Verdict: 4.5 stars ON1 Effects is both a standalone program, reviewed here, and a core component in ON1 Photo RAW 2026, ON1’s flagship photo editor. So why would you buy this one component and not the whole thing? Because, in my opinion, ON1 Effects is the best part of ON1 Photo RAW, and the standalone Effects version gives you all the same inspiring effects and powerful masking and adjustment tools but in an application you can slot into your existing Lightroom, Capture One or other workflow.
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DxO FilmPack 8 review
Verdict: 3.5 stars DxO FilmPack 8 sets out to replicate the look of classic analog films and processes with true scientific and historical accuracy. Does it succeed? Yes, but while its renderings are faithful and evocative, the absence of local adjustment tools can give you some workflow headaches and it lacks the madness/genius of Nik Analog Efex.
DxO PureRAW 6 review
Verdict: 5 stars DxO PureRAW 6 is like a RAW pre-processing tool that applies DxO’s trademark lens corrections and DeepPRIME denoising and outputs a RAW DNG file for other programs to use. Version 6 adds key improvements to an already excellent tool. The lens corrections are superb, the denoising and detail enhancement are exceptional and not you get AI dust removal too!
DxO ViewPoint 5 review
Verdict: 3.5 stars DxO ViewPoint 5 is a specialised distortion and correction tool which has some clever features but is a bit of an awkward fit with most editing workflows, partly because it can’t open and correct RAW files and partly because most applications you might launch it from have distortion and perspective correction tools of their own.
DxO PhotoLab 9.6 update: DeepPRIME XD3, compressed DNG files and ‘feathered’ AI masks
The DxO PhotoLab 9.6 update is not a major version release, so it’s a free update for existing PhotoLab 9 users, and a pretty substantial one at that. And there might be enough here to convince anyone thinking about getting DxO PhotoLab 9 to finally take the plunge.
Reviews
Does the new dust removal option in DxO PureRAW really clean up your RAW files? YES!
DxO PureRAW 6 is the latest version of DxO’s clever RAW preprocessing software, and it has two big new features. One is its new ‘high fidelity’ DNG compression option which drastically reduces its file sizes, and the other is a new AI dust removal feature built into the PureRAW process. Who saw that coming?
DxO PhotoLab 9 AI masking tools explained, with examples
DxO PhotoLab already had a formidable set of local adjustment tools, including some that rivals don’t have. PhotoLab’s clever control point masks and control lines, which effectively combine linear masks with selective masking, are unique to DxO. But other makers had already introduced AI masking with automatic region, subject and object detection, so it was about time PhotoLab caught up – and that’s exactly what DxO has done with the launch of PhotoLab 9.
DxO PhotoLab 9 review: a major update for DxO’s flagship photo editor
Verdict: 4.5 stars DxO PhotoLab 9 is a powerful photo editor which includes basic but effective image organizing tools too. It’s the latest update to DxO’s flagship photo editing software and adds AI masking, iPhone HEIF and ProRAW support and DeepPRIME processing for Fujifilm’s latest X-Trans sensors. It’s not cheap to buy and it’s not especially easy to learn but it certainly repays the effort. The quality of the lens corrections, the RAW processing, the DeepPRIME AI noise reduction combine to make this one of the best photo-editors on the market for RAW shooters.
Adobe Lightroom review (2025)
Adobe Lightroom (2025) verdict: 4.1 stars Adobe Lightroom does something pretty amazing. It makes all your photos available to organize and edit anywhere, on any device. But this does come at a cost. One drawback is that you have to pay for Adobe’s Creative Cloud storage, which is now included in its subscription plans. Another is that this version of Lightroom is slicker and more streamlined than the original Lightroom Classic, but also sacrifices some organizational features.
How to articles
Capture One has many advantages over Lightroom, and Sessions is one of the biggest
Capture One and Lightroom both offer image cataloguing tools with powerful organization and search capabilities, but they both rely on an import process. And, if you make changes outside your catalog, you’ll have to synchronize or re-link your image files. Capture One Sessions are different. They are like ‘live’ browsing. And they are not just for tethered shooting.
How the Nik Silver Efex 8 Colour Filter works, with free cheat sheet!
Like all good black and white photo editing tools, Silver Efex can ‘filter’ the colours in your digital images to translate them into different shades of grey. You can replicate the effect of traditional black and white ‘contrast’ filters, achieving dramatic blue skies with a red filter effect, richer landscape tones with a yellow filter effect and more. Here’s how it works.
Silver Efex 8 Basic Adjustments: what do they do and how – includes a free cheat sheet!
The Basic Adjustments panel is one of the ‘optional’ Filters in Nik Silver Efex 8. What this means is that if you are building an effect from scratch, you can add it manually from the list of Filters in the left sidebar, or not use it at all. You will find it’s included as standard in many Silver Efex presets, though, and despite being ‘Basic’, it’s actually central to a lot of black and white ‘looks’.
The strange alchemy of Analog Efex Filters, what they do and how they combine
Analog Efex is one of the creative plug-ins in the DxO Nik Collection and it’s a bit of an outlier because, first of all, it was developed by Google and not Nik Software (it appeared during Google’s ownership of the Nik Collection) and secondly, because it can produce the most amazing results from filters which individually don’t seem to amount to very much. I’ll explain.
How to turn black and white negatives into positives in Adobe Lightroom
Lightroom doesn’t have a ‘negative’ filter for turning negative images into positives, so how do you do it? I’ve been going through my old mono negatives, rephotographing them with a camera and a macro lens, and I wanted to figure out how to convert them without using an external tool – and here’s how it’s done! (And it should work in any other software with curves adjustments.)