UPDATE – APRIL 2023:

Adobe just added AI Denoise abilities to Lightroom Classic and they are fantastic. I honestly don’t think anyone really needs the PureRaw plugin any more. I’ve not bothered to upgrade to PureRaw 3 as the new AI Denoise in Lightroom Classic is already so much better to use than PureRaw 2 was, without any of the PureRaw 2 bugs I came up against. So why bother spending more money when AI Denoise is built into Lightroom Classic at no extra cost?

I’ll leave my outdated review of PureRaw 2 up below, for posterity. The ‘tl; dr’ is this:

  • the PureRaw plugin was at the time the best denoise tool for Fuji raw files
  • but there’s no adjustable settings, and no preview – you have to actually run it to see what you’ll get
  • the auto-import process rarely works properly; I usually need to ‘synchronise folder’ after I run it, which leads to a torrent of import error messages about an hour later for some reason, all of which need to be manually dismissed (lots of fun if you ran it on dozens of images in a batch!)
  • and when it does finally import, while it applies my edits I usually need to correct the exposure or the white balance as everything is often a tiny bit too dark and/or warm. DxO claim they can’t reproduce this even though I sent many, many examples.

Whereas with the first generation of AI Denoise built into Lightroom Classic:

  • it also does amazing work with Fuji files
  • there’s an adjustable strength slider, AND it shows you a preview
  • it automatically adds the resulting DNG to the library, applies your edits, AND creates a stack with the original raw file
  • the resulting DNG looks EXACTLY like the original raw… just cleaner. No colour shifts to speak of, unlike DxO PureRaw 2

So, in all honesty, for my purposes batch cleaning noisy event and wedding shots, I don’t need the DxO PureRaw plugin any more. I’m sure pixel peepers will find plenty to complain about, and perhaps PureRaw 3 does ‘better’ if you get really super picky on 100% crops, but as a professional event photographer and wedding photographer I’m perfectly happy with the new AI tools in Lightroom Classic.

Want a second opinion? This review by Alex Armitage makes it really clear that Adobe’s AI Denoise tool pretty much blows away ALL third party denoise tools:

 

ORIGINAL POST:

I’d never heard of DxO PureRaw before March 2022. My workflow for editing my Fuji raw files is pretty straightforward and I don’t tend to use anything other than Lightroom to import, edit, and export to JPG.

But let’s face it: while Lightroom is certainly ‘good enough’, Adobe doesn’t seem to know how to properly de-mosaic and de-noise/sharpen raws from Fuji’s X-Trans sensor, or just doesn’t care enough to add dedicated handling for them.

I’ve dabbled with Topaz Labs tools like DeNoise and Sharpen, but found the DeNoise tool was prone to producing plasticky smooth images even with every slider turned down. And they’re a lot of effort to use on a more than a couple of shots.

My entire workflow is built around Lightroom so I learned to make Lightroom work for me. At the sizes most clients print images, the output is absolutely fine, if a little noisier at high ISO than I know my files could be in other apps.

Enter, the DxO PureRaw 2 plugin for Lightroom

With PureRaw 2, DxO have added Fuji raw file support that promises vastly superior de-mosaicing, de-noising, and sharpening than Lightroom can offer. It also does distortion control, although this is largely on a par with what LR can do with Fuji files.

With a LR plugin the idea is you edit your Fuji raw files, put the finished raws through PureRaw 2’s DeepPrime tool and have the resulting dng files imported seamlessly back into your LR catalog with the existing raw edits copied over too.

It sounds perfect for Fuji shooters, especially us wedding and event photographers!

There was a bumpy start with quite a few bugs, but I’m happy to say that after a few months of updates most of the bugs are gone and it’s incredibly powerful.

When I was shooting with the X-T3 I started running almost every wedding and PR shoot image over ISO 3200 through DxO PureRaw 2 before I exported to JPG and the results were excellent.

(UPDATE: Now I’m on the X-T5 I find I’m getting better results in LR than before and I’m only using DxO Pure Raw 2 on the noisiest high ISO images. And even then only on very special images the client may want to print. Not to say DxO isn’t as useful, but the improved sensor on the X-T5 seems to lend itself to better quality images from the outset.)

DxO Pure Raw 2 sharpens Fuji X-Trans images beyond what LR can manage, and it handles noise in high ISO images more smoothly than LR, and to my eye much more realistically than Topaz.

However, it does add quite a bit of time to your workflow if you’ve got more than a few images to process (my 2017 iMac handles 26MP -T3 files in about 14 seconds each, but for my 40MP X-T5 it takes about 24 seconds each) but for weddings and events it’s become an essential part of my workflow for high ISO images.

But… there remain some awkward bugs.

Images don’t import automatically, you’ll need to ‘Synchronise folder’

One of the major draws of the DxO PureRaw 2 Lightroom plugin is that you can do everything without really leaving Lightroom.

The idea is you edit your Fuji raw files in LR, then push them all through the DxO plugin, and when it’s done they’ll be automatically re-imported back into LR, in whatever folder you set up, plus they’ll appear in their own dated collection set. And then your existing edit is automatically copied over to the newly imported DNG to match the original raw.

The problem is that the ‘automatic import’ part of this process is completely broken, at least for me.

Very, very occasionally the very first image in a batch will import, but that’s it. I’ve used DxO Pure Raw 2 on dozens of shoots at this stage and it has never, ever imported more than a single image from any shoot. And even then, sometimes even that single image isn’t imported.

The next problem is that eventually LR throws an import error dialog box at you, for each and every image, which needs clearing by clicking Okay. So if you’ve run the batch on hundreds of wedding images, eventually you’ll need to hold down the Return button until hundreds of error warnings are cleared.

The user workaround to this problem is simple: wherever you told DxO to create the folder to place the dng files, just go to the parent folder and use the ‘Synchronise folder’ command in LR.

LR will find the dng files, import them, and magically apply your existing raw edits to all those files, in just a few seconds. And most of the time this seems to stop the ‘import error’ issue – but not every time. It’s just not consistent.

Why the DxO plugin isn’t able to import correctly like it’s supposed to I don’t know, but this workaround sidesteps the problem for now.

The camera profile isn’t copied over

Once the DNGs are imported and you’ve given LR time to re-apply your edits to them, you’ll need to do a few final tweaks – mainly to correct the profile.

For some reason in my imports the profile is always left on Adobe Color. Even if I was using an official Lightroom camera profile (such as the Fuji Astia film simulation profile Adobe includes in LR), all the imported images are set to Adobe Color.

Here’s the workaround: once you’ve synchronised the folder and all the other settings have been copied over automatically, just select everything and apply the correct profile.

Not a big deal, unless you had some images using a different profile, such as maybe the Acros camera profile. Now you need to manually find those images that should use a different profile before you can batch-apply the profile to them.

That’s a pain in the arse, and I wish this was something they could fix.

Fujifilm X-T5 files come back about a third of a stop too dark

DxO recently added Fujifilm X-T5 support but every image I’ve run through it so far has come back noticeably darker than the raw file once my edits are applied. See the before/after screenshot of my Lightroom screen below, which clearly shows the difference in brightness between the original edited raw and the imported DNG (after applying my colour profile).

Adding +0.2 to +0.3 with the exposure slider brings the DNG back to the same brightness as the original edited raw file. That’s something you can easily fix using the relative adjustments of Quick Develop, rather than a preset (presets can’t save relative adjustments like that) but it’s annoying and will hopefully be addressed by DxO.

DxO PureRaw 2 dng files may seem to have a slightly different visual white balance (update: seemingly fixed)

Now you’ve got all your dng files using the exact same Develop settings as your original Fuji raw files, and you’ve got the correct profile applied to everything.

When I started using DxO PureRaw 2 I found that all the imported dng files were noticeably warmer in colour than the raw files, and sometimes a little greener in tint. Even if I ‘reset’ both the raw and the dng to be absolutely sure all settings are equalised (which they were already, but just to be sure), there was a noticeable difference.

Lately, I’ve found the difference isn’t as profound, so it’s possible my many (many!) emails to their support team resulted in a fix.

If you’re seeing the issue, here’s a sort-of workaround that seems to work for most images: a single click on the ‘Make Cooler’ button, and the ‘Make More Magenta’ button, in Quick Develop.

And fortunately, because we’re using the ‘relative’ controls in Quick Develop rather than the ‘absolute’ controls in Develop, we can batch adjust all the dng files like this.

But, like I say this issue seems to be much reduced lately.

If you turn off DxO’s lens correction controls, it seems to wipe out ALL lens corrections, even Fuji’s own corrections

Normally, with DxO Distortion Control turned on, it disables existing corrections from LR (or even Fuji’s in-camera corrections) and applies its own – the same as it does with LR’s Detail controls in order to run its own detail improvements.

But, if you turn PureRaw 2 Distortion control OFF, then instead of allowing existing corrections to work, it strips out ALL lens corrections.

This typically produces a distorted image, especially on wide angle lenses.

For example, using the Fuji 8-16 with PureRaw 2 Distortion Control turned on the image is great, similar to what Lightroom presents. But with the Distortion setting turned off, I get a massively distorted dng, even where no distortion at all was visible in the EVF when I framed the shot.

So, I guess that Fuji is applying distortion control in-camera even before pressing the shutter. That control is then written into the raw I see on the LCD, and Lightroom either reads that, or applies its own similar correction on import. Verticals and horizontals that were correct in-camera are correct on import to LR.

But with the DxO PureRaw 2 plugin, if you turn off their distortion control it chucks out all corrections. In the case of the 8-16 at 8mm I can see parts of the scene at the edges of the distorted frame that weren’t actually visible when I shot it.

Long story short

With just a couple of small issues you’ll need to keep an eye on, DxO PureRaw 2 can generally be trusted to work miracles with Fujifilm X-Series raw files, sharpening them far better than LR can, and applying excellent noise reduction that’s cleaner than LR and more realistic than Topaz.

But, the much touted auto-import feature doesn’t really work, and it doesn’t have the sense to allow existing lens corrections through when you turn that setting off in the plugin.

And the new update to add X-T5 files results in the final DNG consistently being too dark, needing a +0.3 exposure lift in Lightroom to match the original edited raw file.

But I’ve seen big improvements in other problems that I brought to DxO’s attention, and now it’s a big part of my workflow when exporting high ISO raw files for my event and wedding photography.

Highly recommended, especially for Fujifilm X-Series photographers.