DxO PureRAW 2 will now integrate with a Lightroom workflow, swapping Adobe's raw processing for DxO's
(Image credit: Rod Lawton/Digital Camera World)
DxO PureRAW 2 brings a number of improvements to the company’s raw processing, lens correction and noise removal software, but the big news for Lightroom users is that you can now use it from within Lightroom.
The easiest way to think of DxO PureRAW is to imagine an up-market Adobe DNG Converter. It takes regular RAW files and applies DxO’s high-powered DeepPRIME demosaicing and noise reduction technology, plus its advanced in-house lens correction profiles, to produce ‘Linear DNG’ raw files. These are part-processed raw files that have all the image quality of DxO’s proprietary processing, but are still ‘raw’ files with all the extended tonal and color data that photographers like to exploit.
DxO PureRAW 2 can be used as a standalone image converter. You can give it a folder full of raw files and it will batch process them either as JPEG images, or as Linear DNGs. Its optical corrections don’t just include the usual chromatic aberration, distortion and vignetting corrections, but lens softness too.
What’s new in PureRAW 2 is that you can now send a raw file in your Lightroom catalog to PureRAW for processing – it will then return the processed DNG file to Lightroom. This means you can swap Adobe’s raw processing for DxOs, but without having to leave Lightroom.
That’s not all. With PureRAW 2 it’s also now possible to select and process images direct from the Mac Finder or Windows Explorer.
DxO says its DeepPRIME processing engine, the AI-driven tech behind its remarkable noise reduction and detail retention, is now up to 4x faster.
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DxO has also added Fujifilm X-Trans sensor support – which is huge news for the legions of Fujifilm camera fans out there – with over 2,000 correction modules available for 26 X-Trans camera models. This is on top of more than 1600 new correction modules and 14 new cameras. This brings to the total number of camera/lens pairings supported in PureRAW 2 to 70,000+.
DxO PureRAW 2 pricing and availability
DxO PureRAW 2 is available from the DxO store from March 16 2022 at a launch price of $129/£115 (about AU$178) for new users, or $79/£69 (about AU$109) for users upgrading from the previous version.
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Rod is an independent photography journalist and editor, and a long-standing Digital Camera World contributor, having previously worked as DCW's Group Reviews editor. Before that he has been technique editor on N-Photo, Head of Testing for the photography division and Camera Channel editor on TechRadar, as well as contributing to many other publications. He has been writing about photography technique, photo editing and digital cameras since they first appeared, and before that began his career writing about film photography. He has used and reviewed practically every interchangeable lens camera launched in the past 20 years, from entry-level DSLRs to medium format cameras, together with lenses, tripods, gimbals, light meters, camera bags and more. Rod has his own camera gear blog at fotovolo.com but also writes about photo-editing applications and techniques at lifeafterphotoshop.com