No more Noises: DXO can be the saver for Hyper Long exposure photography ?

Pureraw and photolab6

DXO is increasingly promoting Pureraw and photolab6 these days, and their ads pop up wherever I go to the photo-related site. (A bit irritating, huh? (-_-)) like this.

Since I use DXO’s NIK collection, mainly Silver Efex pro, but I am not interested in either PureRAW or Photolab since I’ve used Lightroom and Photoshop in my workflow for a long time, and they’ve worked well great so far.
Thought, there is one thing I dont use a fuction much in Lightroom :Noise reduction.
slight use of NR(noise reduction) in LR(Lightroom) is OK, but when I use intensevelly, the image get soffer, and the detatil has gone.

So, I’ve been pretty curious about their AI NoiseReducion technology, “DeepPRIME”.
In this blog post, I’ll give it try with some of my raw data, which have many noises,

Let’s find out whether it is useful or not so much with me.

Part1: Old data Die-hard

Make the old raw clean
The first image(above )you see is the lookup of the Transamerica Pyramid Center building: captured by D7000(cropped censor) at my first trip to San Francisco in 2014.
The image was certainly underexposed (36sec), but the texture of the long exposure clouds looks fine. so I adjusted the exposure and shadow.

The adjusted image looks fine, but to see it with 100%, the noises were pretty apparent in the boosted shadow area.

Which and Which: PureRAW or PhotoLab ?

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Both use the DXO’s NR engine, so the NR result is the same.
Only, and the most advantage of Photolab 6 i: it has DeepPRIME XD.

On DXO’ website, DeepPRIME XD is more powerful than DeepPRIME.
So let me try with Photolab 6.

Photolab 6

Once you installed photoLab6, you can use as a pluguin from Lightroom.
It was eazy.

Lightroom vs Photolab

Let’s see the difference between Lightroom’NR and DXO’NR.
I use DXO NR with [PRIME]

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B

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C

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Both image were also slightelly sharpend in the each program.
Here is the bigger image.

Photolab 6 [Noise Reduction (PRIME)]

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Lightroom

My impression so far…

Maybe it was difficult to figure out the differences between two images.
So here is my impression. I can say simply saying;

DXO’ NR is better than LR’s

This is true, but this is not mean Lightroom’s NR is bad.
So here is a comparison.

Comparing with Ligtroom’ Denoise

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As you can see see the above the difffernce with two is very small.
However, preserving the very detials of the architecture (especially in the shadow), DXO’ NR did a great job.
Still, today’s Adobe Lightroom’ NR have an enough capablity working with normal noises.

Judge by yourself
The best way is download the program and examine with your own images.
You can down load the Photolab6 here : 1 month free trial.
Or PureRAW2.

Part2 : Nightscape

I think the initial image was too easy for DXO’NR.
So here is another example from the same trip in 2014 from S.F.

D7000,10-24mm F8, 230seconds.
(I forgot about whether a ND filter was used or not. Maybe 3 stops ND filter was used.
Not for sure though…)

The original RAW

As you can see the original RAW has a large amount of shadow areas for forground.
Lets compare the three images with after postprocess:
(I recommand to click to see the bigger image.)
1.NO Noise Reduction
2. NR with Lightroom
3. NR with DXO photolab (deepPRIME XD)

I applied the same adjustment in Lightroom.

1.No noise reduction
[To Click for the bigger image]

As you can see there were so much noise.
Color noise and dead pixels are apparent entire image.

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Lightroom NR

I applied NR so strongly that the image went so softened. It looks good but there are still ugly dots which were quite visible.

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DXO NR (DeepPRIME)

So clean and looks natural.

Comparison: LR vs DXO(DeepPRIME)

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The ugly dots which were visible in LR’NR were gone. Even using NR strongly, DXO preserves the details.

My impression so far…2

DXO’ NR is just AMAZING for eliminating noises in the long exposure in Nightscapes.
Hyperlong exposure in Nightscape is challenging since it makes many noises, especially with
Higher ISO.
Now that I can say DXO PureRAW (or PhotoLab) surely is the saver for Night photography.

How about day time hyper long exposure ?

So how about the program work for my main area; daytime Hyperlong exposure photography?

Actually, I’ve already tested it in Part 1, but the image was just a 36 seconds capture,

So in the final chapter, let’s see some of the intensive hyper-long exposure images from my archives.

Part3: Daytime hyper long expposure images

Here is 600-second hyper-long exposure image.
D800E, PC-E 24mm, with Formatt Hitech 16 stops circular filter.

The image was captured on a cold day January in 2018.
So there were not so many heat noises, but to see it closely, they have many noises.
TO identify, and have a better view of the noises, I gave it the bluish tone.

As you can see, there is many of color noise or dead pixels across the image.
They were not stand out, and I know I can handle them in the post process
but I hope they were gone before the BW post process.
Can DXO’ NR eliminate all of these noises?
Let’s find out.

Comparison among 4 NR in PhotoLab 6 Elite

You should know about the kind of 4 noise reducion in DXO.
You can use 3 NR in PureRAW2: High Quality, PRIME, DeepPRIME
Plus Photolab6, you can use 4:High Quality, PRIME, DeepPRIME. DeepPRIME XD

I use DeepPRIMEXD this time, which is the Best NR of DXO so far.

Again, I gave the image purple to see better only noises in the sky. Let’s check how the Long exposure noise was treated with each DXO’ NR.

I was quite shocked when “Deep PRIME” eliminated most of the heat noises and dead pixels in the image. And with “DeepPRIME XD”, they killed all noises.

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The great thing was that it preserve the details of the images. They only killed the noises.
I’m not exaggerating the result. This is just a fact.

Final part : More harsh image

DXO won. I was totally convinced. But how about more harsh noised image?

Especially Hyper long exposure in Hot summer?
I brought this image, which was captured in Hot summer July in 2014.
181 seconds. f13, iso100 camera D600.

Heat noises were everywhere! Hey, DXO how do you treat this!

Comparison

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Even on the Noises on the concrete, they only elimnated the noises and preserve the detail of the concrete.

Here is the entire image, NR by DeepPRIME XD. Please click to see the bigger image.

There are some noises in the Left corner, but they can be easily eliminated in the post.

Final thought

As a hyper-long-exposure photographer, I’ve been living with noise for a long time.
I’ve acknowledged that long exposure photography occurred noises, and it’s inevitable.

Now that I can say the DXO surely is the saver for any type of long exposure photography, not to mention our beloved “Daytime Hyper long exposure photography”.
Welcome to DXO, and Goodby Noise!

Judge yourself.