DxO PhotoLab 3: The future of photo editing software?
The photography market moves quickly and innovation is at the heart of it. One company that is driving that change is DXO and with their latest offering - DxO PhotoLab 3 - they certainly mean business. The new software is feature rich and hosts a range of innovative updates.
Learning a new piece of software is always intimidating. However, DxO make it really simple as the layout is very intuitive and with two main working areas - ‘Photo Library’ & ‘Customise’ - it’s pretty easy to guess what each one does! The depth and the power of the tools on offer in PhotoLab 3 is pretty easy to understate - it certainly has you well catered for! Once again, all of the tools and controls are self-explanatory by their nature and allow you take full control over your edits.
So how did I find using the software and will I be switching from Lightroom? The software is fantastic and I really like the speed and the range of tools on offer! The optical corrections seems spot on, which is great as I am slowly moving over to the new Canon ‘RF’ glass. One of the clear highlights for me was the ‘U Point’ Local adjustment tools - they are super accurate and make local adjustments really simple and effective - a real joy to use.
The colour management tools are also excellent and for someone like me, that likes to really tweak colours, it has me well covered! The DxO ‘Smart Lighting’ tool is also very impressive. I usually like to take complete manual control over my editing but it was certainly fun to see the software do some of the ‘heavy lifting’ in terms of brightening dark patches etc.
So will I be switching from Lightroom - Honestly, if it wasn’t for the hundreds of thousands of images in multiple Lightroom catalogues, I would switch in a heartbeat! The DxO software just feels faster and more, well, modern. If I was starting out again or looking to improve on my software experience from a photography point-of-view, I really don’t think you can go fdar wrong with PhotoLab 3, go find out more at the link below!