For its 20th anniversary, DxO launches PhotoLab 8

A bit of history

What a journey since the launch of DxO Optics Pro twenty years ago! Originally designed exclusively to correct lens defects from Windows systems, the young software from the French publisher DxO, now compatible with Mac OS from version 6 in 2010quickly gained many features to become a real photo editor. In 2017, its skills became such that it is renamed PhotoLab. It is then enriched with local correction tools, the U Points that DxO acquired when it bought the Nik Software suite from Google, but also the brush and graduated filters. Its version 2 brings photo library management and makes it a more direct competitor to the American Adobe Lightroom cataloger, while the version 3 integrates keyword management and brings up the ColorWheel for more instinctive colorimetry management.

At a steady pace of one new version per year, PhotoLab then opened up to AI with the introduction of the DeepPrime noise correctiontook charge of the Raw files from Fujifilm X-Trans sensorsintegrated an on-screen proofing option and supported the LUT.

PhotoLabs 8

If this version 8 of PhotoLab does not revolutionize the scope of the software, it also gains in comfort of use and efficiency. In terms of new features, we will remember the introduction of a preview magnifying glass with a configurable magnification between 100 and 1,600% allowing you to appreciate the noise correction and sharpness accentuation settings. The latter is necessarily displayed on the image and cannot be moved to the side.

DxO also introduces a new masking tool based on hue, which is reminiscent of the one available on Lightroom and whose action area can be refined using other tools such as the brush. The tone curve gains a Luma channel to act on the image densities without affecting the color saturation and the establishment of inflection points thanks to an eyedropper click on the image.

Improved electronic noise correction

After introducing a new version of DeepPrime with XD2 in Pure Raw 4 At the beginning of the year, DxO is making PhotoLab benefit from it, which even gains an improved XD2s version for certain devices, the list of which DxO does not, however, communicate. The compensation of the sharpness of the lens has been reworked to reduce fringes and artifacts and the workflow improved by a new comparison mode allowing to load any photo as a reference.

Availability and prices

DxO PhotoLab 8 remains available as a perpetual license sold for €229 for new buyers and €109 for an update from PhotoLab 6 or 7. A bundled offer with FilmPack 7the software for simulating the rendering of silver films, and offered at €299.