DxO PhotoLab 5: Should You Upgrade?

hey guys i'm jim i added photos thanks for stopping by today i'm taking a look at dxo photo lab 5. it's the new version that came out about a week or so ago and there's some new stuff in it they have basically updated control points a little bit they've added controlled lines which is cool it's like a gradient but gives you better control they've made a lot of changes around metadata and keywording which although not sexy is useful uh certainly in certain circumstances and they've also sped up deep prime which is their amazing raw file noise reduction and that stuff is uh quite a bit faster but most importantly for many of you it supports fuji raw files so that's pretty cool this video is going to be kind of a high level i'm not going to dive into all the nuances of everything i kind of want to do an overall kind of high level look at the product at these new things and then just kind of try to answer the question should you upgrade or not because that was the first thing when i got the product and started looking at it you know there are some nice things that have been added but is it enough to make you upgrade obviously you'll have to be the judge of that so let's uh let's get into it here it is i am in the editing menu as you can see the edit module i'm on local adjustments and as you may recall in the past you can right click and then kit get a control point let's say you want to add a control point i've got a big one right there if you remember when they updated the knit collection they basically added the ability to adjust chroma and luma masks within the mask view so when you click on show mask you have chroma and luma over here now so they've basically taken what they did with i think it was just silver effects pro in vevasa and now that's included here in control points in photo lab so i think that's pretty cool as you can see as you adjust these it will adjust the mask sensitivity and of course as you know you can move this around uh to you know make sure that you're basically targeting uh targeting the proper areas and so that has been added to the control points which i think is pretty cool i'm going to go ahead and click to delete that but the new feature is a control line and so again right click to bring up this masking selection menu and control line is like that so you just click and drag it just like a gradient and as you can see it's basically adding the mask there i'm still in show mask which is actually probably better it would normally look like that you've got your menus here for adjusting things so you can increase the brightness let's say for example maybe i want to add some clear view plus to give a little bit of crunch maybe i want to make it a little bit brighter and maybe i want to lift the shadows just a tiny bit i'm just kind of hacking this is not actually an edit of this photo but again you can show mask and if you recall with the control points because they're circular you can move them around to adjust the mask well you can't really move this because it's a straight line so they give you this dropper and you can take this dropper and you can drag it around and see how it affects and adjust your mask accordingly so that's something that's new but the control lines themselves are quite new and it allows you to isolate areas when you have something like this where basically a gradient filter would do but you want to control the masking a little bit better these control lines can come in really handy i'm going to go ahead and click to draw stop showing the mask so you can actually see the photo but that's a new feature it's pretty cool stuff and then of course you can add multiple masks to a photo i could add a new mask put it into the sky for example and edit this guy to my heart's content actually let me go back to show masks and here once again you've got chroma and luma on this as well so both on control points and on these new control line you have the chroma and luma adjustments so remember chroma is around color and luma is around light so again i'm kind of hacking here but there's an adjustment based on chroma and luma and adjusting that and that looks terrible right there so i need to go fix that and just like control points they have the ability to what's called protect an area which is kind of like adding a negative control line so if you need to isolate part of the photo but it's overlapping something you can use that to basically remove it from that section all in all a nice feature more control over the mask than you would have if you just did a gradient and i think that's a welcome addition to photo lab 5. now let's pop into the library and talk about metadata and keywords okay as you may remember in photo lab 4 the metadata and keywords were actually showing up in the editing module next to each photo but now they've been placed over here on the right hand side in the library uh module so makes a little bit more sense i think to have it there and it's handy now there's a couple of different things that are new and different iptc here you can fully edit that but one of the cool things is you can actually sync it with lightroom so if you go into your preferences panel and go over here to advanced you can click always synchronize and that will allow you to sync via xmp sidecar files with lightroom so i could come in here and type in my name you know as a creator for example and then sync that with lightroom so if you're going back and forth between libraries for example or if you just use both editors for different reasons you can keep your iptc metadata in sync between the two applications you can also go to file and sidecar and export and then that file can be read individually by lightroom if you're not doing it automatically they've also added the ability to copy and paste metadata and keywords from one image to another which can come in handy and speaking of keywords i think the updates here are actually really useful as you can see on the right-hand side you can see keywords that are tied to that particular image as well as a keyword list which is pulling from all the photos in this folder i just have this one folder connected to dxo now some of these keywords are really old so for example when i first created these files and imported them into lightroom a long time ago i was using aurora hdr quite a bit i could just come in here and remove that keyword from the image and there you go but the cool thing for me is that you can nest and create hierarchies and so i'm going to go down here towards the bottom where i've got uk and united kingdom and so i used to keyword say united kingdom and then also say uk things like that but for me let's say united kingdom is the header that i want and maybe i want uk even though it's the same thing i can drop it in there and now i've got a nested hierarchy well you know i also see another keyword here that hey guess what that's whales and while wales is not part of this image this was taken in southern england that's the same image i was editing a minute ago wales is in the united kingdom so once again i might drag this up here and drop it on united kingdom and you can see that i've got both uk and wales nested under united kingdom for this image uk is turned on but maybe it's redundant so i could turn that off and you can see that it disappears and if for some reason this photo had been taken in wales which it wasn't but for this example we'll pretend it was i could just click on wales turn it on and it'll show up there in the keyword list so you can create these hierarchies and basically get super organized again these kind of updates to the product aren't super sexy they're not like you know sky replacement or something you know new or interesting or different or even technical but this is useful stuff for keeping track of your images it's going to improve search and things like that and i mentioned an update to deep prime it is faster and also it supports fuji raw files i've got a dot raf right here and this is a fuji raw file taken with my x100v which is a cool little camera by the way so i've got this image and of course if you're on the detail panel you can see that you can use deep prime keep in mind you have to export the photo with the deep prime adjustments in order to see it so i can't really demo that here but just keep in mind that the raw files from fuji will now work in dxo with d prime and by the way i do want to note that the support for fuji they say is still in beta at launch seems to work fine for me but i just wanted to point that out by the way the upgrade sells for 99 and i believe it's on sale for 79 for a limited time and the full product is 219 normally and i believe it's on sale for 165 for a little while i will say overall photo lab 5 it's a great product and overall photo lab i like quite a bit by the way they also announced a new version of film pack which is film pack 6. i'll go take a look at that in a separate video but it does integrate nicely into photo lab 5. so like i said great product a lot of power a lot of capability there's lots of great tools and this is not a demo video of everything that you can do with dxo because you can do a lot and so the question for me that i think you might be considering as well is is the upgrade worth it so at 99 and short term you know time pricing is 79 dollars is it worth it for what you're getting because the updates to the control points with the chroma and luma fantastic i mean they give you better control and better sensitivity to your mass so your edits are going to be more more precise with the control points awesome control line you have that same chroma and luma adjustment so again sensitivity the mask is fantastic and just being able to do that with basically a gradient is fantastic and i think that's awesome the metadata and the keywording updates very useful although i think a narrower use case i don't think that would apply to everybody for example it won't apply to me a whole lot it's cool and if i was perhaps leaving lightroom or torn and editing between the two and wanting to keep things in sync it would make a lot of sense for me but i'm not really doing that and then that leaves the fuji shooters those of you that shoot fuji and always wanted to try dxo but couldn't take advantage of deep prime which is amazing noise reduction it's really world class um that's going to be an attract you know quite an attractive element to this i think but for everyone else is is it a worthwhile upgrade are you getting enough i don't know how to answer that question to be honest i think for me i'm a little bit on the fence i think the updates to the control points if you use control points and think that you would use controlled lines quite a bit it very well might be worth it in order to have that more accuracy to the mass that you're creating and if you're a fuji shooter i think you'd be pretty interested but overall i don't feel like there's a whole lot of new stuff like when i think of an upgrade which to me is a brand new version which this is because it's version 5 and the previous version was version 4. i think of there typically being a lot more new features on one's new product quite a few new features luminar's new product that's coming quite a few new features and so in comparison to those other apps i feel a little bit like there's not a whole lot here but again i think it's going to depend if you're a fuji shooter you might be really interested in that and if you depend on the accuracy of your masks for the control points and now the control lines it very well might be worth it and one of the ways i look at it is if you pay 99 for the upgrade and you use this thing for a year that's about two bucks a week so not a lot of money certainly less than just getting a coffee which many people will go do each day so in the scheme of things it's not a lot of money if you put it in those kind of terms i'm just trying to decide you know for the average user will they get enough out of it and take advantage of those features enough to make it worth it again it's a question that you'll have to answer for yourself everybody's situation is unique and personal and i won't pretend to be able to answer that question for you i just think it's something to think about overall great product absolutely great power and control over your images with the different masking tools and the filters and the noise reduction and if you happen to get a film pack as well you got a lot of different options there and even paying full price for photo lab 5 if you don't have any of the previous versions pane 219 full price that's still a little over four dollars a week so again if you're using the product and really editing a lot less than a dollar a day for this much power and control is really frankly a good value so that's a high level over overview of kind of the new stuff in photo lab 5 overall solid product i really like it i just think it's a question you have to answer for yourself whether or not you're getting enough features enough new stuff to make the upgrade worth it something to think about if you would like to see more videos covering some of these features as well as other things in dxo please let me know i'd be happy to do that leave a comment down below and um i'll be back soon with another video my friends take care cells i'll see you soon and adios

Channel: Jim Nix

Views: 4,969

Keywords: Jim Nix, travel, photography, post processing, editing, training, tutorial, photo editor, photo editing, DxO, PhotoLab 5

Id: 0bQhjRAQnmI

Length: 12min 10sec (730 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 28 2021