple images are selected in the thumbnail pane, no preview image will be displayed. Filters — opens a sub-menu with check boxes allowing you to enable display of “Don’t process”, “Ready to process” and “Already processed” images. Very useful to avoid a cluttered workspace after initial viewing! Sort — opens a sub-menu offering options to either leave thumbnail images unsorted (i.e. in the order as loaded), or to sort them by file date or name, or group them by camera body or lens type.
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Viewer — opens the DxO Viewer (see separate description) for before/after viewing of corrected images. Note that an error message will be displayed if you attempt to open the Viewer before you have any corrected images for viewing! Start batch — once you have selected the images to be included in your batch, and made any settings and adjustments you want, this is the ‘Go’ button that will start the DxO processing of your batch. A processing progress window opens (see separate description later) to keep you informed of progress, but it is otherwise a ‘hands-off’ process from this moment on. Save settings / Preset manager — options only applicable to ‘Expert Controls’ mode, so these buttons are grayed out here. Apply preset — allows you to apply any of the various default and custom presets that you can create and/or modify in ‘Expert Controls’ mode. Preview window toolbar
Logically enough, on the ‘Preview’ toolbar are grouped a series of tools that operate only on the Preview image Shadow clipping Normal preview Highlight clipping This group of 3 associated buttons provides a very useful display tool in the preview image. The highlight and shadow clipping buttons can be used to show respectively which parts of the image are either black crushed or white clipped, which can be very useful when making decisions about exposure adjustments. Look at the picture examples below to see how they work. Two important keyboard shortcuts are Altt and Alt + Shift, which can be used to update respectively the ‘Highlight clipping’ and ‘Shadow clipping’ preview display following correction changes. These make the clipping displays visible in the main preview image Normal image preview
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Highlight clipping image preview
Shadow clipping image preview
Previous / next — for quick navigation backwards and forwards through a sequence of selected images; these buttons are available in ‘preview only’ mode (in 2-pane mode, they are grayed out) Another group of 3 associated (and mutually canceling) buttons, the first 2 of which operate in association with the ‘Zoom’ correction tab (see description later). ‘Eye-dropper’ tool — click white / gray point Zoom Crop Another group of 3 associated (and mutually canceling) buttons, the first 2 of which operate in association with the ‘Zoom’ correction tab (see description later). enables the ‘eye-dropper’ tool, used to select an area of pixels to be The ‘WB picker’ button used as a reference for correcting the white balance of the whole image. activates a rectangular crop of a section of the image for detailed The ‘Zoom’ button previewing of certain functions.
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And finally, the ‘Crop’ button (a new feature in version 3.5) makes it possible to crop images— checking the ‘enable’ box activates the ‘ratio’ box, where you can select ‘No Ratio’ (i.e. freelyadjustable proportions), constrain the image proportions to ‘Original’ (i.e. the same as shot), a selection of numeric values, or ‘Custom’, which brings up an edit box for you to enter integer values for aspect ratio.
Enabling ‘Crop’ displays a scalable, movable rectangular box on the image to indicate the crop outline. You can adjust the edges of this box by using the mouse (anywhere along the edge, not just on the handles). The magnified zoom image shows the exact position of the mouse pointer, allowing you to perform extremely accurate cropping. If you place the mouse within the crop area, but not near one of the edges, the mouse pointer turns into a ‘hand’ tool that allows you to move the re-sized rectangle around as a whole.
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As noted in the relevant section, the ‘Histogram’ tool works from the contents of the ‘crop’ box (if enabled), which makes it a useful additional analytical tool. Preview manager
This button opens a dialogue box with check boxes to enable / disable previewing of Distortion, Vignetting, DxO Lighting, HSL, Tone curve, and Lateral chromatic aberration corrections. To save preview refresh time, you may at times wish to suspend previewing of certain corrections. Do note that the first two options will be grayed out on the preview panel if even one image is included in your selection for which the appropriate lens correction module is not available. Note also that lateral chromatic aberration is now included here because, in the event that previewing of geometric distortion has not been enabled, the chromatic aberration correction alone can introduce a slight image zoom, and hence mild cropping, which it is clearly important to show in the preview image. DxO Optics Pro v3.5
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WORKSPACE TIP As you move a correction slider, the current correction will be applied to the last-corrected preview image (in other words, each correction preview builds upon the previous one), either ‘live’ as you move it, or only once you have released the mouse button (where processing time is significant). So certain corrections may not appear to be having any visible effect, until the mouse button is released. Note also that certain corrections are never shown in the preview image (see ‘Zoom’ tab below).
Menus Here’s what you’ll find under the six pull-down menus, with the associated toolbar buttons: The first two menus are common to all three workspaces. The File menu includes commands to
*Add / * Remove images—the first step in any work session will always be to add the images you wish to preview for processing onto the workspace; the Add command [Ctrl + O] opens a browser window where you can select single or multiple images, and transfer them onto your workspace, where they appear as thumbnails. Remove image(s) [Ctrl + Del] is self-explanatory, and there is also * Remove “don’t process” images [Ctrl + Backspace] that allows you to automatically remove all images that you have selected not to process, in order to make your workspace less cluttered. Select all images [Ctrl + A] does just what you’d expect. The Delete files command sends unwanted files to the recycle bin. Exit is also available from this menu [Alt + F4] TIP Note that images loaded from a write-only CD-ROM drive will not be able to be saved after processing back to that same drive, so you will need either to copy them first into a working directory on your hard drive or CD-R/W drive, or change the destination path for output files to a recordable location using the ‘Output file format’ tab [under the ‘Output settings’ palette in ‘Key Controls’ mode (Ctrl + F4) or ‘Expert Controls’ mode (Ctrl + F9)]—see below. If you choose not to copy your files across before processing, note that the side-car settings file will not be able to be saved alongside the original image file.
When you select the ‘Add images’ command (or use the keyboard shortcut or toolbar button), a whole new ‘Add images’ window opens to let you find and select the image file(s) you want to add. If you hover the mouse over a filename, a tooltip will be displayed giving certain key image
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properties. If you select multiple images to be added, a progress bar will appear at the bottom left of the status bar, along with a ‘Stop’ button to allow you to cancel loading of the images. This is one of the version 3.5 tools that is a real time saver, and makes workflow management that much easier. The ‘Add images’ browser window is divided into two resizable panes—the classic left-hand pane showing the tree structure of your disk, and the right-hand pane showing the selected folder as either thumbnails of your images, or as the usual list of file details. Note that the Mac version is quite different, please refer to ‘Add images’ in the ‘Expert Controls’ chapter for a full description.
On this ‘Add images’ toolbar (and the same commands are available from the ‘File’ and ‘View’ menus), you will find: Add selected image(s) to main workspace Delete selected image(s) — in fact, sends them to the recycle bin Select all images Sort — as in the main workspace, there’s a drop-down for sorting by filename, size, date or type Filters — again, as in the main workspace, a drop-down gives you the option to filter out images that have already been processed, RGB images and Raw images. These last two make it easy to pre-select images for adding to the main workspace. Display thumbnails / Display details—two mutually-canceling buttons to select the right-hand pane display mode. Return to main window—instead of closing / minimizing the ‘Add images’ window using the usual controls, you can use this button to toggle between the main workspace and ‘Add images’ window; handy if you want to come back and add further images later on, as it saves time by avoiding having to regenerate the
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thumbnails each time… A status bar at the bottom right of the window confirms the filter criteria in use. Note that, to economize on processing, thumbnail images are only produced if thumbnail display is actually selected; hence the first time you switch over from details listing to thumbnails, there will be a short delay as the images are computed. If a folder contains very many image files, DxO will display a message while it checks which ones are usable image files. Also, if you have selected to filter out ‘already processed’ images, DxO detects them in a separate pass, so there thumbnails will appear briefly, only to disappear again if the filter is in use. In ‘Key Controls’ mode, images you add will be displayed initially as a series of thumbnails on your ‘workspace’, and once you have added one or more images, you can select / deselect them with a single left-click [toggles]—selected images are shown with a heavier frame round them (as we’ll be seeing later, the color of this frame can be set under the Misc. tab of the ‘Preferences’ menu). As usual, Ctrl + left click lets you select multiple images at the same time, while Shift + left click lets you select a range of adjacent images. You can drag-&-drop them to change the order around. For technical reasons, no corrections are applied to the thumbnail images. The image thumbnails will be displayed with various icons to indicate their status:
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Ready to be processed Already-processed image, but with at least one different setting Previously unprocessed image with no ambiguities Already-processed image where corrected file is missing
The image cannot be processed because it has already been processed using DxO Optics Pro—or because the image is a Raw file format that is not supported Either the image file is corrupted, or the format is unreadable; the image will not be processed In these last two cases, you will probably want to either remove these images from your workspace, or select them and choose “Don’t process” from the Workflow menu (see below), in which case the image will display the “Don’t process” icon in its top left-hand corner. “Don’t process” selected for this image Raw image, camera profile information is available, but not the lens correction module required: only raw conversion, noise reduction, DxO Lighting, USM sharpness and ICC color space are available, no optical corrections will be applied JPEG image, lens correction module is missing, but noise profile is available: only noise reduction, WB, Tone Curve, HSL, USM sharpness and DxO Lighting corrections are available JPEG image, lens correction module is missing, and noise profile is not available: WB, Tone Curve, USM sharpness and DxO Lighting are the only corrections available. Missing focus: you need to enter focusing distance in order to perform optical corrections; otherwise, one or more of the lens/camera-dependent optical corrections will not be performed DxO Optics Pro v3.5
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‘Are you Sure’ — image has been modified using third-party software, but it can be processed by DxO, with no performance guarantee. (Please refer to the ‘Tip’ at the end of this section) Below each thumbnail image is displayed its filename, together with the type of image (JPEG or Raw). Except in the case of corrupted, unreadable or “cannot be processed” files, the image will also be marked with a checkmark, indicating that the image is ready to be processed, or is an already processed image where at least one setting has been altered.
At the end of processing, after viewing processed images in the DxO Viewer (described later), next time you return to your workspace, the thumbnail icons will be updated to reflect the images’ new status. The status bar at the bottom of the screen gives information about a selected image, or about any image if you hover the mouse over it. On the left is displayed the full path name for the image file, in the center are details of the camera and lens used to shoot the picture (where this information is available), or a note to the effect that it is an already-processed image. The Workflow menu too is basically the same as for the other two workspaces:
* Start batch [Ctrl + S] processing * Mark image as “process” [F12] / “don’t process” [F11] — enable you to skip processing of selected images. Clearly, if only one image has been placed on the workspace, these two commands will be mutually exclusive. In common with the other two workspaces, the Workspace menu offers Mode select: the 3 workspace layout options: Fully Automatic / Key Controls / Expert Controls You can select these at any time, and the layout of your workspace changes to suit.
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The Wizard offers an introductory text that helps you pick the right mode for your need by recapping on the uses of the three workspace modes, with a radio button for each. This wizard is displayed automatically once only, the very first time you run the program. The ‘Preferences’ command and shortcut [Ctrl + P] access adjustments to certain overall working parameters: version 3.5 has some additions here, please see dedicated paragraph later
The Image menu offers the possibility to rotate your image * left (counter-clockwise) [Ctrl + L] or * right (clockwise) [Ctrl + R] in order to be able to view portrait images with the correct orientation.
In the ‘Key Controls’ workspace, version 3.5’s new View menu now offers direct access to the DxO Viewer (see later dedicated chapter for details)—also available via the toolbar button and the Ctrl + W shortcut, for before/after viewing of corrected images. Note that until processing has been completed, DxO Viewer will only be able to display already-processed images whose files still exist in the chosen output file location. An error message will be displayed if you attempt to open the Viewer before you have any corrected images for viewing!
Layout — opens a sub-menu where you can choose to view thumbnails or preview images alone on your workspace, or as 2 panes allowing you to view both at the same time—the last 4 menu options enable you to choose where the thumbnail pane is positioned with respect to the preview pane. Do note that if multiple images are selected in the thumbnail pane, no preview image will be displayed.
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Filters — opens a sub-menu with check boxes allowing you to enable display of “Do not process”, “Ready to process” and “Already processed” images. Very useful to avoid a cluttered workspace after initial viewing!
Sort — opens a sub-menu offering options to either leave thumbnail images unsorted (i.e. in the order as loaded), or to sort them by file date or name, or group them by camera body or lens type.
The View menu also includes * Previous / * Next image commands, once again available as keyboard shortcuts: Ctrl + Æ for next and Ctrl + Å for previous. The Help menu offers access to the complete help file (i.e. this User Manual) [F1], plus details of the various module options installed [Ctrl + M], and an About… information screen containing information about the exact software version, important if you need to contact DxO Technical Support. There’s also a command you can click, and the software will check automatically for updates.
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TIP DxO Optics Pro is designed to correct images straight out of your camera. This means that images that have been previously corrected with other software will not be accepted by Optics Pro for correction. Please check the on-line FAQ at http://support.dxo.com/ for the most recent updates related to this requirement. DxO Optics Pro has been designed to be at the very beginning of the workflow, at the point images are copied from the card reader or camera. Any of the following circumstances will prevent images being accepted for DxO Optics Pro processing: – The image has been treated in other software programs; – The image has been modified and the MakerNote (manufacturer-specific part of the EXIF metadata) is missing; – The image does not carry any EXIF data. A new feature in version 3.5 is the ability to process images that have been previously processed by certain authorized third-party applications (so far, the list includes Picture Project® and Nikon Capture®) that leave the EXIF MakerNote intact. Such images can be processed by DxO Optics Pro, but the results performance cannot be guaranteed. For this reason, these images are marked with an ‘Are you sure?’ icon. DxO Optics Pro itself strives to leave as much as possible of the metadata (EXIF, MakerNote, IPTC, XMP) untouched. This means that you should be able to use your other image processing/editing software even after the images have been processed by DxO Optics Pro. DxO Optics Pro automatically rotates the images if you use the autorotate facility of your camera. There is no need for additional software for this particular step.
Preferences The ‘Workspace’ menu ‘Preferences’ command and shortcut [Ctrl + P] access adjustments to certain overall working parameters: Misc. tab
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Under this miscellaneous tab, combo-boxes let you select the sizes of both thumbnail and preview images, select the working language, go on line to check for availability of new DxO Correction Modules or software updates (with a check-box offering the option to do this automatically at each start-up), choose whether you prefer to use metric or imperial units for measurements, and disable the jingle that plays over the splash screen when the program starts. Changes made to language or preview size only come into effect the next time you start the program, so if you want them to take effect immediately, you will need to exit and re-start the program. WORKSPACE TIP Depending on how many images you want to view in a given batch, you can adjust the size of the displayed thumbnails to fit as many as possible on the workspace, while keeping them as large as possible. Note that in twin-pane mode (i.e. split screen displaying both thumbnails and preview), the preview size will shrink automatically to fit, so the preview size selected here will only represent the maximum size possible.
Appearance tab This tab allows you to choose your own colors for the workspace backgrounds, image outlines and various other display elements. Click on any item to display its current color, and then if you want to change it, click on the current color button; you will be presented with a typical Windows color palette to choose from, or the option to create a set of customized colors of your own.
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Viewer tab
Under the ‘Viewer’ tab, radio buttons let you choose to use the DxO Viewer (the default setting), or an external viewing utility. A combo box allows you to select the order in which you want DxO Viewer to present your images when it first opens, with the options of Input/Output (before/after) and Output/Input (after/before), as well as Output (after) alone. This only sets the initial presentation—once in Viewer, local commands enable you to toggle at will between the two versions of your images, unless of course you have selected ‘Output’ alone. Note that if a viewer other than the DxO Viewer is used, images will be previewed immediately after they are computed, whereas if DxO Viewer is used, preview of all images will be available only at the end of processing the whole batch. In practice, this is likely to save time when processing large batches of images. Multiprocessing tab
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The multiprocessing tab offers some speed-up options for those with suitably-equipped computers. The multiprocessing combo box lets you select how many processing tasks you want to run simultaneously during batch processing and cache generation. The first figure shows how many processes to enable, while the second figure indicates how many (logical) processors your system has available. If your system has more than one logical processor, it makes sense to enable as many processes as there are processors available. But it is important to note that image processing uses up a lot of memory, especially with larger images (over 8 M pixels). The amount of RAM used will be around 10× the image size for JPEGs, and as much as 20× for raw images. Another speed-up feature is the disk cache, which allows DxO Viewer to pre-compute “before” raw images; this speeds up refresh time when using the Viewer to display before / after images. You can set here how much disk space to allocate to the cache, and the directory you’d like the system to use for it. The Browse button opens a browser window where you can choose an existing directory or create a new one.
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Settings Once you have added all the batch of images for processing onto the workspace, just as for the Fully Automatic mode, the first step is obviously to select one or more images you wish to process. In Key Controls mode, you can then use the selection of most commonly required controls available to adjust your image(s), and if you wish, you can then copy and paste settings (from the Workflow menu, or by right-clicking on a selected image to bring up a contextual menu), so as to apply the same settings to one or more group(s) of images, or call up already-created preset(s) that you’ve previously saved as a custom preset in the ‘Expert Controls’ mode (see later chapter). In all these cases, you can choose to paste all of the settings onto one or more selected images, or to paste only a selection from the settings. So, for example, you might choose a group of, say, six related images, create a pattern of settings to apply to all of them, and then copy and paste these settings, perhaps leaving out certain ones, onto a further group or groups of images. You can begin to see just what a powerful, flexible feature this is!
Key Controls palette Now, let’s take a closer look at the palette of all-important correction controls, to be found under the Workspace menu. Just before we do, though, one general point—on all panels where a slider is accompanied by an entry box, after you type in a correction value directly, you must press ‘Enter’ so that this value will be taken into account. Correction settings can be performed in any order, but we have listed them here in a sequence that offers a logical workflow; once you know how to handle each type of correction, of course you’re free to adjust the settings in any order you like. Users of earlier versions will note that in version 3.5, the main workspace can be used in twin-pane ‘split-screen’, and that the toolbar includes new buttons for Layout, and a new toolbar for the Preview window—please see the Toolbar and Menu descriptions for full details. As long as you have at least one image already selected, this palette is displayed as soon as you select ‘Key Controls’ mode, and can be hidden at any time by closing the window using the × at the top right corner, or the ‘Hide controls’ command from the Workspace menu, and revealed again by selecting ‘Show controls’. The palette consists of five separate tabs, for Corrections, Histogram, Zoom, Workflow, and Image information respectively. In the Workspace menu, these are checked in turn when they are the active feature, and unchecked when in the background. You can move swiftly from one to the other using the keyboard shortcuts, Ctrl + F1 to F5 respectively. You can also hide or show the whole control palette from this menu. Under the Corrections tab, the DxO Optics panel has check boxes for two new features, Chromatic aberration (overall + purple fringing) and Max Image. In addition, the ‘Key controls’ mode new Preview toolbar carries buttons for Crop and Preview management—again, please refer to the fuller descriptions of these under Toolbars and Menus. Once the control palette is displayed on your workspace, you can move it around as a whole, or use your mouse to drag-&-drop any one or more tabs to different parts of the window (to pick them up, you’ll need to click quite accurately on the actual tab itself, and not the title bar!). As we’ll be seeing a bit later, it is often helpful to keep certain tabs open whilst working with others. As you click on each tab, it comes to the front and becomes active, and the others move behind. The layout of your palettes is remembered from one session to the next, so that next time you open the program they will be displayed in the same format as you left them, provided of course that you have not changed display mode (from twin to single-screen, for example); if the stored display layout cannot be used, then a default layout is provided.
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WORKSPACE TIP At first start-up, the DxO workspace is organized with the palettes stacked, with tabs, and the histogram palette to the fore. This way, you can see everything on a single screen, merely opening palettes as and when needed. But if you are working on two separate screens, you can keep all the palettes open at once, arranging them to suit your preference. By clicking on any of the tabs, you can drag-&-drop it anywhere on your screen; once it is separated from the other tabs, you can open and close it at will, thus enabling you to keep open several at once if you so wish, but also letting you organize your workspace to be as uncluttered as possible. To re-stack the tabs, pick each tab up by its tab (not by the title bar!) and drag-&-drop it onto the stack.
You can shrink any tab by clicking on its title bar; once shrunk, you can expand it by clicking again on the title bar. You can also use Ctrl + function keys F1 to F5 to bring any tab to the fore. Certain tabs have panels within them, and some of these panels have a box (checked by default) that enables them; if you uncheck this box, this particular correction algorithm will not be applied, and so logically enough, the panel will not open and its controls will not be accessible. Under any given tab, F4 and F5 respectively open and close all the panels. If a particular parameter has been previously adjusted in ‘Expert Controls’ mode that is not adjustable in ‘Key Controls’, the header for the relevant panel in the ‘Key Controls’ workspace is highlighted to indicate that this is the case; to make further adjustments to this parameter, you’ll need to switch over to ‘Expert Controls’ mode. Just as for the Fully Automatic mode, the first step is obviously to select one or more images you wish to process. In Key Controls mode, you can then use the controls available to adjust certain key characteristics of your image(s), and if you wish, you can then copy and paste settings (from the Workflow menu, or by right-clicking on a selected image to bring up a contextual menu), so as to apply the same settings to one or more group(s) of images, or call up already-created preset(s). In all these cases, you can choose to paste all of the settings onto one or more selected images, or to paste only a selection from the settings. So, for example, you might choose a group of, say, six related images, create a pattern of settings to apply to all of them, and then copy and paste these settings, perhaps leaving out certain ones, onto a further group or groups of images. You can begin to see just what a powerful, flexible feature this is! Let’s now go through the five tabs of this palette window one by one and see how they work with examples. Before we move onto the actual corrections, let’s first look at two tabs offering tools that are likely to be so useful, you’ll probably want to keep them open on your workspace while using the other tools.
Histogram tab [Ctrl+F2]
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You’ll no doubt already be familiar with the histogram display that shows the distribution of tonal values in the three color channels, with black on the left and white on the right. A handy new feature in version 3.5 is that the histogram is calculated on the cropped area of the image (if the crop facility is enabled). Although this of course means you must be careful when interpreting the histogram if you have selected ‘crop’, it has the immense advantage that you can perform a more detailed histogram analysis of even quite a small part of the image, simply by selecting a small crop ‘sampling’ area, which you can then move around as required in the image. It’s also worth noting that the histogram is calculated in the output color space; so if you have changed this, the results will be reflected in your histogram display, even if they are not necessarily visible in the Preview image (remember, preview images are always displayed with the sRGB color space, whatever setting you may have selected). Note for v3 users: The ‘display clipping’ buttons have been updated and are now located on the ‘Preview’ toolbar. You’ll almost certainly find it very helpful to keep the Histogram tab open while you’re working with the other tools, since it very often gives you a good idea of exactly what’s going on. To do this, you’ll need to drag-&-drop it with your mouse onto another part of the screen, and once it is away from its home palette, it will then stay open even when you access another tab. And the same goes for the next tab we’re going to look at too.
Zoom tab [Ctrl+F3] This important feature is rather complicated to explain, so an explanation with pictures is in order. We mustn’t forget that the normal preview image only shows an approximation of some of the corrections to be applied (White Balance, Exposure, rough demosaicing, Distortion, Vignetting, Tone Curve, Lighting, Lateral chromatic aberration, Hue/Saturation/Luminance), whilst other key corrections like noise reduction, lateral chromatic aberration, true demosaicing, and sharpness processing are not previewed. Hence why this ‘zoom’ function is important, as it displays a cropped section of the image with all the final processing applied. The zoom tab opens a small zoom window, the function and operation of which depends on the selection of the three buttons on the preview toolbar: ‘Eye-dropper’ tool — click white / gray point Zoom Crop First, let’s look at this function as it is used for white balance.
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White balance With the white balance tool activated, as you move the mouse pointer (eye-dropper tool) around in the main image, the image in the magnified sections moves in such a way that the center cross indicates the exact pointer position; and the RGB values of the selected point are shown in the bottom right-hand corner of the status bar. For greater precision, you can use the slider at the bottom to increase the magnification in four steps up to 400%—note that the white balance reference sample is an average of several screen pixels at the pointer position, so the more you zoom in, the more tightly your define the white balance reference pixels. As you move the pointer around in the main image, the white balance of the ‘If clicked’ righthand preview image changes to reflect the white balance that would be produced by the selected ‘neutral’ pixels, giving a ‘before’ and ‘after’ view of the white balance. Clicking at any point will update the white balance of the main image to match that of the ‘If clicked’ display. You can press the Alt key to temporarily disable the eye-dropper tool and ‘stick down’ the zoomed area. Here’s a real image that illustrates how this works; you may find it easier if you try this out for yourself. Zoom
Activating the zoom tool changes the display to a single rectangle showing a zoomed-in section of the main image, where it is indicated by a green frame that you can move around by clicking on it using the hand tool that appears when you hover the mouse over the framed area. The size of this zoomed crop from the main image can be adjusted (in steps of 100 %) by dragging and dropping the slider from 100% (i.e. actual size) to 400%.
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The importance of this ‘actual-size’ sample facility cannot be over-emphasized; although the preview image does give a very good idea of the final result you will get, the image size is limited, is sub-sampled to speed up preview processing, and not all corrections are applied. But this actual-size zoomed image is processed exactly as your final image, and so shows you precisely the effect you’ll get. This is vital in order to be able to adjust some of the corrections that we’re about to look at more closely below (DxO Noise), and later in the ‘Expert Controls’ workspace description (DxO Lens Softness and USM). In this mode, you can access the white balance eyedropper tool by holding down the Ctrl key as you move the pointer around, and as usual, leftclicking will adopt the current pointer position as a new neutral white balance reference. Crop And finally, the ‘Crop’ button (a new feature in version 3.5) makes it possible to crop images— checking the ‘enable’ box activates the ‘ratio’ box, where you can select ‘No Ratio’ (i.e. freelyadjustable proportions), constrain the image proportions to ‘Original’ (i.e. the same as shot), a selection of numeric values, or ‘Custom’, which brings up an edit box for you to enter integer values for aspect ratio.
Enabling ‘Crop’ displays a scalable, movable rectangular box on the image to indicate the crop outline.
You can adjust the edges of this box by using the mouse (anywhere along the edge, not just on the handles). The magnified zoom image shows the exact position of the mouse pointer, allowing you to perform extremely accurate cropping. If you place the mouse within the crop area, but
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not near one of the edges, the mouse pointer turns into a ‘hand’ tool that allows you to move the re-sized rectangle around as a whole.
Corrections tab [Ctrl+F1] Under this tab you’ll find five panels for the key correction controls that can be adjusted in this mode. Just before we take a look at them, though, one general point—on all panels where a slider is accompanied by an edit box, after you type in a correction value directly, you must press ‘Enter’ so that this value will be taken into account.
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WORKSPACE TIP As you move a correction slider, the current correction will be applied to the last-corrected preview image (in other words, each correction preview builds upon the previous one), either ‘live’ as you move it, or only once you have released the mouse button (where processing time is significant). So certain corrections may not appear to be having any visible effect, until the mouse button is released. Note also that certain corrections are never shown in the preview image (see ‘Zoom’ tab below). Please refer to the description of the ‘Preview manager’ panel under the ‘Image information’ tab for other important information about previewing. White Balance Note that when an image is selected, the White Balance panel (and its header) will change according to whether it is a raw or other file; in the case of raw conversion, true white balance adjustment is possible, whereas in processing other images, the white balance adjustment is achieved slightly differently. Raw version
At the top of the White Balance (RAW) panel is a combo box, offering ‘Original’ (i.e. uses the values read from the image file’s EXIF header), a series of presets for ‘standard’ lighting conditions (Daylight / Cloudy / Tungsten / Fluorescent / Flash / Shade), and a ‘Custom’ position for manual adjustment. Starting out from any one of these presets, you can make adjustments with the color Temperature and Tint sliders—as soon as a slider is moved, the label (Custom) appears alongside its title, to show that the setting has been adjusted. The ‘Custom’ position corresponds to a DxO average calibration, but it may also represent camera settings of AWB [auto white balance] or Manual Temp [color temperature set manually in the camera by the user] The top slider adjusts the color ‘Temperature’—basically, it swings the balance of the red and blue channels, whilst leaving the green untouched. Moving the slider to the right increases the color temperature, moving it to the left decreases it. The same result can be achieved by typing in a figure for the color temperature and pressing ‘Enter’. The range is from 2,000 K to 20,000 K. DxO Optics Pro v3.5
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Note that the effect on the image is to make it warmer with increasing color temperature, and cooler with decreasing; although this might at first appear counter-intuitive, we need to remember that this is correcting the color balance as if the picture had been shot with this color temperature lighting in the first place. Imagine, for example, that a picture has been taken by tungsten artificial light, but with the camera accidentally set to ‘daylight’; the resulting image will appear too orange. Moving the slider to the left, towards a lower K value more appropriate for the artificial light actually used, will cool the image, correcting the orange cast. The lower slider adjusts the ‘Tint’—in this case, swinging the color balance between blue and green, leaving the red untouched. Moving the slider to the left (or entering a negative number) makes the image greener, moving it to the right or entering a positive number makes it bluer. The range runs from +100 to –100. As with all the sliders in Optics Pro, clicking anywhere on the slider bar to one side or the other of the slider itself will move the slider in that direction by a fixed increment; in the case of the color temperature, this is in steps of 500 K, while the tint slider moves in steps of 25. TIP The way the software performs White Balance adjustment differs slightly between processing raw and RGB images (JPEG and TIFF ). Using raw images allows greatest freedom of white balance adjustment, but you need to exercise care when correcting RGB files, as large amounts of correction can lead to undesirable artifacts (banding in high-key areas / posterization in shadows).
Let’s take a look at the operation of these two controls using some actual pictures (in this case, raw images). Here in the middle is the picture as shot, and to the left and right, the effects of shifting the color temperature slider left and right respectively:
And here is the same picture, this time with the tint control adjusted:
Notice how the mouse pointer turns into an eye-dropper tool when you move it over the preview image; this powerful tool lets you pick a neutral area of the image to be taken as a white DxO Optics Pro v3.5
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reference. This should be a fairly light grey tone, but avoid clipped highlights, as the results can be very unpredictable! Note that the eye-dropper ‘looks’ at the average of a number of screen pixels, so you should also avoid transition areas that might yield unwanted errors. Simply position the pointer over the required area, and left-click to white balance for this point; at any time, you can re-select ‘Original’ from the pull-down menu in order to cancel the changes and revert to the original white balance. Immediately you click on a gray point to adjust the white balance, the legend (Custom) is automatically added to the slider titles. The eye-dropper tool can be temporarily disabled using the Alt key (toggles); as soon as you right-click anywhere in the image, it comes back (but without changing the white balance, or if you left click, it comes back and changes the white balance at the same time). It’s perhaps important here to explain a little about this idea of applying ‘custom’ settings to defined presets. In their quest for ever-more-faithful colorimetry, certain camera manufacturers generate the color using different calculation matrices for each of the defined lighting conditions represented in DxO by these presets, and as a result, DxO itself uses different color matrices. In order to avoid any possibility of color anomalies, it is important that images are processed using the settings appropriate for the original taking selection. However, it is clear that users may still want to ‘tweak’ adjustments around these preset positions, and so it is for this reason that it has been made possible to ‘customize’ the settings under any given preset. RGB Version
If the image selected is an already-converted RGB file, a slightly different White Balance panel is displayed. In this case, the full range of adjustments as for raw images is not available, and there is just a single slider to adjust the overall balance of the image—cooler to the left, warmer to the right. Extreme settings in this RGB mode need to be used with care, in order to avoid artifacts that are the result of limitations in the RGB formats themselves. As before, clicking on a gray point in the image with the eye-dropper tool will adjust the overall white balance so as to make this point neutral, and the selection in the combo box will change automatically, this time to ‘Click white/gray point’. TIP DxO’s powerful tone curve, lighting correction and noise reduction features mean you’ll be able to recover an astonishing amount of shadow detail that in conventional photography would likely have been lost (this concerns both raw and RGB images).
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Exposure compensation
This slider works just as you might expect—moving it to the right (or entering a positive Ev number into the edit box) increases the exposure, to the left (or a negative Ev number) reduces it. The range is from +4.00 Ev to –4.00 Ev, and clicking moves the slider in steps of 0.50 Ev. During exposure adjustments, you may well find it helpful to use the highlight / shadow clipping display, accessible using the usual Shift + Ctrl / Alt keyboard shortcuts. It’s important to note that shadow and highlight clipping displays are computed in the final output color space, and hence these displays, and any adjustments performed based on them, will be affected if the output color space is subsequently changed (see the later description of ‘Output color space’ under the ‘Output settings' tab). When processing a raw image, the Highlight recovery box will be checked by default, disabling the manual settings; to make an adjustment, you need to uncheck the Highlight recovery box. Note that when processing an RGB image, highlight recovery is not available, and so the check box is grayed out.
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WHAT IS HIGHLIGHT RECOVERY? Typical Digital SLR sensors have a 12-bit dynamic range—this means they use 4096 gray levels to describe an image, while JPEG images only use 8 bits—256 gray levels. Traditionally, 12-bit raw images are converted to 8 bits using a “tone curve” that typically reduces dynamics in the highlights. Certain color elements may also lose highlight information. The aim of Highlight Recovery is to overcome this problem. DxO Optics Pro 3.5 Highlight Recovery automatically sets the Ev Bias slider to a negative value, to bring the out-of-range highlight information within the available 8-bit dynamic range, and then adjusts the lighting gamma to restore overall image brightness as far as is possible, always seeking for the best balance between recovery of the highlights and preservation of the general exposure of the scene. Note that if Gamma [on Brightness panel, DxO Lighting / Expert tab] has been set to ‘Manual’ (i.e. ‘Auto’ box unchecked), it will have to be set manually to compensate for the negative Ev bias when Highlight recovery is used. When it is in auto mode, the gamma is computed taking the highlight recovery effect into account. For some images, better results may be obtained by manually tuning Ev Bias and lighting parameters. The simplest way is to set lighting to ‘auto’ and then tune the Ev Bias. Expert users will first tune the Ev Bias to recover highlights and then play with lighting parameters, and if necessary HSL lightness to find the best compromise. DxO Lighting’s local adaptation avoids the need for tiresome masking techniques. In some images, Highlight Recovery might induce changes in the overall brightness, contrast and color saturation; such situations can usually be rectified using the HSL controls. For JPEG images, a similar effect can be obtained manually, using a combination of the DxO Lighting and Exposure compensation controls.
However, if Highlight recovery is set to anything other than ‘None’, the manual slider is disabled. In this case, you can select one of three strengths of automatic highlight recovery adjustment (Slight, Medium, Strong) in the combo box, depending on your image requirements. A very dark image containing a bright area (for example, a backlit shot) requires considerable under-exposure in order to preserve highlight detail, which will make the overall image too dark. Automatic contrast control is not optimized for this type of image—the output image may not necessarily have been lightened enough to bring out the detail in the darker areas. For this reason, it is advisable to change to manual mode in DxO Lighting in order to find a better settings compromise. Notice the effect on the picture below of a small increase to correct for initial slight underexposure. Clearly, this makes it possible to err on the side of under-exposing, to allow for the reduced ‘headroom’ of digital images and avoid clipping highlight detail, with the possibility of choosing the exact exposure setting you prefer during image processing. Original Image
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Note how the use of ‘Highlight recovery’ produces a slight reduction in exposure and retrieves highlight detail that had appeared to be ‘lost’; this is one of the great advantages of working with raw images, since with an RGB image, once highlights are ‘blown’, there is no possibility of rescuing the lost detail. TAKING TIP Compared to traditional film, digital capture is much less tolerant of highlight over-exposure; once a highlight has reached digital clipping point, no further detail is available. Hence it is important to familiarize yourself with the actual ‘raw’ clipping point of your particular camera, and then adapt your taking habits to suit, holding back the exposure if necessary to preserve highlight detail.
Saturation There is a check box to enable correction, and if disabled, the panel does not open (check box is unchecked).
In Key Controls mode, saturation alone is available; as usual, the slider can be moved to the right to increase, or to the left to decrease, the color saturation, or a positive or negative figure can be entered. The range is from +100 to –100, and clicking moves the slider in steps of 10.
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WHAT IS HSL? Within equipment, digital images are described using 3 color channels Red, Green and Blue, but this system is not very user-friendly for making meaningful adjustments. HSL is an alternative color model, internally based on the same RGB values, but much easier to work with. It describes colors in terms of three fundamental parameters: Hue — what basic color (orange, turquoise, purple, etc.) Saturation — how strong the color is, from pastel to vibrant Lightness — how light or dark the color is, from black to white By making these parameters adjustable, colors can be manipulated for correction or artistic effect.
And also as usual, the ‘As shot’ button lets you cancel everything and get back to where you started!
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DxO Optics
Note that this panel will only be displayed if an image is selected for which the lens correction module is loaded; if the panel is missing, Optics Pro cannot apply its optical corrections to that particular image. DXO OPTICS INTRODUCTION Lens design is always a matter of compromise. Even the most expensive lenses show a certain amount of image degradation, referred to as aberration, such as geometric distortion, vignetting, chromatic aberration or field-dependent blur. In an attempt to compensate for these defects, a lens is typically made of several pieces of glass assembled together in such a way as to partially cancel out each other’s defects. But this compensation is never perfect. Zoom lenses are even more complex, as the compensation needs to work at all focal lengths. The DxO Optics Engine is designed to improve the performance of a lens by compensating through software the residual defects of the lens itself. For example, pin-cushion or barrel distortion (as well as more complex distortions) can be corrected by applying an inverse geometric transform to the digital image. The DxO Optics Engine works on the principle of creating a detailed model of lens performance by taking thousands of images with each lens for which a DxO Lens Module is created. This model – the DxO Lens Module – is then used by the DxO Optics Engine algorithms to “reverse out” all the defects. This way of working means the optical corrections are based on the “real-world” defects of the lens, rather than on estimates, and can be fully automated. The current DxO Optics Engine correction is fairly exhaustive: chromatic, geometric, axial and field-dependent aberrations can all be corrected simultaneously, and if desired, automatically. Correction is automatically adapted within the field and from one picture to another in accordance with taking conditions (focal length, aperture, etc.) In this mode, there is just a single check box to enable / disable optical corrections, and a second for ‘Max Image’. In order to maximize the amount of image usable, version 3.5 includes the new ‘Max frame’ feature; if this box is checked, the image aspect ratio is no longer constrained to the original proportions as shot, but is allowed to expand outwards to the largest possible centered rectangle that will fit within the corrected image. In certain cases, this can result in as much as 40 % extra usable image area!
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TAKING TIP This new feature is going to be of especial interest to users of super-wide / fisheye lenses, and opens new possibilities for taking panoramic shots—now you can use a very wide-angle lens, use DxO Optics Pro to correct the inevitable distortion it will produce, and then make the most of ‘Max frame’ to allow you to crop your image down to the final wanted proportions. Now you can take panoramic shots in situations where you couldn’t have before, or at least, not without a great deal more time and effort. Focusing distance
Certain lens correction modules (distortion, lateral chromatic aberration) need focusing distance information in order to perform optical corrections. Some cameras do not store the focusing distance in the EXIF data; if this is the case, the focusing distance panel will be displayed, and you should manually enter the focusing distance used for the shot, as accurately as you are able to. A combo box allows you to select either the default ‘not set’ (in this case, distortion and lateral chromatic aberration will not be corrected), or various distance ranges, whilst the slider lets you set the distance precisely, or alternatively, enter the figures in the edit box to the right. Do note that the slider may allow you to enter a focusing distance that is not actually covered by your lens; in this case, DxO will use the minimum focusing distance applicable for your lens. Note that the units for focusing distance (feet & inches or meters) can be changed in the ‘Miscellaneous’ tab under the ‘Preferences’ menu, accessible via the Workspace pull-down or using the Ctrl+P shortcut. Focal length
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Likewise, in order to optimize optical corrections, a small number of zoom lens correction modules need more precise focal length information over certain specific parts of their range than is available from the camera’s EXIF file; if this is the case, the focal length panel will be displayed, and you should manually enter the focal length the lens was set at for the shot, as accurately as you are able to. The slider lets you set the distance precisely, and will be calibrated for the range of focal lengths across which ambiguity exists for the particular lens in question; click steps in this instance are 50% of the scale (so too broad to be of much practical value). Alternatively, you can enter the figures in the edit box to the right.
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DxO Lighting
There is a check box to enable correction, and if disabled (check box is unchecked), the panel does not open. DXO LIGHTING INTRODUCTION This key DxO Optics Pro feature merits a little explanation. Natural scenes rarely exhibit ideal lighting conditions; light sources are often directional and sometimes quite harsh. What’s more, when taking pictures we are often more concerned about capturing the right moment, and pay little attention to potential lighting problems. To compound the problem, the dynamic range of sensors can’t compete with that of our eyes. All this can result in some shots exhibiting underexposed, dark or shadowed regions with missing details. To overcome these problems, DxO Labs introduced DxO Lighting, a unique local exposure and dynamic range optimizer. Automatically replicating analog film techniques known as “dodging and burning”, DxO Lighting Engine brings out shadow detail of digital image files while preserving highlights, textures, colors and a natural look. How does this work? To a certain degree—basically when the desired image signal is sufficiently above the noise level— lighting problems can be corrected afterwards, given appropriate image processing. Simply put, DxO Lighting first breaks the image down into a number of areas in which luminance values have a certain range; it then processes each of these areas in the most appropriate manner to reveal detail. In general terms, lightness and tone curve slope are slightly increased in dark areas to bring out detail, yet avoid the highlight clipping that could occur if the overall gamma were adjusted. Pixel-precise image segmentation technology lies at the heart of DxO Lighting, to deliver automatic local contrast adjustment and thereby reveal hidden detail in dark areas. The local nature of the adjustment is of course crucial to reveal shadow detail without burning out the highlights.
In ‘Key Controls’ mode, there is a simple check box for Auto or manual, with a combo box offering a choice of Slight, Medium or Strong correction. The manual ‘Correction strength’ slider is disabled until the Auto box is unchecked. Slider range is from 0 to 150 %, clicking moves it in 10 % steps. There is also an edit box for direct entry. To try to explain this simply, it is basically like a sophisticated gamma or tone curve adjustment, affecting mid-tones but leaving highlights and shadows virtually unaltered.
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Look at the effect on the picture below, and compare the histograms: Original image
With DxO Lighting correction
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DxO Noise
And so we come to the last panel under the Corrections tab, DxO Noise; here too, there is a check box to enable correction, and if disabled, the panel does not open (check box is unchecked). DXO NOISE INTRODUCTION This is a feature of DxO Optics Pro that merits a little explanation. DxO Noise is a hardware-model based correction—in other words, the correction algorithm is specifically tailored by DxO Labs for each camera, and so this correction will only be performed for images from cameras that have been calibrated by DxO. More and more cameras are being profiled as time goes by. Generally, DxO Noise achieves a 2-stop gain in image noise level. So for example, an image shot at 1600 ISO and processed by DxO Noise, will display the noise level of an image shot at 400 ISO. DxO Noise has been specifically designed to retain maximum detail in the image. In order to judge the effect of your noise adjustments, it is essential to use the Zoom tool, which gives an accurate preview of final image quality. To make your adjustments, pick an area of your image where you can best assess the noise, and then if necessary move the zoom area around in order to examine other critical areas. Once again, the only controls are the check box for Auto or manual setting, and a slider to set the degree of luminance noise correction. Slider range is from 0 to 100 %, clicking moves it in 10 % steps. There is also an edit box for direct entry. DxO’s very intelligent noise reduction algorithm operates virtually undetectably on almost all picture content, but since some softening of certain image areas might sometimes be apparent, it obviously makes sense to use as low a level of noise reduction as can be tolerated, given the parameters of the image in question. Version 3.5 offers a real improvement in this respect, with refined algorithms to enable as much fine detail as possible to be preserved, while keeping noise at a very low level. Look at the zoomed-in sections of picture below, which illustrate the effect of the noise reduction, particularly visible in the shadow areas.
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Without correction
After correction
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Image information tab [Ctrl+F5] Just two small panels under this tab: EXIF
Summarizes the EXIF data for the current image. Note that where a number of images are selected together, any ambiguity in any or all of the EXIF information between them will result in a display of ???? in its place.
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Output settings tab [Ctrl+F4] Output file format
Here’s one of DxO Optics Pro’s really useful time-saving features—not only can you save in Adobe’s .DNG file format, but you can do so at the same time as saving in JPEG and TIFF too, if you want. This means that you can batch-process a whole load of images all in one go, and simultaneously save copies in multiple formats, perhaps for speedy previewing plus further editing. Do note that .DNG is only available as an output format for raw input images. This raw in–raw out facility means you can still use your favorite third-party raw converter if you wish, once your images have been corrected in Optics Pro. Each of the three tabs for DNG, JPEG and TIFF formats starts off with the same basic functions. Check the ‘Output in this format’ box under each tab to save your output files in that format. All three tabs have an ‘Enable crop’ check box, to support the new ‘Crop’ feature in version 3.5— for full details of this feature, please see the preview toolbar description. Note that the ‘Enable crop’ check box on the preview toolbar sets this check box, but it can also be set / unset here from the Output format tabs—all three tabs share the same crop enable / disable, so changing the setting on any one tab changes the others too. In the case of the JPEG and TIFF output format tabs, the size information is updated to reflect the re-sized image resulting from cropping. When using the new ‘Crop’ feature, the last-used crop size is initially applied, so the size information may not be up to date until the new cropped image has been re-calculated for preview. In the case of the ‘Max image’ feature, the re-sized image is only calculated after correction, so image size data will not be displayed, and size settings are not accessible until an image’s corrections have been calculated for preview—and not at all in ‘thumbnail only’ view. For JPEG input images, two output file formats are available: TIFF (compressed or un-compressed) or JPEG (with a compression ratio variable from 0–100). For Raw input images, three output file formats are available: TIFF (8-bit, compressed or uncompressed, or 16-bit), JPEG (with a compression ratio variable from 0–100) and Adobe® Digital Negative (DNG). DxO Optics Pro v3.5
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Saving in DNG, allows you to use the unique features of DxO Optics Pro (DxO demosaicing, DxO Optics corrections, etc.) while still maintaining a workflow involving Adobe® Camera Raw or any other DNG-input compliant Raw converter. You may choose the suffix to be automatically added to filenames of corrected files. You can either keep the one suggested (“ _DXO”) or create your own, being sure to use only nonaccented characters, figures, and the _, = or . signs. For RAW input images, an additional suffix “_raw” is automatically added, in order to allow RAW+JPEG processing. You are not allowed to leave the suffix blank—this is to avoid deletion of original files by accident. A check box allows you to overwrite or not existing processed images. If you choose not to overwrite, and then try to process a previously-corrected image for which the processed file still exists in the same output directory, upon starting processing, an error message is returned, and the image will not be processed Likewise, if you click the radio button ‘in this directory’, the grayed-out ‘Browse’ button to the right is enabled, and will open a browser window where you can set an alternative path for saving your corrected images—as mentioned briefly earlier, this is essential if you’re importing images via a non-recordable medium, since in that case it is not possible to save output files to the same location as the input files, which will cause Optics Pro to return an error when you try to process. In addition, the JPEG and TIFF format tabs invite you to set parameters that are relevant to those formats. In the case of JPEG, that means the quality slider; the factory default is 100, on a scale from 0 (maximum compression, so lowest quality, but smallest file size) to 100 (minimum compression, so best quality, but larger file size). Clicking moves the slider in steps of 10. For best quality, always use the highest setting you can, as appropriate for your file size requirements—if in doubt, leave the factory default setting. Be wary of using JPEG compression ratios lower than 70, which create highly visible artifacts. We suggest you try out several compression ratios and choose the one that best suits your requirements. The TIFF tab offers check boxes for Compress and 8-bit conversion; only check these if you fully understand their function and relevance to your specific needs, otherwise leave them unchecked (factory default setting).
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Processing That completes our tour of the Key Controls palette, so now you are ready to adjust the settings for your images, and then push the Start button (or use the Ctrl + S keyboard shortcut, or select the Start batch command from the Workflow menu). Version 3.5 includes a multi-processing feature that can help speed up batch processing, if your computer is equipped with multiple (logical) processors. The configuration options for this new feature can be found under ‘Preferences’ (Workspace menu, or Ctrl + P). Here are a few general details about processing: At the start of processing, DxO first performs a number of checks on the batch images; at the end of these checks, it may be necessary for the user to respond to one or more questions before processing proper can commence; for example, if there are images for which the focusing distance has not been set, a dialog box pops up, asking whether you want to continue without correcting distortion and chromatic aberration, or cancel the batch to go back and set the focusing distance for these images. – To improve processing efficiency in the event of multiprocessing, images are always sorted before processing, so they will not necessarily be processed in thumbnail order – Depending on the number and size of your images, and the different corrections being applied, processing may take from just a few seconds to several minutes, or even longer in the case of slower computers. – If the disk cache has been enabled, raw images will be calculated immediately batch processing finishes, so that converted ‘Before’ images will already be available when Viewer is launched. Without the disk cache, ‘Before’ images cannot be calculated in advance, which slows down Viewer launch where large images are involved. This saves a lot of time at the review stage. –
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During processing, a batch dialogue window opens to keep you informed about progress. It has a progress bar showing progress of the batch as a whole. The lower part of the window shows details of the image currently being processed, and its individual progress. The ‘Skip’ button allows you to skip a particular image, while the ‘Pause’ button lets you pause one or more processes (if multi-processing is enabled)—this allows you to temporarily free up CPU time if you need to run another application, for example. In this case, the images awaiting processing are simply shared out between the other processes still running.
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Where multi-processing is being used, the lower part of the screen shows progress information for each process running; up to 4 will be displayed at once—if more are being used, a vertical scroll bar will allow you to view the others. Once processing is finished, a log screen (common to all the workspaces) is displayed which will report any problems that might have been encountered, and offers ‘View’ and ‘Done’ buttons.
When Raw images have been processed and saved only in DNG format, they cannot be displayed in DxO Viewer, and so in this case the ‘View’ button will be grayed out. ‘Done’ terminates the current batch and returns you directly to the main DxO workspace, while ‘View’ opens the DxO Viewer, which makes it very easy to go through all your images and compare the corrected versions with the originals. Let’s take a look at that now…
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DxO Viewer window anatomy Mac Version
A toolbar…
…and a status bar at the bottom of the screen, used for displaying various image and zoom information
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Windows Version
a toolbar…
Pull-down menus across the top…
…and a status bar at the bottom of the screen, used for displaying various image and zoom information
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Just like the main DxO Optics Pro screen, the Viewer’s Image menu offers commands for * Rotate 90° counterclockwise (left) / clockwise (right) [Ctrl + L or R], along with a new command, * Delete corrected files, which enables you to delete the corrected file for the current image—for example, if after viewing you decide that you’d like to process an image again.
The Viewer’s View menu offers commands for * Next / Previous image [also available as keyboard shortcuts Æ or Ç and Å or È], as well as switching between * Before / After DxO images [Ctrl + D / Ctrl + F], and also for * Zoom in / out [Ctrl + + or -], * Fit to window [Ctrl + I], and * Actual size [Ctrl + 1] .
All these same Image and View menu functions are also available via the Toolbar buttons: Zoom + / – functions, as well as two other view scaling options: Fit to window, and Actual size. Note that any zoom setting you use will be applied to both original and corrected images. Rotate 90° counterclockwise/ clockwise buttons enable you to change the orientation of your images. Screen layout — just as in the main workspace, opens a sub-menu where you can choose to view thumbnails or preview images alone on your workspace, or as 2 panes allowing you to view both at the same time—the last 4 menu options enable you to choose where the thumbnail pane is positioned with respect to the preview pane. Note that the thumbnails in the Viewer window bear the same icons as those in the Workspace window, so you can easily see at a glance if the relevant DxO Lens Module was used or not.
Previous / Next buttons allow you to navigate through your images. After DxO / Before buttons enable you to toggle back and forth between the A pair of original (unprocessed) and corrected versions of your images — also available simply by rightclicking anywhere in the workspace to toggle between the two [Keyboard shortcuts: Ctrl + D / Ctrl + F]. allows you to delete selected results files—you might need to The Delete results file(s) button do this, for example, for certain images that you wish to correct again, or in cases where you have more than one output file format and want to eliminate one or more of them. DxO Optics Pro v3.5
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The
button will close the Viewer window and return you to your DxO Optics Pro workspace.
The Help menu offers access to the complete help file (i.e. this User Manual) [F1], plus details of the various module options installed [Ctrl + M], and an About… information screen containing information about the exact software version, important if you need to contact DxO Technical Support. There’s also a command you can click, and the software will check automatically for updates.
The bottom status bar displays the filename currently being viewed in the center, and if you hover the mouse over it, a tooltip displays information about the corrections that have been applied. A legend in the bottom left-hand corner confirms whether you’re viewing the original or corrected image, and indicates if only partial correction has been applied. In some cases, it may not have been possible to apply all the corrections requested to an image, and those that have been applied will be indicated here. In the bottom right-hand corner, image magnification is indicated as a percentage. Note that if you have resized images as part of your processing, such images will show a difference in size between the original / corrected images in the Viewer. Normally, before / after images will appear with their centers aligned, and so will overlay correctly (unless you have resized them). However, in the specific case where an image corrected using the ‘Max frame’ feature yields a corrected image that extends outside the original image boundaries (even after any cropping), the before / after images will be displayed with their centers re-aligned, which may mean that the overlay is displaced. After viewing a newly-processed batch of images, when you return to your main DxO Optics Pro workspace, the thumbnails for that batch will be updated.
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‘EXPERT CONTROLS’ In this chapter, we’re first going to take a look at the basic anatomy of the ‘Expert Controls’ workspace, then quickly go through the menu commands, toolbar buttons and corresponding keyboard shortcuts, before taking a look at the various control ‘palettes’, and finally, at the DxO Viewer that allows you to see the final results of your corrections. The basic sequence for processing images is always the same: add the images you want to process onto your workspace (or drag-&-drop from other applications), double-click on an image to access ‘preview’ mode and the control palettes to make your adjustments or select presets, move on if necessary to subsequent images, and then click ‘start batch’ to begin processing. Once completed, you can use DxO Viewer to see the results. Now let’s take a look at all this in a bit more detail…
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Workspace anatomy Mac Version A toolbar…
…a workspace for handling images— the electronic equivalent of a light-box… …and a status bar at the bottom of the screen, used for displaying various details of the current image and processing. WARNING This document describes the Windows version of DxO Optics Pro v3.5. The Mac version features the same functionalities and workflow, except for the menus that are slightly different.
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Windows Version
a toolbar…
Pull-down menus across the top…
…a workspace for handling images— the electronic equivalent of a light-box…
…and a status bar at the bottom of the screen, used for displaying various details of the current image and processing.
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New in version 3.5, it is now possible to split the workspace window into two ‘panes’, so that the thumbnail images can be displayed alongside the main preview image. The various options for workspace layout are accessed using the ‘Layout’ button on the main toolbar, which opens a drop-down sub-menu (the same menu is also available via the ‘View’ menu); according to your individual preference, the thumbnail pane (re-sizable) can be located at the top or bottom of the screen, or on the left- or right-hand sides. Of course, the single-pane ‘thumbnails only’ and ‘preview only’ displays are still available, just as in previous versions. Do note that in the specific case of a multi-image selection, the preview pane will be empty. In the ‘Fully Automatic’ workspace, the ‘Thumbnails only’ view alone is available (the other options are grayed-out in the menus).
Toolbars The buttons along the toolbars all relate to the most frequently-needed commands from the pulldown menus, and each button provides a tooltip explaining what it does when you roll the mouse over it. Menu commands that have a corresponding toolbar button are preceded by an * in the description below. There are two toolbars: the main one is displayed all the time, but the preview toolbar only appears when the preview screen is active. Main window toolbar
Let’s go through these buttons one by one and summarize their functions. Add Images — opens the ‘Add images’ browser window, where you can easily navigate around your files and folders. We’ll come back to this a bit later. Remove images — simply removes any selected image(s) from your current workspace Move to trash — actually deletes any selected image(s) from your disk (sends them to the recycle bin) Do Process — marks selected original image(s) for processing (even if they may have been processed previously, for example) Don’t Process — marks selected image(s) not to be processed (they will simply be skipped during batch processing) Remove “don’t process” images — cleans out all images marked as “Don’t process” from your workspace. In fact, it also cleans out any other images that cannot be processed—for example, corrected images that have already been processed by DxO. Rotate left & right — rotates any selected image(s) clockwise or counter-clockwise (portrait / landscape formats) Screen layout — opens a sub-menu where you can choose to view thumbnails or preview images alone on your workspace, or as 2 panes allowing you to view both at the same time—the last 4 menu options enable you to choose where the thumbnail pane is positioned with respect to the preview pane. Do note that if multiple images are selected in the thumbnail pane, no preview image will be displayed. Filters — opens a sub-menu with check boxes allowing you to enable display of “Don’t process”, “Ready to process” and “Already processed” images. Very useful to avoid a cluttered workspace after initial viewing! Sort — opens a sub-menu offering options to either leave thumbnail images unsorted (i.e. in the order as loaded), or to sort them by file date or name, or group
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them by camera body or lens type. Viewer — opens the DxO Viewer (see separate description) for before/after viewing of corrected images. Note that an error message will be displayed if you attempt to open the Viewer before you have any corrected images for viewing! Start batch — once you have selected the images to be included in your batch, and made any settings and adjustments you want, this is the ‘Go’ button that will start the DxO processing of your batch. A processing progress window opens (see separate description later) to keep you informed of progress, but it is otherwise a ‘hands-off’ process from this moment on. Save settings Preset manager These three buttons access DxO’s powerful preset Apply preset features, which we’ll be describing below. Preset management buttons (see also Workflow menu) Let’s return now to take a closer look at version 3.5’s improved preset management facilities, accessed via either the main window toolbar buttons or the commands on the ‘Workflow’ menu (some of which have associated function keys). Save settings Preset manager Select&Apply preset
Here in ‘Expert Controls’ mode is where you can save (and manage) your presets for subsequent use in the simpler ‘Key Controls’ mode. In all cases, the current preset can be saved, and once you have a selection of presets saved, you can ‘Apply’ them (also available via the F8 function key), and use the ‘Preset manager’ button to access a dialogue box where you can change their order in the list, rename, delete, import and export them. The ‘Apply setting’ button [ ] offers a choice of the default factory preset (cannot be modified), then there is one (user-)default preset, along with any custom presets that exist, for application to the current selected image(s).
Clicking on ‘Select and apply’ [ ] opens a combo box where you can select a preset (or the current contents of the clipboard, if you have previously copied a preset to it), and then use check boxes to select which of the parameters from that preset you wish to apply to the current image selection; to simplify parameter selection, you can choose to ‘Select all’ or ‘Unselect all’, and then go through the individual check boxes unchecking (or checking, as the case may be) DxO Optics Pro v3.5
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the ones you don’t (or do) wish to include for this batch. Having done this, you might even choose to re-save this as a new preset, if you think these settings may be of use to you again in the future.
In fact, it is probably good practice to start off by saving most of your settings as presets, in case you want to apply similar settings again later to other images, as it is much less work than to laboriously go through trying to reproduce settings you’ve used before. It’s worth pointing out here that all your settings are saved in a ‘side-car file’ alongside your original image file, so if at any time you return to an image, it is possible to find out what settings were last used to process it.
The ‘Presets Management’ window consists of two panes, the left-hand one displaying the list of available presets, and the right-hand one listing the corrections included in this preset.
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The buttons below (tooltips available by rolling mouse over them) offer move up / move down of a given preset in the list, rename, delete, import and export preset. That completes our tour of the Expert Controls palette, so now you are ready to adjust the settings (or use the Ctrl + S keyboard shortcut, or for your images, and then push the Start button select the ‘Start batch’ command from the Workflow menu). Preview window toolbar
Logically enough, on the ‘Preview’ toolbar are grouped a series of tools that operate only on the Preview image Shadow clipping Normal preview Highlight clipping This group of 3 associated buttons provides a very useful display tool in the preview image. The and shadow clipping buttons can be used to show respectively which parts of highlight the image are either black crushed or white clipped, which can be very useful when making decisions about exposure adjustments. Look at the picture examples below to see how they work. Two important keyboard shortcuts are Alt and Alt + Shift, which can be used to update respectively the ‘Highlight clipping’ and ‘Shadow clipping’ preview display following correction changes. These make the clipping displays visible in the main preview image.
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Normal image preview
Highlight clipping image preview
Shadow clipping image preview
Previous / next — for quick navigation backwards and forwards through a sequence of selected images; these buttons are available in ‘preview only’ mode (in 2-pane mode, they are grayed out) WB picker
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Zoom 1:1 Crop Another group of 3 associated (and mutually canceling) buttons, the first 2 of which operate in association with the ‘Zoom’ correction tab (see description later). enables the ‘eye-dropper’ tool, used to select an area of pixels to be The ‘WB picker’ button used as a reference for correcting the white balance of the whole image. activates a rectangular crop of a section of the image for detailed The ‘Zoom’ button previewing of certain functions. And finally, the ‘Crop’ button (a new feature in version 3.5) makes it possible to crop images— checking the ‘enable’ box activates the ‘ratio’ box, where you can select ‘No Ratio’ (i.e. freelyadjustable proportions), constrain the image proportions to ‘Original’ (i.e. the same as shot), a selection of numeric values, or ‘Custom’, which brings up an edit box for you to enter integer values for aspect ratio. Enabling ‘Crop’ displays a scalable, movable rectangular box on the image to indicate the crop outline. You can adjust the edges of this box by using the mouse (anywhere along the edge, not just on the handles). The magnified zoom image shows the exact position of the mouse pointer, allowing you to perform extremely accurate cropping. If you place the mouse within the crop area, but not near one of the edges, the mouse pointer turns into a ‘hand’ tool that allows you to move the re-sized rectangle around as a whole. As noted in the relevant section, the ‘Histogram’ tool works from the contents of the ‘crop’ box (if enabled), which makes it a useful additional analytical tool. Preview manager
This button opens a dialogue box with check boxes to enable / disable previewing of Distortion, Vignetting, DxO Lighting, HSL, Tone curve, and Lateral chromatic aberration corrections. To save preview refresh time, you may at times wish to suspend previewing of certain corrections. Do note that the first two options will be grayed out on the preview panel if even one image is included in your selection for which the appropriate lens correction module is not available. Note also that lateral chromatic aberration is now included here because, in the event that previewing of geometric distortion has not been enabled, the chromatic aberration correction alone can introduce a slight image zoom, and hence mild cropping, which it is clearly important to show in the preview image.
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WORKSPACE TIP As you move a correction slider, the current correction will be applied to the last-corrected preview image (in other words, each correction preview builds upon the previous one), either ‘live’ as you move it, or only once you have released the mouse button (where processing time is significant). So certain corrections may not appear to be having any visible effect, until the mouse button is released. Note also that certain corrections are never shown in the preview image (see ‘Zoom’ tab below).
Menus Here’s what you’ll find under the six pull-down menus, with the associated toolbar buttons: The first two menus are common to all three workspaces. The File menu includes commands to
*Add / * Remove images—the first step in any work session will always be to add the images you wish to preview for processing onto the workspace; the Add command [Ctrl + O] opens a browser window where you can select single or multiple images, and transfer them onto your workspace, where they appear as thumbnails. Remove image(s) [Ctrl + Del] is self-explanatory, and there is also * Remove “don’t process” images [Ctrl + Backspace] that allows you to automatically remove all images that you have selected not to process, in order to make your workspace less cluttered. Select all images [Ctrl + A] does just what you’d expect. The Delete files command sends unwanted files to the recycle bin. Exit is also available from this menu [Alt + F4] TIP Note that images loaded from a write-only CD-ROM drive will not be able to be saved after processing back to that same drive, so you will need either to copy them first into a working directory on your hard drive or CD-R/W drive, or change the destination path for output files to a recordable location using the ‘Output file format’ tab [under the ‘Output settings’ palette in ‘Key Controls’ mode (Ctrl + F4) or ‘Expert Controls’ mode (Ctrl + F9)]—see below. If you choose not to copy your files across before processing, note that the side-car settings file will not be able to be saved alongside the original image file.
When you select the ‘Add images’ command (or use the keyboard shortcut or toolbar button), a whole new ‘Add images’ window opens to let you find and select the image file(s) you want to add. If you hover the mouse over a filename, a tooltip will be displayed giving certain key image properties. If you select multiple images to be added, a progress bar will appear at the bottom left of the status bar, along with a ‘Stop’ button to allow you to cancel loading of the images. DxO Optics Pro v3.5
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This is one of the version 3.5 tools that is a real time saver, and makes workflow management that much easier. The ‘Add images’ browser window is divided into two resizable panes—the classic left-hand pane showing the tree structure of your disk, and the right-hand pane showing the selected folder as either thumbnails of your images, or as the usual list of file details. The following description applies specifically to the Windows environment; the Mac environment will be described below
On this ‘Add images’ toolbar (and the same commands are available from the ‘File’ and ‘View’ menus), you will find: Add selected image(s) to main workspace Delete selected image(s) — in fact, sends them to the recycle bin Select all images Sort — as in the main workspace, there’s a drop-down for sorting by filename, size, date or type Filters — again, as in the main workspace, a drop-down gives you the option to filter out images that have already been processed, RGB images and Raw images. These last two make it easy to pre-select images for adding to the main workspace Display thumbnails / Display details—two mutually-canceling buttons to select the right-hand pane display mode. Return to main window—instead of closing / minimizing the ‘Add images’ window using the usual controls, you can use this button to toggle between the main workspace and ‘Add images’ window; handy if you want to come back and add further images later on, as it saves time by avoiding having to regenerate the thumbnails each time… It is also worth noting that you can drag-&-drop images, or whole directories, from the ‘Add images’ window to the main window A status bar at the bottom right of the window confirms the filter criteria in use.
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Note that, to economize on processing, thumbnail images are only produced if thumbnail display is actually selected; hence the first time you switch over from details listing to thumbnails, there will be a short delay as the images are computed. If a folder contains very many image files, DxO will display a message while it checks which ones are usable image files. Also, if you have selected to filter out ‘already processed’ images, DxO detects them in a separate pass, so there thumbnails will appear briefly, only to disappear again if the filter is in use. Add images (Mac OS) The screenshot below illustrates the ‘Add images’ window under Mac; you will note that it is quite different, though the functions remain largely the same. It is basically a standard Mac ‘Open files’ dialogue box. Broad file pre-selection can be done by file type using the ‘Enable’ box, and the usual Mac sort options can be used to sort on various criteria. Note that there are no dedicated tool buttons for the various DxO selection operations; you can select the file(s) to be used using the mouse or arrow keys (multi-selection is possible in the usual way), then click ‘Open’ to add them to the main DxO window. As soon as you click on the Open button, the ‘Add images’ window closes and you are returned to the main DxO workspace. Also note that the thumbnail image is only calculated and displayed for one selected image at a time. Unlike under Windows, it is not possible to drag-&-drop files from this window into the main window.
(multi-selection is possible in the usual way: hold down Shift and drag/click to select a range, and hold down
and click to make multiple individual selections)
In ‘Expert Controls’ mode, images you add will be displayed initially as a series of thumbnails on your ‘workspace’, and once you have added one or more images, you can select / deselect
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them with a single left-click [toggles]—selected images are shown with a heavier frame round them (as we’ll be seeing later, the color of this frame can be set under the Misc. tab of the ‘Preferences’ menu). As usual, Ctrl + left click lets you select multiple images at the same time, while Shift + left click lets you select a range of adjacent images. You can drag-&-drop them to change the order around. For technical reasons, no corrections are applied to the thumbnail images. The image thumbnails will be displayed with various icons to indicate their status: Ready to be processed - Already-processed image, but with at least one different setting - Previously unprocessed image with no ambiguities - Already-processed image where corrected file is missing The image cannot be processed because it has already been processed using DxO Optics Pro—or because the image is a Raw file format that is not supported Either the image file is corrupted, or the format is unreadable; the image will not be processed In these last two cases, you will probably want to either remove these images from your workspace, or select them and choose “Don’t process” from the Workflow menu (see below), in which case the image will display the “Don’t process” icon in its top left-hand corner. “Don’t process” selected for this image Raw image, camera profile information is available, but not the lens correction module required: only raw conversion, noise reduction, DxO Lighting, USM sharpness and ICC color space are available, no optical corrections will be applied JPEG image, lens correction module is missing, but noise profile is available: only noise reduction, WB, Tone Curve, HSL, USM sharpness and DxO Lighting corrections are available JPEG image, lens correction module is missing, and noise profile is not available: WB, Tone Curve, USM sharpness and DxO Lighting are the only corrections available. Missing focus: you need to enter focusing distance in order to perform optical corrections; otherwise, one or more of the lens/camera-dependent optical corrections will not be performed ‘Are you Sure’ — image has been modified using third-party software, but it can be processed by DxO, with no performance guarantee. (Please refer to the ‘Tip’ at the end of this section) Below each thumbnail image is displayed its filename, together with the type of image (JPEG or Raw). Except in the case of corrupted, unreadable or “cannot be processed” files, the image will also be marked with a checkmark, indicating that the image is ready to be processed, or is an already processed image where at least one setting has been altered.
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At the end of processing, after viewing processed images in the DxO Viewer (described later), next time you return to your workspace, the thumbnail icons will be updated to reflect the images’ new status. The status bar at the bottom of the screen gives information about a selected image, or about any image if you hover the mouse over it. On the left is displayed the full path name for the image file, in the center are details of the camera and lens used to shoot the picture (where this information is available), or a note to the effect that it is an already-processed image. The Workflow menu too is basically the same as for the other two workspaces:
* Start batch [Ctrl + S] processing * Mark image as “process” [F12] / “don’t process” [F11] — enable you to skip processing of selected images. Clearly, if only one image has been placed on the workspace, these two commands will be mutually exclusive. In common with the other two workspaces, the Workspace menu offers Mode select: the 3 workspace layout options:
Fully Automatic / Key Controls / Expert Controls You can select these at any time, and the layout of your workspace changes to suit.
The Wizard offers an introductory text that helps you pick the right mode for your need by recapping on the uses of the three workspace modes, with a radio button for each. This wizard is displayed automatically once only, the very first time you run the program. The ‘Preferences’ command and shortcut [Ctrl + P] access adjustments to certain overall working parameters; version 3.5 has some additions here, please see dedicated paragraph later.
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The Image menu offers the possibility to rotate your image * left (counter-clockwise) [Ctrl + L] or * right (clockwise) [Ctrl + R] in order to be able to view portrait images with the correct orientation.
In the ‘Key Controls’ workspace, version 3.5’s new View menu now offers direct access to the DxO Viewer (see later dedicated chapter for details)—also available via the toolbar button and the Ctrl + W shortcut, for before/after viewing of corrected images. Note that until processing has been completed, DxO Viewer will only be able to display already-processed images whose files still exist in the chosen output file location. An error message will be displayed if you attempt to open the Viewer before you have any corrected images for viewing!
Layout — opens a sub-menu where you can choose to view thumbnails or preview images alone on your workspace, or as 2 panes allowing you to view both at the same time—the last 4 menu options enable you to choose where the thumbnail pane is positioned with respect to the preview pane. Do note that if multiple images are selected in the thumbnail pane, no preview image will be displayed. Filters — opens a sub-menu with check boxes allowing you to enable display of “Don’t process”, “Ready to process” and “Already processed” images. Very useful to avoid a cluttered workspace after initial viewing! Sort — opens a sub-menu offering options to either leave thumbnail images unsorted (i.e. in the order as loaded), or to sort them by file date or name, or group them by camera body or lens type.
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The View menu also includes * Previous / * Next image commands, once again available as keyboard shortcuts: Ctrl + Æ for next and Ctrl + Å for previous. The Help menu offers access to the complete help file (i.e. this User Manual) [F1], plus details of the various module options installed [Ctrl + M], and an About… information screen containing information about the exact software version, important if you need to contact DxO Technical Support. There’s also a command you can click, and the software will check automatically for updates.
TIP DxO Optics Pro is designed to correct images straight out of your camera. This means that images that have been previously corrected with other software will not be accepted by Optics Pro for correction. Please check the on-line FAQ at http://support.dxo.com/ for the most recent updates related to this requirement. DxO Optics Pro has been designed to be at the very beginning of the workflow, at the point images are copied from the card reader or camera. Any of the following circumstances will prevent images being accepted for DxO Optics Pro processing: – The image has been treated in other software programs; – The image has been modified and the MakerNote (manufacturer-specific part of the EXIF metadata) is missing; – The image does not carry any EXIF data. A new feature in version 3.5 is the ability to process images that have been previously processed by certain authorized third-party applications (so far, the list includes Picture Project® and Nikon Capture®) that leave the EXIF MakerNote intact. Such images can be processed by DxO Optics Pro, but the results performance cannot be guaranteed. For this reason, these images are marked with an ‘Are you sure?’ icon. DxO Optics Pro itself strives to leave as much as possible of the metadata (EXIF, MakerNote, IPTC, XMP) untouched. This means that you should be able to use your other image processing/editing software even after the images have been processed by DxO Optics Pro. DxO Optics Pro automatically rotates the images if you use the autorotate facility of your camera. There is no need for additional software for this particular step.
Preferences The ‘Workspace’ menu ‘Preferences’ command and shortcut [Ctrl + P] access adjustments to certain overall working parameters, by means of four tabs: Misc. tab
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Under this miscellaneous tab, combo-boxes let you select the sizes of both thumbnail and preview images, select the working language, go on line to check for availability of new DxO Correction Modules or software updates (with a check-box offering the option to do this automatically at each start-up), choose whether you prefer to use metric or imperial units for measurements, and disable the jingle that plays over the splash screen when the program starts. Changes made to language or preview size only come into effect the next time you start the program, so if you want them to take effect immediately, you will need to exit and re-start the program. WORKSPACE TIP Depending on how many images you want to view in a given batch, you can adjust the size of the displayed thumbnails to fit as many as possible on the workspace, while keeping them as large as possible. Note that in twin-pane mode (i.e. split screen displaying both thumbnails and preview), the preview size will shrink automatically to fit, so the preview size selected here will only represent the maximum size possible.
Appearance tab This tab allows you to choose your own colors for the workspace backgrounds, image outlines and various other display elements. Click on any item to display its current color, and then if you want to change it, click on the current color button; you will be presented with a typical Windows color palette to choose from, or the option to create a set of customized colors of your own.
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Viewer tab
Under the ‘Viewer’ tab, radio buttons let you choose to use the DxO Viewer (the default setting), or an external viewing utility. A combo box allows you to select the order in which you want DxO Viewer to present your images when it first opens, with the options of Input/Output (before/after) and Output/Input (after/before), as well as Output (after) alone. This only sets the initial presentation—once in Viewer, local commands enable you to toggle at will between the two versions of your images, unless of course you have selected ‘Output’ alone. Note that if a viewer other than the DxO Viewer is used, images will be previewed immediately after they are computed, whereas if DxO Viewer is used, preview of all images will be available only at the end of processing the whole batch. In practice, this is likely to save time when processing large batches of images. Multiprocessing tab
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The multiprocessing tab offers some speed-up options for those with suitably-equipped computers. The multiprocessing combo box lets you select how many processing tasks you want to run simultaneously during batch processing and cache generation. The first figure shows how many processes to enable, while the second figure indicates how many (logical) processors your system has available. If your system has more than one logical processor, it makes sense to enable as many processes as there are processors available. But it is important to note that image processing uses up a lot of memory, especially with larger images (over 8 M pixels). The amount of RAM used will be around 10× the image size for JPEGs, and as much as 20× for raw images. Another speed-up feature is the disk cache, which allows DxO Viewer to pre-compute “before” raw images; this speeds up refresh time when using the Viewer to display before / after images. You can set here how much disk space to allocate to the cache, and the directory you’d like the system to use for it. The Browse button opens a browser window where you can choose an existing directory or create a new one.
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Settings Once you have added all the batch of images for processing onto the workspace, just as for the Fully Automatic mode, the first step is obviously to select one or more images you wish to process. In Expert Controls mode, you can then use the full range of controls available to adjust your image(s), and if you wish, you can then copy and paste settings (from the Workflow menu, or by right-clicking on a selected image to bring up a contextual menu), so as to apply the same settings to one or more group(s) of images, call up already-created preset(s), or save a comprehensive group of settings as a custom preset. In all these cases, you can choose to paste all of the settings onto one or more selected images, or to paste only a selection from the settings. So, for example, you might choose a group of, say, six related images, create a pattern of settings to apply to all of them, and then copy and paste these settings, perhaps leaving out certain ones, onto a further group or groups of images. You can begin to see just what a powerful, flexible feature this is! In addition to all the facilities of the ‘Key Controls’ layout, the ‘Expert Controls’ workspace permits comprehensive adjustments to virtually all the corrections DxO applies, via an expanded palette that opens as soon as you go into ‘Expert Controls’ mode (as long as you already have at least one image selected). This palette comprises nine tabs that are also accessible from the ‘Workspace’ menu, and via the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + F1 – F9. Clicking it in the menu, or pressing the appropriate shortcut, brings a tab in front of the others to make it active. We’ll be going through all of these in detail shortly, but first, here’s a quick rundown of the overall ‘Expert Controls’ workspace anatomy, and the various commands in the pull-down menus and toolbar.
Expert Controls palette However, if you’re using ‘Expert Controls’ mode, it’s probably because you want to be able to take over manual control of some or all of the processing features, and for this you will need to use the palette of nine tool tabs, so let’s now take a closer look at these all-important correction controls, to be found under the Workspace menu. As long as you have at least one image already selected, the palette is displayed as soon as you select ‘Expert Controls’ mode. It can be hidden at any time by closing the window using the × at the top right corner, or selecting ‘Hide controls’ from the Workspace menu, and revealed again by selecting ‘Show controls’. The palette consists of nine separate tabs, respectively for Color and Exposure, DxO Optics, DxO Lighting, DxO Noise, Sharpening, Histogram, Zoom, Image information, and Output settings. In the Workspace menu, these are checked in turn when they are the active feature, and unchecked when in the background. You can move swiftly from one to the other using the keyboard shortcuts, Ctrl + F1 – F9 respectively. You can also hide or show the whole control palette from this menu. Once the control palette is displayed on your workspace, you can move it around as a whole, or use your mouse to drag-&-drop any one or more tabs to different parts of the window (to pick them up, you’ll need to click quite accurately on the actual tab itself, and not the title bar!). As we’ll be seeing a bit later, it is often helpful to keep certain tabs open whilst working with others. As you click on each tab, it comes to the front and becomes active, and the others move behind. The layout of your palettes is remembered from one session to the next, so that next time you open the program they will be displayed in the same format as you left them, provided of course that you have not changed display mode (from twin to single-screen, for example); if the stored display layout cannot be used, then a default layout is provided.
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WORKSPACE TIP At first start-up, the DxO workspace is organized with the palettes stacked, with tabs, and the histogram palette to the fore. This way, you can see everything on a single screen, merely opening palettes as and when needed. But if you are working on two separate screens, you can keep all the palettes open at once, arranging them to suit your preference. By clicking on any of the tabs, you can drag-&-drop it anywhere on your screen; once it is separated from the other tabs, you can open and close it at will, thus enabling you to keep open several at once if you so wish, but also letting you organize your workspace to be as uncluttered as possible. To re-stack the tabs, pick each tab up by its tab (not by the title bar!) and drag-&-drop it onto the stack.
You can shrink any tab by clicking on its title bar; once shrunk, you can maximize it by clicking again on the title bar. You can also use Ctrl + function keys F1 – F9 to bring any tab to the fore. Certain tabs have panels within them, and some of these panels have a box that enables them; if you uncheck this box, this particular correction algorithm will not be applied, and so logically enough, the panel will not open and its controls will not be accessible. Under any given tab, F4 and F5 respectively open and close the panel. Let’s now go through the nine tabs of this palette window one by one and see how they work with examples. Before we move on to the actual corrections, let’s first look at three tabs offering tools that are likely to prove very helpful when making your adjustments: The remaining two tool tabs are likely to be so useful, you’ll probably want to keep them open on your workspace while using the other tools.
Histogram tab [Ctrl+F6]
You’ll no doubt already be familiar with the histogram display that shows the distribution of tonal values in the three color channels, with black on the left and white on the right. A handy new feature in version 3.5 is that the histogram is calculated on the cropped area of the image (if the crop facility is enabled). Although this of course means you must be careful when interpreting the histogram if you have selected ‘crop’, it has the immense advantage that you can perform a more detailed histogram analysis of even quite a small part of the image, simply
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by selecting a small crop ‘sampling’ area, which you can then move around as required in the image. It’s also worth noting that the histogram is calculated in the output color space; so if you have changed this, the results will be reflected in your histogram display, even if they are not necessarily visible in the Preview image (remember, preview images are always displayed with the sRGB color space, whatever setting you may have selected). Note for v3 users: The ‘display clipping’ buttons have been updated and are now located on the ‘Preview’ toolbar. You’ll almost certainly find it very helpful to keep the Histogram tab open while you’re working with the other tools, since it very often gives you a good idea of exactly what’s going on. To do this, you’ll need to drag-&-drop it with your mouse onto another part of the screen, and once it is away from its home palette, it will then stay open even when you access another tab. And the same goes for the next tab we’re going to look at too.
Zoom tab [Ctrl+F7] This important feature is rather complicated to explain, so an explanation with pictures is in order. We mustn’t forget that the normal preview image only shows an approximation of some of the corrections to be applied (White Balance, Exposure, rough demosaicing, Distortion, Vignetting, Tone Curve, Lighting, Lateral chromatic aberration, Hue/Saturation/ Luminance), whilst other key corrections like noise reduction, lateral chromatic aberration, true demosaicing, and sharpness processing are not previewed. Hence why this ‘zoom’ function is important, as it displays a cropped section of the image with all the final processing applied. The zoom tab opens a small zoom window, the function and operation of which depends on the selection of the three buttons on the preview toolbar: ‘Eye-dropper’ tool — click white / gray point Zoom Crop
First, let’s look at this function as it is used for white balance. White balance
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With the white balance tool activated, as you move the mouse pointer (eye-dropper tool) around in the main image, the image in the magnified sections moves in such a way that the center cross indicates the exact pointer position; and the RGB values of the selected point are shown in the bottom right-hand corner of the status bar. For greater precision, you can use the slider at the bottom to increase the magnification in four steps up to 400%—note that the white balance reference sample is an average of several screen pixels at the pointer position, so the more you zoom in, the more tightly your define the white balance reference pixels. As you move the pointer around in the main image, the white balance of the ‘If clicked’ righthand preview image changes to reflect the white balance that would be produced by the selected ‘neutral’ pixels, giving a ‘before’ and ‘after’ view of the white balance. Clicking at any point will update the white balance of the main image to match that of the ‘If clicked’ display. You can press the Alt key to temporarily disable the eye-dropper tool and ‘stick down’ the zoomed area. Here’s a real image that illustrates how this works; you may find it easier if you try this out for yourself. Zoom
Activating the zoom tool changes the display to a single rectangle showing a zoomed-in section of the main image, where it is indicated by a green frame that you can move around by clicking on it using the hand tool that appears when you hover the mouse over the framed area. The size
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of this zoomed crop from the main image can be adjusted (in steps of 100 %) by dragging and dropping the slider from 100% (i.e. actual size) to 400%. The importance of this ‘actual-size’ sample facility cannot be over-emphasized; although the preview image does give a very good idea of the final result you will get, the image size is limited, is sub-sampled to speed up preview processing, and not all corrections are applied. But this actual-size zoomed image is processed exactly as your final image, and so shows you precisely the effect you’ll get. This is vital in order to be able to adjust some of the corrections that we’re about to look at more closely below (DxO Noise), and later in the ‘Expert Controls’ workspace description (DxO Lens Softness and USM). In this mode, you can access the white balance eyedropper tool by holding down the Ctrl key as you move the pointer around, and as usual, leftclicking will adopt the current pointer position as a new neutral white balance reference. Crop And finally, the ‘Crop’ button (a new feature in version 3.5) makes it possible to crop images— checking the ‘enable’ box activates the ‘ratio’ box, where you can select ‘No Ratio’ (i.e. freelyadjustable proportions), constrain the image proportions to ‘Original’ (i.e. the same as shot), a selection of numeric values, or ‘Custom’, which brings up an edit box for you to enter integer values for aspect ratio. Enabling ‘Crop’ displays a scalable, movable rectangular box on the image to indicate the crop outline. You can adjust the edges of this box by using the mouse (anywhere along the edge, not just on the handles). The magnified zoom image shows the exact position of the mouse pointer, allowing you to perform extremely accurate cropping. If you place the mouse within the crop area, but not near one of the edges, the mouse pointer turns into a ‘hand’ tool that allows you to move the re-sized rectangle around as a whole. As noted in the relevant section, the ‘Histogram’ tool works from the contents of the ‘crop’ box (if enabled), which makes it a useful additional analytical tool.
Now let’s move on to take a look at the various correction tabs. Just before we do, though, one general point—on all panels where a slider is accompanied by an entry box, after you type in a correction value directly, you must press ‘Enter’ so that this value will be taken into account. Correction settings can be performed in any order, but we have listed them here in a sequence that offers a logical workflow; once you know how to handle each type of correction, of course you’re free to adjust the settings in any order you like.
Color and Exposure tab [Ctrl + F1]
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This is one of the areas where new refinements and extra controls have been added in version v3.5, to bring greater color fidelity and still more flexibility of adjustment. Under this tab you’ll find four panels for this group of related correction controls: White Balance Note that when an image is selected, the White Balance panel (and its header) will change according to whether it is a raw or other file; in the case of raw conversion, true white balance adjustment is possible, whereas in processing other images, the white balance adjustment is achieved slightly differently. Raw version
At the top of the White Balance (RAW) panel is a combo box, offering ‘Original’ (i.e. uses the values read from the image file’s EXIF header), a series of presets for ‘standard’ lighting conditions (Daylight / Cloudy / Tungsten / Fluorescent / Flash / Shade), and a ‘Custom’ position for manual adjustment. Starting out from any one of these presets, you can make adjustments with the color Temperature and Tint sliders—as soon as a slider is moved, the label (Custom) appears alongside its title, to show that the setting has been adjusted. The ‘Custom’ position corresponds to a DxO average calibration, but it may also represent camera settings of AWB [auto white balance] or Manual Temp [color temperature set manually in the camera by the user] The top slider adjusts the color ‘Temperature’—basically, it swings the balance of the red and blue channels, whilst leaving the green untouched. Moving the slider to the right increases the color temperature, moving it to the left decreases it. The same result can be achieved by typing in a figure for the color temperature and pressing ‘Enter’. The range is from 2,000 K to 20,000 K. Note that the effect on the image is to make it warmer with increasing color temperature, and cooler with decreasing; although this might at first appear counter-intuitive, we need to remember that this is correcting the color balance as if the picture had been shot with this color temperature lighting in the first place. Imagine, for example, that a picture has been taken by tungsten artificial light, but with the camera accidentally set to ‘daylight’; the resulting image will appear too orange. Moving the slider to the left, towards a lower K value more appropriate for the artificial light actually used, will cool the image, correcting the orange cast.
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The lower slider adjusts the ‘Tint’—in this case, swinging the color balance between blue and green, leaving the red untouched. Moving the slider to the left (or entering a negative number) makes the image greener, moving it to the right or entering a positive number makes it bluer. The range runs from +100 to –100. As with all the sliders in Optics Pro, clicking anywhere on the slider bar to one side or the other of the slider itself will move the slider in that direction by a fixed increment; in the case of the color temperature, this is in steps of 500 K, while the tint slider moves in steps of 25. Let’s take a look at the operation of these two controls using some actual pictures (in this case, raw images). Here in the middle is the picture as shot, and to the left and right, the effects of shifting the color temperature slider left and right respectively:
And here is the same picture, this time with the tint control adjusted:
Notice how the mouse pointer turns into an eye-dropper tool when you move it over the preview image; this powerful tool lets you pick a neutral area of the image to be taken as a white reference. This should be a fairly light grey tone, but avoid clipped highlights, as the results can be very unpredictable! Note that the eye-dropper ‘looks’ at the average of a number of screen pixels, so you should also avoid transition areas that might yield unwanted errors. Simply position the pointer over the required area, and left-click to white balance for this point; at any time, you can re-select ‘Original’ from the pull-down menu in order to cancel the changes and revert to the original white balance. Immediately you click on a gray point to adjust the white balance, the legend (Custom) is automatically added to the slider titles. The eye-dropper tool can be temporarily disabled using the Alt key (toggles); as soon as you right-click anywhere in the image, it comes back (but without changing the white balance, or if you left click, it comes back and changes the white balance at the same time). It’s perhaps important here to explain a little about this idea of applying ‘custom’ settings to defined presets. In their quest for ever-more-faithful colorimetry, certain camera manufacturers generate the color using different calculation matrices for each of the defined lighting conditions represented in DxO by these presets, and as a result, DxO itself uses different color matrices. In order to avoid any possibility of color anomalies, it is important that images are processed using
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the settings appropriate for the original taking selection. However, it is clear that users may still want to ‘tweak’ adjustments around these preset positions, and so it is for this reason that it has been made possible to ‘customize’ the settings under any given preset. TIP The way the software performs White Balance adjustment differs slightly between processing raw and RGB images (JPEG and TIFF ). Using raw images allows greatest freedom of white balance adjustment, but you need to exercise care when correcting RGB files, as large amounts of correction can lead to undesirable artifacts (banding in high-key areas / posterization in shadows).
RGB Version
If the image selected is an already-converted RGB file, a slightly different White Balance panel is displayed. In this case, the full range of adjustments as for raw images is not available, and there is just a single slider to adjust the overall balance of the image—cooler to the left, warmer to the right. Extreme settings in this RGB mode need to be used with care, in order to avoid artifacts that are the result of limitations in the RGB formats themselves. As before, clicking on a gray point in the image with the eye-dropper tool will adjust the overall white balance so as to make this point neutral, and the selection in the combo box will change automatically, this time to ‘Click white/gray point’. TIP DxO’s powerful tone curve, lighting correction and noise reduction features mean you’ll be able to recover an astonishing amount of shadow detail that in conventional photography would likely have been lost (this concerns both raw and RGB images).
Exposure compensation
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If Highlight recovery is set to ‘None’, this slider works just as you might expect—moving it to the right (or entering a positive Ev number into the edit box) increases the exposure, to the left (or a negative Ev number) reduces it. The range is from +4.00 Ev to –4.00 Ev, and clicking moves the slider in steps of 0.50 Ev. During exposure adjustments, you may well find it helpful to use the highlight / shadow clipping display, accessible using the usual Shift + Ctrl / Alt keyboard shortcuts. It’s important to note that shadow and highlight clipping displays are computed in the final output color space, and hence these displays, and any adjustments performed based on them, will be affected if the output color space is subsequently changed (see the later description of ‘Output color space’ under the ‘Output settings' tab). Note that when processing an RGB image, highlight recovery is not available, and so the combo box is grayed out.
However, if Highlight recovery is set to anything other than ‘None’, the manual slider is disabled. In this case, you can select one of three strengths of automatic highlight recovery adjustment (Slight, Medium, Strong) in the combo box, depending on your image requirements. A very dark image containing a bright area (for example, a backlit shot) requires considerable under-exposure in order to preserve highlight detail, which will make the overall image too dark. Automatic contrast control is not optimized for this type of image—the output image may not necessarily have been lightened enough to bring out the detail in the darker areas. For this reason, it is advisable to change to manual mode in DxO Lighting in order to find a better settings compromise.
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WHAT IS HIGHLIGHT RECOVERY? Typical Digital SLR sensors have a 12-bit dynamic range—this means they use 4096 gray levels to describe an image, while JPEG images only use 8 bits—256 gray levels. Traditionally, 12-bit raw images are converted to 8 bits using a “tone curve” that typically reduces dynamics in the highlights. Certain color elements may also lose highlight information. The aim of Highlight Recovery is to overcome this problem. DxO Optics Pro 3.5 Highlight Recovery automatically sets the Ev Bias slider to a negative value, to bring the out-of-range highlight information within the available 8-bit dynamic range, and then adjusts the lighting gamma to restore overall image brightness as far as is possible, always seeking for the best balance between recovery of the highlights and preservation of the general exposure of the scene. Note that if Gamma [on Brightness panel, DxO Lighting / Expert tab] has been set to ‘Manual’ (i.e. ‘Auto’ box unchecked), it will have to be set manually to compensate for the negative Ev bias when Highlight recovery is used. When it is in auto mode, the gamma is computed taking the highlight recovery effect into account. For some images, better results may be obtained by manually tuning Ev Bias and lighting parameters. The simplest way is to set lighting to ‘auto’ and then tune the Ev Bias. Expert users will first tune the Ev Bias to recover highlights and then play with lighting parameters, and if necessary HSL lightness to find the best compromise. DxO Lighting’s local adaptation avoids the need for tiresome masking techniques. In some images, Highlight Recovery might induce changes in the overall brightness, contrast and color saturation; such situations can usually be rectified using the HSL controls. For JPEG images, a similar effect can be obtained manually, using a combination of the DxO Lighting and Exposure compensation controls.
Original Image
With Highlight Recovery
Note how the use of ‘Highlight recovery’ produces a slight reduction in exposure and retrieves highlight detail that had appeared to be ‘lost’; this is one of the great advantages of working with raw images, since with an RGB image, once highlights are ‘blown’, there is no possibility of rescuing the lost detail. TAKING TIP Compared to traditional film, digital capture is much less tolerant of highlight over-exposure; once a highlight has reached digital clipping point, no further detail is available. Hence it is important to familiarize yourself with the actual ‘raw’ clipping point of your particular camera, and then adapt your taking habits to suit, holding back the exposure if necessary to preserve highlight detail.
Tone curve
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Once again, the panel has a check box to enable this correction, and if the check box is unchecked (correction disabled), the panel will not open. The tone curve is a very powerful tool, but is not at first all that easy to comprehend. The graphic indicates the relationship between tonal values into the tool (across the x axis) and out of it (up the y axis). The tone curve represents the transfer characteristic—the way in which input tones are mapped onto output tones. The initial straight line indicates that output tonal values are exactly the same as input values over the whole tonal range. In order to adjust tone mapping for correction or creative purposes, the straight line is manipulated so as to alter that input/output relationship. In traditional photographic terms, this means altering the gamma of the image, and this graphical approach allows a great deal of flexibility. Note first that the combo box at the top lets you choose to adjust either the Master channel—i.e. all three colors together—or any of the three Red, Green, Blue channels individually. The two buttons to the right enable you to reset respectively either the single curve you are working on, or all three of them together, back to the default straight line. Probably the first step in your manipulation will be to add points to the line, which you do simply by left-clicking on it. As soon as a point is created, you can drag it around, and the line will follow, the curve ‘splining’ as you do so—and you can watch the result live on the preview image. You can create as many points as you need to in order to generate the curve you want. To move a point, simply click on it; the active point is shown filled in black, and inactive ones as hollow white. Likewise, you can delete the active point using the Delete key. An alternative to drawing a made-to-measure line is to make a numerical entry of the gamma value; the box at bottom center is set by default to a gamma of 1.00, and you can enter any
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figure between 0.05 and 6.00. As you would expect, a gamma value higher than 1 tends to bring up detail out of the shadows, whilst a value lower than 1 crushes it down into the blacks. The input and output black and white points can likewise be set, either by dragging-&-dropping the relevant points with your mouse, or entering numerical values in the 4 entry boxes—from 0 (black) to 255 (white). The Tone curve adjustment is probably the hardest to explain in words, but certainly one of the most useful features in terms of tonal control of your images, so once again let’s give an example using a real picture, with its associated tone curve:
Hue / Saturation / Lightness WHAT IS HSL? Within equipment, digital images are described using 3 color channels Red, Green and Blue, but this system is not very user-friendly for making meaningful adjustments. HSL is an alternative color model, internally based on the same RGB values, but much easier to work with. It describes colors in terms of three fundamental parameters: Hue — what basic color (orange, turquoise, purple, etc.) Saturation — how strong the color is, from pastel to vibrant Lightness — how light or dark the color is, from black to white By making these parameters adjustable, colors can be manipulated for correction or artistic effect.
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Another of the panels that has a check box to enable this correction, and if the check box is unchecked (correction disabled), the panel will not open. In ‘Expert Controls’ mode, hue, saturation and lightness can all be adjusted for the master channel, and also separately for each of the three primary (Red, Green, Blue) and three secondary (Yellow, Cyan, Magenta) color axes, as selected in the combo box. As usual, the Hue slider can be moved to the right or left to change the hue, or a positive or negative figure can be entered in the edit box; the exact operation of this slider is naturally affected by which color channel(s) you have selected to adjust. The slider and box values range from +180 to –180, and clicking moves the slider in steps of 10. Likewise for Saturation, the slider can be moved to the right increase, or to the left to decrease, the color saturation (overall, or any of the six color axes), or a positive or negative figure can be entered. The slider and box values range from +100 to –100, and clicking moves the slider in steps of 10. The same goes for the Lightness slider: to the right (or enter a positive figure) to lighten, to the left (or enter a negative figure) to darken. These slider and box values can be from +100 to –100, and clicking moves the slider in steps of 10. The action of this slider is slightly interesting, and you’ll probably find it easiest to understand if you look at the result on the Histogram display. Effectively, moving the slider to the right or entering a positive figure lifts the black level towards white, compressing the tonal range into the upper half of the scale. Conversely, moving the slider to the left or entering a negative number brings down the white level towards black, compressing the tonal range into the lower half of the scale. And also as usual, the ‘As shot’ button cancels any HSL correction.
DxO Optics tab [Ctrl + F2]
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There can be up to six panels under this tab, though not all of these will necessarily be enabled (i.e. displayed) for every image.
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DXO OPTICS INTRODUCTION Lens design is always a matter of compromise. Even the most expensive lenses show a certain amount of image degradation, referred to as aberration, such as geometric distortion, vignetting, chromatic aberration or field-dependent blur. In an attempt to compensate for these defects, a lens is typically made of several pieces of glass assembled together in such a way as to partially cancel out each other’s defects. But this compensation is never perfect. Zoom lenses are even more complex, as the compensation needs to work at all focal lengths. The DxO Optics Engine is designed to improve the performance of a lens by compensating through software the residual defects of the lens itself. For example, pin-cushion or barrel distortion (as well as more complex distortions) can be corrected by applying an inverse geometric transform to the digital image. The DxO Optics Engine works on the principle of creating a detailed model of lens performance by taking thousands of images with each lens for which a DxO Lens Module is created. This model – the DxO Lens Module – is then used by the DxO Optics Engine algorithms to “reverse out” all the defects. This way of working means the optical corrections are based on the “real-world” defects of the lens, rather than on estimates, and can be fully automated. The current DxO Optics Engine correction is fairly exhaustive: chromatic, geometric, axial and field-dependent aberrations can all be corrected simultaneously, and if desired, automatically. Correction is automatically adapted within the field and from one picture to another in accordance with taking conditions (focal length, aperture, etc.)
Focusing distance
Certain lens correction modules (distortion, lateral chromatic aberration) need focusing distance information in order to perform optical corrections. Some cameras do not store the focusing distance in the EXIF data; if this is the case, the focusing distance panel will be displayed, and you should manually enter the focusing distance used for the shot, as accurately as you are able to. A combo box allows you to select either the default ‘not set’ (in this case, distortion and lateral chromatic aberration will not be corrected), or various distance ranges, whilst the slider lets you set the distance precisely, or alternatively, enter the figures in the edit box to the right. Do note that the slider may allow you to enter a focusing distance that is not actually covered by your lens; in this case, DxO will use the minimum focusing distance applicable for your lens.
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Note that the units for focusing distance (feet & inches or meters) can be changed in the ‘Miscellaneous’ tab under the ‘Preferences’ menu, accessible via the Workspace pull-down or using the Ctrl+P shortcut. Since focusing distance has the most visible effect on distortion correction, you will probably find it helpful to enable distortion correction preview (see below) when adjusting focusing distance. Focal length
Likewise, in order to optimize optical corrections, a small number of zoom lens correction modules need more precise focal length information over certain specific parts of their range than is available from the camera’s EXIF file; if this is the case, the focal length panel will be displayed, and you should manually enter the focal length the lens was set at for the shot, as accurately as you are able to. The slider lets you set the distance precisely, and will be calibrated for the range of focal lengths across which ambiguity exists for the particular lens in question; click steps in this instance are 50% of the scale (so too broad to be of much practical value). Alternatively, you can enter the figures in the edit box to the right. Camera orientation
Although we recommend you always use DxO Optics Pro to rotate your image automatically using the information from the EXIF orientation tag, you may have images that have been already rotated. In this case, and in this case only, the Camera orientation panel appears; it will never appear if DxO Optics Pro rotates your images automatically.
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It allows you to specify in which orientation the shot was taken. You have three options. The first is to indicate which way the camera was turned when the image was taken (to the left or to the right). The second option is to select “I don't know. Do your best.”, in which case DxO Optics Pro will apply a default. In the extremely unlikely event of the results proving unacceptable, as a last resort you can click the third “Don’t correct distortion and lateral chromatic aberration” button. WHY DOES CAMERA ORIENTATION MATTER? To correct images properly, DxO Optics Pro needs to know the orientation of the camera with respect to the image taken, because a large number of lenses are not symmetrical—the optical elements themselves are usually symmetrical, but the lens mount itself is not. Depending on the camera, the optical center may not always correspond to the image center. This has little impact on the correction of softness and vignetting, but may have a significant impact on the correction of distortion and lateral chromatic aberration—the variation in measured distortion between two symmetrically-positioned points in the image can be as much as 0.25%. We strive to achieve a residual distortion of just 0.15%. If images have been rotated using an external program, the indication of the original orientation is not always preserved. When a photo is shot, the EXIF Orientation tag is set by the camera, but the image is saved horizontally. Most image downloaders will read this tag, rotate the image accordingly and erase the tag to prevent other software from rotating the image again. This is all very well, but the end result is an image for which the original orientation is not known.
Because the effects of orientation are most visible on the correction of distortion, previewing distortion correction may help you decide in which orientation you shot the pictures. Distortion
Again here, there is a check box to enable this correction, and if the check box is unchecked (correction disabled), the panel will not open. The Distortion panel has just one slider for the degree of distortion correction; the range is 0 to 100 %, with a step size of 10 % when clicked. The default setting is 100 %, and you should only depart from this in special circumstances— either to avoid cropping of important detail near edges, or for creative reasons.
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TIP Distortion correction involves a non-linear change in the magnification, which produces curved edges to the image and empty black spaces. To restore clean, straight edges and maintain the image’s original aspect ratio, some cropping of the image is inevitable; at very wide-angle (and especially with fish-eyes) this may be quite significant, so remember to make allowance for this when framing such shots. In order to maximize the amount of image usable, version 3.5 includes the new ‘Max Image’ feature; if this box is checked, the image aspect ratio is no longer constrained to the original proportions as shot, but is allowed to expand outwards to the largest possible centered rectangle that will fit within the corrected image. In certain cases, this can result in as much as 40 % extra usable image area!
TAKING TIP This new feature is going to be of especial interest to users of super-wide / fisheye lenses, and opens new possibilities for taking panoramic shots—now you can use a very wide-angle lens, use DxO Optics Pro to correct the inevitable distortion it will produce, and then make the most of ‘Max frame’ to allow you to crop your image down to the final wanted proportions. Now you can take panoramic shots in situations where you couldn’t have before, or at least, not without a great deal more time and effort. Chromatic aberration
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Version 3.5 handles chromatic aberration correction in a completely different way from earlier versions, and as a result, there’s a whole new ‘Chromatic aberration’ panel under the DxO Optics tab. It carries check boxes for ‘Lateral chromatic aberration’ and ‘Purple fringing’, and you should normally check these in order for both corrections to be applied unless, exceptionally, you observe specific problems. There is a slider / edit box for correction strength (enabled only when the ‘Auto’ box is unchecked), with a range from 0 to 200 % and click steps of 20 %, and another for fringe size, running from 0 to 12 with click steps of 2. Normally, you should leave these set to ‘Auto’, unless you observe any artifacts as a result of the system’s being confused between (wanted) fine color detail and unwanted chromatic aberration; in this case, adjusting the fringe size and/or correction strength should cure the problem. It’s worth noting that lateral chromatic aberration correction is still based around the DxO Lens Module, and so is specific to a given lens/body combination, whereas overall chromatic aberration and ‘purple fringing’ correction is based on a completely different algorithm that is not hardware-specific. As a result, overall and purple fringing will always be possible, whereas lateral chromatic aberration correction will only be offered where the appropriate DxO Lens Module is available (if not, the check box won’t be displayed). ‘Purple fringing’ correction is an extension of overall chromatic aberration correction, tailored in such a way as to particularly address fringing in the red/blue channels with respect to the green channel. It’s also important to be aware that there is a certain interaction between distortion and lateral chromatic aberration corrections as far as the preview image is concerned; in effect, lateral chromatic aberration correction can produce a very small zoom effect, and corresponding mild cropping of the final image; this is normally completely swamped by the more significant cropping that may be produced by distortion correction. However, in the event that you have chosen to preview chromatic aberration but not distortion, this could have led to an error in the preview image. For this reason, even if distortion is not selected for preview, the correction is still applied, but at 0 % strength (thus processing time is minimized), to ensure that the preview image is always accurate. This is an entirely user-transparent process that you simply ought to be aware of. Vignetting
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Again here, there is a check box to enable this correction, and if the check box is unchecked (correction disabled), the panel will not open. Vignetting correction takes place in two steps, both of which can be fine-tuned. First, from the lens data, focal length and aperture setting, the DxO Correction Module computes the attenuation factor for every pixel in the image, and each pixel’s RGB value is multiplied by the inverse of this factor. The correction strength slider (range 0–100 %, click step size 10 %) allows you to decide how much of the vignetting should be removed from the whole image, independent of image content—in other words, all pixels will be multiplied by the scaled factor applicable to their position in the image field. Second, a filter is applied to avoid clipping in bright areas and noise increase in dark areas. This is done by limiting the value by which a pixel can be multiplied, depending on its luminance. The effect of this filter will be different, depending on image content. The Shadow/highlight preservation slider lets you fine-tune this second step; the range is Off – 100%, with a step size of 10 % when clicked. As usual, the normally-checked ‘Auto’ box must be unchecked in order to enable the manual control. If you want full correction of vignetting, you can set the value to 0 (Off). Shadow/highlight preservation restricts the amount of exposure correction applied by the vignetting corrector at both ends of the tonal range, so as to avoid either crushing in the shadows, or clipping in the highlights. So, for example, if you want to limit the luminance increase (which may reveal unwanted noise) in rather dark image corners because you shot at high ISO, shadow preservation limits the degree of correction being applied. Likewise, because of the vignetting, the camera may have incorrectly exposed a cloud in the sky; the highlight preservation filter allows you apply as much vignetting correction as possible, while still retaining wanted highlight detail. We recommend you do not depart from the default 100 %, as the shadow/highlight preservation slider is often more effective than the correction strength slider in preventing the undesirable effects of vignetting correction. Note that only vignetting caused by the lens or sensor are corrected. Mechanical vignetting, caused for example by too narrow a lens shade, cannot be corrected.
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DXO LIGHTING INTRODUCTION This key DxO Optics Pro feature merits a little explanation. Natural scenes rarely exhibit ideal lighting conditions; light sources are often directional and sometimes quite harsh. What’s more, when taking pictures we are often more concerned about capturing the right moment, and pay little attention to potential lighting problems. To compound the problem, the dynamic range of sensors can’t compete with that of our eyes. All this can result in some shots exhibiting under-exposed, dark or shadowed regions with missing details. To overcome these problems, DxO Labs introduced DxO Lighting, a unique local exposure and dynamic range optimizer. Automatically replicating analog film techniques known as “dodging and burning”, DxO Lighting Engine brings out shadow detail of digital image files while preserving highlights, textures, colors and a natural look. How does this work? To a certain degree—basically when the desired image signal is sufficiently above the noise level—lighting problems can be corrected afterwards, given appropriate image processing. Simply put, DxO Lighting first breaks the image down into a number of areas in which luminance values have a certain range; it then processes each of these areas in the most appropriate manner to reveal detail. In general terms, lightness and tone curve slope are slightly increased in dark areas to bring out detail, yet avoid the highlight clipping that could occur if the overall gamma were adjusted. Pixel-precise image segmentation technology lies at the heart of DxO Lighting, to deliver automatic local contrast adjustment and thereby reveal hidden detail in dark areas. The local nature of the adjustment is of course crucial to reveal shadow detail without burning out the highlights.
Once again here, there is a check box to enable this correction, and if the check box is unchecked (correction disabled), the panel will not open. In ‘Expert Controls’ mode, the lighting
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tab has two secondary tabs, ‘Auto’ and ‘Expert’. The ‘Auto’ tab has a check box for Auto with a combo box offering a choice of Slight, Medium or Strong correction. The manual ‘Correction strength’ slider is disabled until the Auto box is unchecked. Slider range is from 0 to 150 %, clicking moves it in 10 % steps. There is also an edit box for direct entry of the correction value. Look at the effect on the picture below, and compare the histograms: The ‘Expert’ tab keeps the same basic check box and combo boxes for Auto with its three options for the degree of correction (Slight / Medium / Strong); note that this applies to all of the settings set to ‘auto’ under this tab. As before, the manual ‘Correction strength’ slider is disabled until the Auto box is unchecked. Slider range is from 0 to 150 %, clicking moves it in 10 % steps. There is also an edit box for direct entry.
But in addition, a whole new group of controls is now available. First come the buttons for All auto / All manual that check / uncheck all of the ‘Auto’ boxes at the same time, and a central ‘As shot’ button that resets all sliders to their default positions—very useful!
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The White and Black point sliders operate in a complementary fashion; each has a range from 0 to 255, with click steps of 10, or you can enter a whole number in the edit boxes instead. These controls have the effect of stretching the image’s lower tonal range up towards white, or viceversa: stretching the upper range down towards black. This is similar in many ways to what might be achieved using a tone curve adjustment, and is probably easiest to visualize in conjunction with the Histogram display. Selecting or deselecting ‘Auto’ for either automatically selects / deselects it for the other too. The purpose of these controls is to enable you to adjust an image so as to occupy as much as possible of the dynamic range (= available tonal range). Normally, you should limit adjustment in such a way that no more than one of the three Red / Green / Blue channels reaches saturation (white and/or black). You’re sure to find the histogram display invaluable here! The Brightness panel has an overall gamma control, the slider and entry box having a default setting of 1.00, with a range from 0.50 to 5.00, and click steps of 0.10. The effect of increasing the gamma is to ‘stretch’ (increase the contrast of) the darker end of the tonal range and ‘squash’ (reduce the contrast of) the brighter end. The ‘Preserve shadows’ feature (checked by default) operates at higher positive gamma settings, where shadows tend to become washed-out, and determines to what extent the slope of the tone curve (= contrast increase) should be restricted towards the darker end of the scale, with the effect of ‘holding back’ shadows. The Radius slider / edit box modifies the way DxO Lighting decides what size areas represent shadow or not, and hence how the gamma setting is applied locally in the image; it has a range from 0 (entirely global) to 15 (fully localized). The precise use of these manual controls is highly dependent on the exact nature and content of each individual image—and of course, on the artistic effect you wish to achieve! And last but by no means least comes the pair of sliders / edit boxes for Local contrast (range from 0 to 100 %, and a click step of 10 %) and Global contrast (range from +50 to –50 %, and a click step of 10 %). As you might expect, the Global contrast control uses an S-curve to affect the overall contrast of the image, with a useful bi-directional range allowing both contrast enhancement for slightly flat images, and reduction for contrasty ones. At the ‘Less’ end of the scale (–ve setting values), the dynamic range is increased at both the darker and lighter ends of the tonal range, and midtones are flattened. Conversely, ‘More’ (+ve setting values) has the effect of stretching the dynamic range of midtones, while slightly flattening it at the darker and lighter ends. The Local contrast control, on the other hand, is more subtle in its effect, altering the contrast in a spatially-determined way, having something of the feel of dodging-and-burning. You might find it helpful to regard it as applying a varying tone curve across the image, according to its interpretation of whether a given area represents shadow or not, yet always taking care to avoid letting highlights burn out. Look at the examples below to help you get a feel for the way this very powerful tool can enhance your pictures.
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DxO Noise tab [Ctrl + F4] Remember that these corrections will not be visible in the main preview image, but only by using the Zoom function.
DXO NOISE INTRODUCTION This is a feature of DxO Optics Pro that merits a little explanation. DxO Noise is a hardware-model based correction—in other words, the correction algorithm is specifically tailored by DxO Labs for each camera, and so this correction will only be performed for images from cameras that have been calibrated by DxO. More and more cameras are being profiled as time goes by. Generally, DxO Noise achieves a 2-stop gain in image noise level. So for example, an image shot at 1600 ISO and processed by DxO Noise, will display the noise level of an image shot at 400 ISO. DxO Noise has been specifically designed to retain maximum detail in the image. Once again here, there is a check box to enable this correction, and if the check box is unchecked (correction disabled), the panel will not open. All four controls under this tab have ‘Auto’ boxes that have to be unchecked in order to access the manual controls; as before, there are All auto / All manual buttons at the bottom that can be used to check / uncheck all the controls at the same time. In order to judge the effect of your noise adjustments, it is essential to use the Zoom tool, which gives an accurate preview of final image quality. To make your adjustments, pick an area of your image where you can best assess the noise, and then if necessary move the zoom area around in order to examine other critical areas. The degree of Luminance noise correction can be set using the slider / edit box, with a range from 0 to 100 %, with 10 % click steps. DxO’s very intelligent noise reduction algorithm operates virtually undetectably on almost all picture content, but since some softening of certain image areas might sometimes be apparent,
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it obviously makes sense to use as low a level of noise reduction as can be tolerated, given the parameters of the image in question. Version 3.5 offers a real improvement in this respect, with refined algorithms to enable as much fine detail as possible to be preserved, while keeping noise at a very low level. ‘Expert Controls’ mode gives access to four further controls; the first is new in DxO Optics Pro version 3.5: a ‘Fine detail preservation’ slider / edit box with a range from 0 to 100 %, with 10 % click steps. Increasing this setting will leave a greater amount of specifically fine detail in the image (at the expense of leaving a small amount of residual noise, but of the high-frequency kind, which is the least objectionable); this is really useful in order to avoid the rather ‘plastic’ look than can occur at higher levels of noise reduction. The degree of Chrominance noise correction can be set using the slider / edit box, with a range from 0 to 100 %, with 10 % click steps. This is useful for reducing or eliminating colored noise—to which the eye is particularly sensitive—and you can usually safely use quite high settings with little risk of unwanted side-effects. Impulse noise is randomly-occurring noise with random amplitude that is not predictable. Impulse noise correction can be applied using the slider / edit box, again with a range from 0 to 100 % and click steps of 10 %. It offers very effective reduction of this type of noise, but should be used judiciously, because of the slightly greater risk of its having a visible effect on wanted picture detail. Note that when processing Raw images this control is not available (its Auto check box and entry box will be grayed out), as this correction is applied automatically as part of the Raw conversion process. And lastly for this tab, the Gray equalizer slider / box has a range from 0 to 100 %, with 10 % click steps. This makes it possible to ‘clean up’ unwanted colored noise from midtones, and has the effect of slightly desaturating neutral tones around mid-gray, to minimize spurious color effects in these sensitive areas. You’ll probably be able to leave it at the default setting, unless you notice the effect it can have of desaturating certain pastel tones.
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Look at the zoomed-in sections of picture below, which illustrate the effect of this noise reduction, particularly visible in the shadow areas. Without correction
After correction
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Sharpening tab [Ctrl + F5] NOTE FOR USERS OF EARLIER VERSIONS Functionally, Sharpening has not changed as far as the user interface is concerned; however, some major refinements have been introduced at the level of the algorithms used, and the interactions between the sharpening correction and noise reduction. In particular, steps have been taken to improve the ability to distinguish between wanted fine detail and unwanted noise, and a new control to preserve fine detail is available under the DxO Noise correction tab (please refer to the description of that tab for more details).
DxO can correct only for certain kinds of softness—the lens + camera combination’s inherent inability to reproduce fine detail (commonly referred to as “optical blur”). Other kinds of softness—caused by inaccurate focusing, insufficient depth of field or motion blur, for example—cannot be corrected. Remember that these corrections will not be visible in the main preview image, but only by using the Zoom function. DxO Lens Softness
This forms part of Optics Pro’s optical corrections, and as such, is lens- / body-dependent. As a result, this panel will only be enabled (i.e. displayed) for images for which the appropriate correction module is installed. Here again, there is a check box to enable this correction, and if the check box is unchecked (correction disabled), the panel will not open. DxO Optics Pro v3.5
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The DxO Lens Softness slider allows you to manually set the overall level of sharpness required for a particular usage. The sharpness level you choose to apply will of course depend on questions like personal taste, final resolution and type of output (print, web, etc). The slider / edit box range is in arbitrary units from –2.0 to +2.0, from Softer to Sharper; click steps are 1.0, with a default setting of 0. Moving the slider to the left or entering negative values will give a softer, smoother image, while moving it to the right or entering positive values will give a sharper image. The value –1 is the equivalent of “Gaussian Blur” in Adobe Photoshop®. The value +1 is not a simple unsharp mask. The sharpening applied in DxO Optics Pro is intelligent, in that it depends on the image content. Areas with noise are sharpened less than areas containing detail. For each area in the image, the amount of sharpening will also depend, for example, on the ISO—less sharpening is automatically applied at high ISO than low ISO, to avoid increasing the noise in the image. Note that because this sharpness correction is specifically tailored for your camera’s optics, and may well vary across the image field (to allow for lens performance shortcomings), it is usually preferable to perform as much of your sharpening as possible using this Lens Softness correction, allowing lighter use of the Unsharp Mask (USM), which although a sophisticated and adaptive tool, is a nonetheless a more generalized process. Of course, for images where the appropriate DxO Correction Module is not installed, all sharpening has to be done in the USM. Version 3.5’s sharpening has been refined in order to preserve as much fine detail as possible, and avoid unwanted interactions with the noise reduction. The result is more natural-looking pictures, avoiding the ‘plastic’ look so often associated with images that have undergone both sharpening and noise-reduction. Unsharp Mask
Once again here, there is a check box to enable this correction, and if the check box is unchecked (correction disabled), the panel will not open. The Amount slider / edit box obviously sets the degree of sharpening correction applied, with a range from 0 to 500 %, and a click step of 10 %. The Radius slider / edit box has a range in arbitrary units from 0.1 to 5.0, with a click step of 1.0. This control affects the fineness of the correction zone surrounding image detail; low values give very subtle correction, whilst over-use of high DxO Optics Pro v3.5
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values can lead to the formation of haloes. The Threshold slider / edit box has a range from 0 to 255, with click steps of 10, and adjusts how far up the tonal range sharpness correction commences. To avoid noise increase in lowlights, which may not contain much wanted detail, the threshold can be raised so that sharpness correction starts at a higher gray level. Take a look at these images to see the effect of these controls: With USM
Without USM
Image information tab [Ctrl + F8] EXIF
Summarizes the EXIF data for the current image. Note that where a number of images are selected together, any ambiguity in any or all of the EXIF information between them will result in a display of ???? in its place. EXIF Editor tab The Expert Controls mode Image information palette also carries an EXIF editor tab, which enables you enter Artist and Copyright data for the currently-selected image(s).
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Output settings tab [Ctrl + F9] Output color space
The combo box permits selection of: As shot Custom sRGB Adobe RGB When you click on ‘Custom’, and as long as there’s at least one ICC profile available, an open file button gives access to a browser, allowing you to open a saved custom color space. Note the DxO supports only ICC profiles with an .ICC or .ICM extension. Note that DxO supports only RGB color profiles, and not CMYK ones. If the color profile chosen is not valid, an error message will be displayed. Note that both Preview and the DxO Viewer always display images in the sRGB color space, but the actual output color space selected will be reflected in the computation of the corrected image; if necessary, this can be verified by close examination of the Histogram display. In the Raw domain, the color profile will only be applied to the image at the point it is converted from Raw to RGB. Color profile is not applied to raw images processed and saved in DNG format. In JPEG, the profile will only be applied if it is different from the input profile. In any event, the final image will be tagged with the chosen profile. ‘As shot’ applies the color profile embedded in the original image. It’s important to note that shadow and highlight clipping displays are computed in the final output color space, and hence these displays, and any adjustments performed based on them, will be affected if the output color space is subsequently changed. Output file format Here’s one of DxO Optics Pro’s really useful time-saving features—not only can you save in Adobe’s .DNG file format, but you can do so at the same time as saving in JPEG and TIFF DxO Optics Pro v3.5
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too, if you want. This means that you can batch-process a whole load of images all in one go, and simultaneously save copies in multiple formats, perhaps for speedy previewing plus further editing. Do note that .DNG is only available as an output format for raw input images. This raw in–raw out facility means you can still use your favorite third-party raw converter if you wish, once your images have been corrected in Optics Pro. Each of the three tabs for DNG, JPEG and TIFF formats starts off with the same basic functions. Check the ‘Output in this format’ box under each tab to save your output files in that format. All three tabs have an ‘Enable crop’ check box, to support the new ‘Crop’ feature in version 3.5—for full details of this feature, please see the preview toolbar description. Note that the ‘Enable crop’ check box on the preview toolbar sets this check box, but it can also be set / unset here from the Output format tabs—all three tabs share the same crop enable / disable, so changing the setting on any one tab changes the others too. In the case of the JPEG and TIFF output format tabs, the size information is updated to reflect the re-sized image resulting from cropping. When using the new ‘Crop’ feature, the last-used crop size is initially applied, so the size information may not be up to date until the new cropped image has been re-calculated for preview. In the case of the ‘Max image’ feature, the re-sized image is only calculated after correction, so image size data will not be displayed, and size settings are not accessible until an image’s corrections have been calculated for preview—and not at all in ‘thumbnail only’ view.
For JPEG input images, two output file formats are available: TIFF (compressed or uncompressed) or JPEG (with a compression ratio variable from 0–100).
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For Raw input images, three output file formats are available: TIFF (8-bit, compressed or uncompressed, or 16-bit), JPEG (with a compression ratio variable from 0–100) and Adobe® Digital Negative (DNG). Saving in DNG, allows you to use the unique features of DxO Optics Pro (DxO demosaicing, DxO Optics corrections, etc.) while still maintaining a workflow involving Adobe® Camera Raw or any other DNG-input compliant Raw converter. You may choose the suffix to be automatically added to filenames of corrected files. You can either keep the one suggested (“ _DXO”) or create your own, being sure to use only non-accented characters, figures, and the _, = or . signs. For RAW input images, an additional suffix “_raw” is automatically added, in order to allow RAW+JPEG processing. You are not allowed to leave the suffix blank—this is to avoid deletion of original files by accident. A check box allows you to overwrite or not existing processed images. If you choose not to overwrite, and then try to process a previously-corrected image for which the processed file still exists in the same output directory, upon starting processing, an error message is returned, and the image will not be processed Likewise, if you click the radio button ‘in this directory’, the grayed-out ‘Browse’ button to the right is enabled, and will open a browser window where you can set an alternative path for saving your corrected images—as mentioned briefly earlier, this is essential if you’re importing images via a non-recordable medium, since in that case it is not possible to save output files to the same location as the input files, which will cause Optics Pro to return an error when you try to process. In addition, the JPEG and TIFF format tabs invite you to set parameters that are relevant to those formats. In the case of JPEG, that means the quality slider; the factory default is 100, on a scale from 0 (maximum compression, so lowest quality, but smallest file size) to 100 (minimum compression, so best quality, but larger file size). Clicking moves the slider in steps of 10. For best quality, always use the highest setting you can, as appropriate for your file size requirements—if in doubt, leave the factory default setting. Be wary of using JPEG compression ratios lower than 70, which create highly visible artifacts. We suggest you try out several compression ratios and choose the one that best suits your requirements. The TIFF tab offers check boxes for Compress and 8-bit conversion; only check these if you fully understand their function and relevance to your specific needs, otherwise leave them unchecked (factory default setting). In addition, in both JPEG and TIFF formats, the ‘Expert Controls’ mode allows the option of resizing the image, and re-sampling to a different resolution. Combo boxes for both size and resolution include the option of ‘Keep original’, as well as various preset resolutions. The size combo box offers a choice of units for expressing the size: pixels, %, cm or inches; the units of the given size, together with a box to enter the new dimension, will change accordingly, and the picture size and resolution information is summarized below. Depending on your future requirements (enlargement, reproduction, etc.), you may well be able to use a smaller size and/or resolution, which will of course help to minimize file size. Do note however that reducing the image size increases the amount of processing required, and hence there is a processing time penalty.
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That completes our tour of the Expert Controls palette, so now you are ready to adjust the settings for your images, and then push the Start button (or use the Ctrl + S keyboard shortcut, or select the ‘Start batch’ command from the Workflow menu).
Processing That completes our tour of the Key Controls palette, so now you are ready to adjust the settings for your images, and then push the Start button (or use the Ctrl + S keyboard shortcut, or select the Start batch command from the Workflow menu). Version 3.5 includes a multi-processing feature that can help speed up batch processing, if your computer is equipped with multiple (logical) processors. The configuration options for this new feature can be found under ‘Preferences’ (Workspace menu, or Ctrl + P). Here are a few general details about processing: At the start of processing, DxO first performs a number of checks on the batch images; at the end of these checks, it may be necessary for the user to respond to one or more questions before processing proper can commence; for example, if there are images for which the focusing distance has not been set, a dialog box pops up, asking whether you want to continue without correcting distortion and chromatic aberration, or cancel the batch to go back and set the focusing distance for these images. – To improve processing efficiency in the event of multiprocessing, images are always sorted before processing, so they will not necessarily be processed in thumbnail order – Depending on the number and size of your images, and the different corrections being applied, processing may take from just a few seconds to several minutes, or even longer in the case of slower computers. – If the disk cache has been enabled, raw images will be calculated immediately batch processing finishes, so that converted ‘Before’ images will already be available when Viewer is launched. Without the disk cache, ‘Before’ images cannot be calculated in advance, which slows down Viewer launch where large images are involved. This saves a lot of time at the review stage.
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During processing, a batch dialogue window opens to keep you informed about progress. It has a progress bar showing progress of the batch as a whole. The lower part of the window shows details of the image currently being processed, and its individual progress. The ‘Skip’ button allows you to skip a particular image, while the ‘Pause’ button lets you pause one or more processes (if multi-processing is enabled)—this allows you to temporarily free up CPU time if you need to run another application, for example. In this case, the images awaiting processing are simply shared out between the other processes still running. Where multi-processing is being used, the lower part of the screen shows progress information for each process running; up to 4 will be displayed at once—if more are being used, a vertical scroll bar will allow you to view the others. Once processing is finished, a log screen (common to all the workspaces) is displayed which will report any problems that might have been encountered, and offers ‘View’ and ‘Done’ buttons.
When Raw images have been processed and saved only in DNG format, they cannot be displayed in DxO Viewer, and so in this case the ‘View’ button will be grayed out. ‘Done’ terminates the current batch and returns you directly to the main DxO workspace, while ‘View’ opens the DxO Viewer, which makes it very easy to go through all your images and compare the corrected versions with the originals. Let’s take a look at that now…
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DxO Viewer window anatomy Mac Version
A toolbar…
…and a status bar at the bottom of the screen, used for displaying various image and zoom information
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Windows Version
a toolbar…
Pull-down menus across the top…
…and a status bar at the bottom of the screen, used for displaying various image and zoom information
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Just like the main DxO Optics Pro screen, the Viewer’s Image menu offers commands for * Rotate 90° counterclockwise (left) / clockwise (right) [Ctrl + L or R], along with a new command, * Delete corrected files, which enables you to delete the corrected file for the current image—for example, if after viewing you decide that you’d like to process an image again.
The Viewer’s View menu offers commands for * Next / Previous image [also available as keyboard shortcuts Æ or Ç and Å or È], as well as switching between * Before / After DxO images [Ctrl + D / Ctrl + F], and also for * Zoom in / out [Ctrl + + or -], * Fit to window [Ctrl + I], and * Actual size [Ctrl + 1] .
All these same Image and View menu functions are also available via the Toolbar buttons: Zoom + / – functions, as well as two other view scaling options: Fit to window, and Actual size. Note that any zoom setting you use will be applied to both original and corrected images. Rotate 90° counterclockwise/ clockwise buttons enable you to change the orientation of your images. Screen layout — just as in the main workspace, opens a sub-menu where you can choose to view thumbnails or preview images alone on your workspace, or as 2 panes allowing you to view both at the same time—the last 4 menu options enable you to choose where the thumbnail pane is positioned with respect to the preview pane. Note that the thumbnails in the Viewer window bear the same icons as those in the Workspace window, so you can easily see at a glance if the relevant DxO Lens Module was used or not. Previous / Next buttons allow you to navigate through your images. After DxO / Before buttons enable you to toggle back and forth between A pair of the original (unprocessed) and corrected versions of your images — also available simply by right-clicking anywhere in the workspace to toggle between the two [Keyboard shortcuts: Ctrl + D / Ctrl + F]. DxO Optics Pro v3.5
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The Delete results file(s) button allows you to delete selected results files—you might need to do this, for example, for certain images that you wish to correct again, or in cases where you have more than one output file format and want to eliminate one or more of them. The
button will close the Viewer window and return you to your DxO Optics Pro workspace.
The Help menu offers access to the complete help file (i.e. this User Manual) [F1], plus details of the various module options installed [Ctrl + M], and an About… information screen containing information about the exact software version, important if you need to contact DxO Technical Support. There’s also a command you can click, and the software will check automatically for updates.
The bottom status bar displays the filename currently being viewed in the center, and if you hover the mouse over it, a tooltip displays information about the corrections that have been applied. A legend in the bottom left-hand corner confirms whether you’re viewing the original or corrected image, and indicates if only partial correction has been applied. In some cases, it may not have been possible to apply all the corrections requested to an image, and those that have been applied will be indicated here. In the bottom right-hand corner, image magnification is indicated as a percentage. Note that if you have resized images as part of your processing, such images will show a difference in size between the original / corrected images in the Viewer. Normally, before / after images will appear with their centers aligned, and so will overlay correctly (unless you have resized them). However, in the specific case where an image corrected using the ‘Max frame’ feature yields a corrected image that extends outside the original image boundaries (even after any cropping), the before / after images will be displayed with their centers re-aligned, which may mean that the overlay is displaced. After viewing a newly-processed batch of images, when you return to your main DxO Optics Pro workspace, the thumbnails for that batch will be updated.
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CREDITS AND PERMISSIONS - Portions of this software are based in part on the work of the Independent JPEG Group. - TIFF support based on LibTIFF, Copyright © 1988-1997 Sam Leffler, Copyright © 1991-1997 Silicon Graphics, Inc. - This product includes DNG technology under license by Adobe Systems Incorporated. More information may be found at: http://www.adobe.com/products/dng/main.html
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