Verdict: 4.3 stars DxO PureRAW 4 is the latest version of DxO’s RAW ‘pre-processing’ software. That’s how I think of it, anyway. It applies DxO’s legendary lens corrections and DeepPRIME denoising to your raw files and outputs a part-processed Linear DNG file which can still be edited like a RAW file in other programs. Alternatively, you can use PureRAW 4 to output sharp, corrected, denoised, ready-to-use JPEGs from your RAW originals. PureRAW 4 is extremely good at correcting image defects and noise, but you do have to decide whether you need it enough to modify your workflow.
Featured posts
Welcome to the Life after Photoshop archive of 'Featured' posts. These are favourite articles or tutorials that appear in the carousel at the top of the home page.
Rediscover the lost art of dodging and burning in Capture One
Dodging and burning isn’t just an old-school black and white darkroom technique. It’s just as useful on color images, and Capture One’s Style Brushes update this classic technique with powerful digital enhancements.
Recreating an 1970s analog street photography vibe in Capture One
Recreating the look of analog films is a surprisingly subtle job that can require several different tools. There are of course magic filters for mobile apps that attempt to achieve the analog look, and desktop applications that have powerful and effective analog presets, like the DxO Nik Collection or ON1 Photo RAW. For this project I’m creating my analog effect manually in Capture One – though you can do the same in Lightroom (see the brief instructions at the end) and other photo editors.
Are these sliders the key to high ISO image quality in Lightroom?
The Noise Reduction and Sharpening sliders might be the obvious go-to tools for optimizing high-ISO images, but these can easily leave you with soft, wishy-washy detail or exaggerated noise as you try to play one off against the other. In fact, there are better ways to get your high-ISO images looking smoother and sharper.
How to get the XPan ‘look’ in Lightroom
The Hasselblad XPan was a classic 35mm ‘panoramic’ camera developed in partnership with Fujifilm. What made it special was its unique widescreen aspect ratio, creating images measuring 65mm x 24mm on 35mm film. You can recreate this unique perspective in Lightroom, together with some of the XPan’s analog rendering. Here’s how.
How to apply corner sharpening in Lightroom with a simple preset
Lightroom Classic has built-in lens correction profiles for fixing distortion and corner shading in countless camera lenses. It also fixes chromatic aberration, or color fringing, via a separate checkbox. The one thing it doesn’t have is corner softness correction – but there is a way around that.
How to create an HDR ‘superRAW’ image in Lightroom – it’s easy!
I’m drawn to extreme contrasts in lighting, which I guess a lot of photographers are. This gets me into trouble, though, because very often a scene will have a wider dynamic range, or brightness range, than the camera can capture.
Tips for a strong black and white look in Lightroom Classic
It’s easy to convert a color image to black and white in any photo editor, Lightroom included, but to get a strong black and white look you often have to do a little more besides. Here’s a look at the B&W mode, B&W panel and the Tone Curve.
Make skies and subjects pop in Lightroom Classic
What’s wrong with this photo of a boat on a shingle beach? I used a prime lens with a wide maximum aperture to get a shallow depth of field effect for this simple composition and that part has worked well. But the boat is just a little too dark and the sky is a little too bright. This is a common issue in outdoor photography.
Black and white with an AI preset
What’s especially clever about Lightroom presets is that they don’t just include global adjustments. You can also create presets with masks. These can be either manual masks which you can move around manually, AI masks which adapt to the contents of images they’re applied to, or combinations of both.