I have been tracking this software program ever since I first heard about it towards the end of last year, if I remember correctly, and I thought that I would share my initial findings on the programme with you.
I have tested DxO Optics Pro on some pictures provided to me by a friend who is incidentally also a photographer on this site. As the pictures that I tested were not mine I won't be supplying the pictures. Just plain results that: --
1. The sharpness level of the picture goes up from what I have seen by somewhere between one and three stops depending on the initial sharpness of the picture.
2. The degree of barrel and pincushion distortion is exceptional, providing almost perfectly delineated pictures.
3. The local contrast on the image is changed only marginally on the 300D
4. As of yet DxO Optics Pro does not support vignetteing -- so if I get the chance to test it later on then I will let you know how that goes
5. Makes 300D pics about 1 meg bigger due to added detail
I guess the main question that needs to be answered for the product is what uses does it have?
I suppose professionals and people who print pictures very large are the main people who will benefit. I really cannot see DxO Optics Pro being very helpful on this site as the downsampling of the images will cripple the image quality too much. You may get some slight benefit but seeing as most people on this site seem to like pictures over sharpened I would just stick with the unsharp mask. It's a lot cheaper. DxO Optics Pro can certainly do things that the likes of Photoshop cannot, but the price tag is a bit too high for the benefits that it offers. I personally feel that a price tag between $50 and $200 for the software, a camera module and two lens modules would be a fairer price. However I am sure that many people will pay the price tag asked as the software can achieve things that would otherwise be almost impossible.
You might also like to note that there are other applications available on the Internet that can do some of the things that DxO Optics Pro can achieve, however they usually cost between $30 and $50 apiece. Also they generally address only one of the image problems that DxO Optics Pro can correct. The final thing to note about these other applications is that you would need to run several of them to achieve the same effect that DxO Optics Pro can achieve in being run on just one picture.
DxO Optics Pro also has excellent batch job capabilities. The one last thing to note is that you have to run the software on the pictures directly out of the camera, once edited you cannot run DxO Optics Pro on the pictures.
I welcome anybody else's opinions on this software, and hope that my opinions prove helpful to some of you.
EDIT -- Added point 5 above.
Message edited by author 2004-05-27 12:06:48. |
