Not every image you capture comes out just as you envisioned. In fact, I'd argue that most people prefer to enhance their digital images to some extent, even if it's just a tiny boost in contrast, brightness or saturation. Of course, this isn't the case for all photographers—specifically photo journalists. It's a sticky web of what's "real" these days when it comes to editorial. Seems like every day someone else is doctoring photos for the wrong reasons. But for those who have the freedom to enhance, correct and polish their photos to their heart's content, there is a plethora of software programs available to help make your photos something you never imagined they could be. DxO Optics Pro 4 is one of them.

Initial Reaction
It should be noted that I’ve been using Photoshop for the past nine years and Lightroom for the past two, so shifting gears in a new program like this is kind of like learning to drive a stick when you’re used to automatic. That said, there’s a steeper-than-expected learning curve for DxO Optics Pro 4. When I tried using the program without doing tutorials or reading any of the user manual, it wasn’t clear how to start. Again, this may be because I have a preconceived idea of how other imaging programs work and an expectation has been established in my head, but the user interface was not immediately intuitive.

In order to figure out how to begin, I had to go to their website and watch the tutorials. I also checked the user manual because, while the tutorials were helpful, they left me asking, “That’s it? What about the rest?”

The Test
For the record, I tested DxO Optics Pro 4 on a Mac Powerbook G4 1.67 GHz with 2GB of RAM running the latest version of OS X 10.4.10.

I began with the stand-alone version of DxO Optics Pro 4 and later used the Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Plug-in version. Both performed well, but I’ll start by talking about my experience with the stand-alone version. When I first started the program, as mentioned above, I really didn’t know what to do. At the top of the program window are five tabs: Select, Organize, Enhance, Process and View. After watching one of the tutorials, it became clear that I had to “select” the photos I wanted to work on (basically picking the ones I thought were good enough to continue processing) out of all the images in the folder I initially selected for my project. I made my selections and then dragged them into the selected images bar at the bottom of the program window.

Next tab: Organize. Not quite sure why the organize and select tabs couldn’t be combined into one, but I’m sure DxO has their reasons. For me it felt like an extra step—I’d have preferred to go right to the Enhance tab. Perhaps I’m too used to Lightroom. Under the Organize tab I had to reselect all the images I just selected in the previous tab, or select only the ones I wanted to continue working on. The function of the Organize tab and working space, I’m assuming, is to see all the photos that I’d chosen and any metadata that goes along with them (if I choose to show it), something like a light-table. It’s a place to zoom in and out of my photos to focus on their quality and perhaps cut some out for a leaner selection. In this place I was also able to rank and stack my photos, which could help in the final processing if I want them in a specific ranked order. But truthfully, as I continued using DxO Optics Pro 4, I found myself skipping this tab and going directly from Select to Enhance.

The Enhance tab is where the heavy lifting is done. Under this tab I was able to work with the following tools for image refinement and enhancement: DxO Optics; Sharpness; DxO Noise; White Balance and Exposure; DxO Color; DxO Lighting; Geometry; and Crop. I’m more comfortable making the majority of these enhancements in Photoshop, but the tools provided in DxO Optics Pro 4 are very good. Especially useful are the optics and geometry settings. These tools perform based on the lens used on my DSLR. (When I first loaded DxO Optics Pro 4 I was prompted to download the modules for all the lenses I shoot with. Now whenever I open a photo in DxO, the software will be able to read the EXIF data and automatically adjust common problems associated with my specific lenses.) For instance, the software knew, via the EXIF data on the image, that I took this shot of Chasm Lake with my Canon EOS EF-S 10-22mm lens and automatically corrected for the pincushion effect, vignetting and keystoning. I was able to adjust it manually if I’d have liked, but the auto settings worked pretty well (as shown in the before and after images below).

A couple of the other tools in the Enhance tab felt a bit restrictive for my liking. I didn’t have the control that I feel I do with other programs for white balance, hue/saturation/luminance or exposure. While I was able to use curves for my image via DxO, I preferred to correct my color in another image editing program. That doesn’t mean these tools in DxO Optics Pro 4 aren’t good; it just means I prefer making certain adjustments with other tools. In fact, the auto presets in DxO were quite good. Most of the other tools, including noise, performed well without much intervention on my part. But of course I played around just to see how far I could push the settings. It’s easy to over-enhance something, and just like in any other image enhancing program, subtlety was the key to making enhancements.

The Process tab was fairly self-explanatory. This is where I was to process my photos. While other programs use the word “export” to do similar things, the word “process” seems more accurate to me. This is basically where I chose the file format, image size, saving location and ICC profile I wanted to attach to the finished files. The images that show up in the Process tab are all the images I selected in the Enhance tab; when I hit process, all of those will be processed simultaneously. There’s a very useful option to add a suffix to my files. For instance, I added -out to the end of each processed image so I’d know that it had been processed when looking in my folder view (-out is also the default suffix). You can change the suffix to whatever makes sense to you as long as it isn’t longer than four characters. Another useful option gave me the choice of saving out several different types of files at the same time: JPEG, TIFF and DNG. I could see this being very useful for archiving purposes and also preparing photos for a client simultaneously.

Once I had selected and enhanced the photos I wanted, I clicked the start button within the Process tab and waited. And waited. Processing certainly wasn’t the fastest part of the entire process. It took about 30 minutes to process 12 RAW images from my Canon EOS 30D on my G4 Powerbook.

The final tab, View, showed before and after thumbnails of the photos I processed, plus a large version of the “after” version. Here I used the before/after toggle button below the tabs to quickly show what I’d started with and ended with. Not much else happens in the view tab besides, well, viewing.

Using DxO with Lightroom
Having choices is nice. Fairly new to the program is the option to use DxO Optics Pro 4 with Adobe Photoshop Lightroom. You can do this in two ways. First, you can process and enhance in DxO as the first step and then import to Lightroom. This method makes Lightroom more of a digital asset management tool than an image enhancement tool, but it works. The second way would be to import all your images into Lightroom and do all your color work there,  and then use DxO’s plug-in version for the geometry and optic corrections. This allows you to make all the corrections you’d like in Lightroom, if you’re more comfortable there, and then make the adjustments that Lightroom can’t handle in DxO. But beware—if you use the plug-in version, you won’t have all five tabs. The plug-in version is pared down to only the Enhance and Process tabs (see image below). Oh, and you also won’t be able to access DxO’s help documents via the plug-in version either. At least not on a Mac. I can’t speak for the Windows version, but it wasn’t available during my tests.

It is highly recommended to make any adjustment in Lightroom after the DxO Optics Pro plug-in has processed your images. If you're using JPEG images and you export a copy of the original, you will lose any adjustments performed in Lightroom, but the DxO Optics Pro plug-in can perform all corrections. However, if you export your image with Lightroom adjustments, DxO Optics Pro will not be able to perform the optical and noise corrections. For RAW images, any adjustments performed in Lightroom before going into plug-in mode will be ignored by the DxO Optics Pro plug-in. But the plug-in will perform its entire range of corrections.

Recommendation
DxO Optics Pro 4 is a great package of digital enhancement tools for all levels of photographers, especially those who don’t want to think too much about their image corrections. It isn’t a replacement for Adobe Photoshop and isn’t meant to be. While you can accomplish many of the same tasks in Photoshop that you can in DxO Optics Pro 4, you have to be more of a Photoshop expert to execute those tasks with accuracy—especially the geometry and optics. The software’s strongest feature is its ability to correct images based on predetermined algorithms according to specific cameras and lenses. By uploading the appropriate modules for your gear and enhancing in DxO Optics Pro 4, you will be correcting for problems you may not even be aware of. And that may translate into better prints, better sales and happier clients.

DxO Optics Pro 4 takes the time commitment out of image correction for those who have pushed a few pixels in Photoshop and are easily frustrated because they can’t do what they know the program is capable of. Let DxO do the heavy lifting, and if you still need to mask part of an image, duplicate layers or remove wrinkles, then head over to Photoshop. But for most image corrections such as color balance, geometry correction and HSL, DxO Optics Pro 4 is going to take care of you.

Note: DxO Optics Pro 4 will allow you to enhance photos taken with a point-and-shoot, but the software was built with DSLR shooters in mind. DxO Labs has profiled only a small number of point-and-shoots to correct for geometry and optics. You can get the list here. To get the most out of this application, you should be shooting with a DSLR.