I recently found out this software from DXO. It is quite good for removing noise and improving the photo quality in general. I am currently using the Canon M50. It’s a nice, little, compact camera. But when using high ISO, I get good amount of noise. DXO PureRAW has been a great help with that.
Before & After
The first time I used DXO PureRAW with a photo from Canon’s cheap zoom lens – 75-300mm, I was very impressed. It was a shot at 300mm and the photo came out noisy. It also had chromatic aberrations. I was so happy with the changes DXO PureRAW made that I purchased a license immediately.
I know seeing is often better than hearing. Before we dive into the technicality and details of this software let’s see a shot before and after running through DXO PureRaw.
You can see the photo has a lot of noise and grain. This is cropped out of the original photo from my Canon M50. I ran it through DXO PureRAW and this is the result –
You can see how the image now looks a lot better. It’s cleaner and it’s still RAW. You can apply more tweaks on top of it using Lightroom, Photoshop or your preferred tool.
How does it work?
You have to import your RAW files into DXO PureRAW. The software will check the EXIF data and find out your camera and lens information. It will then download necessary “modules” for different camera and lens combinations you have in those photos. I assume these modules are actually machine learning model and/or related meta data. These are used in the deep learning process to optimize your photos.
In short – DXO knows about different camera and lenses. They use these knowledge and machine learning (deep learning techniques) to enhance your photos. They have different level of optimizations available based on your computer hardware. Since I process the photos on my gaming PC, I always prefer the maxed out option – deep prime.
Reliability
DXO PureRAW is an amazing piece of technology. No doubt about that. But it’s not magic. The software depends on existing knowledge about a camera and a lens. If DXO doesn’t have these data for a specific camera or lens, the result will be limited. For example, my 7artisans 35mm f/0.95 doesn’t emit lens data in the EXIF. So DXO PureRAW has no way of knowing what lens it is, even if they have machine learning models trained on this lens. As a result photos from this don’t work very well with this software.
However, they do have the Canon EOS M50 and major lens profiles. The software works really great on photos from the Nifty Fifty (Canon EF 50mm f/1.8) and my recent favorite the EF-S 55-250mm f/4-5.6 IS STM. I believe as a company that reviews a lot of camera tech, DXOMark does have majority of the camera + lens combination covered.
Pingback: Low Light: Comparing My Fast Lenses - Masnun | Photography