Ayoul
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 Personal short review of DPL 6 | |
Hi guys. Last year I wrote my personal review of DPL5. You can find the review here
As a big fan of the software (despite a love/hate relationship with it), I bought the new DPL 6, and here is what I can say about it, in case anyone is interested. I posted this at the end of my DPL5 review, but as jwpstl pointed out, it would be better in a new thread.
I will focus of course only on the new things. Most of what I wrote a few months ago is still true, but a few things changed. So let's just see the changes listed in the release :
Deep Prime XD :
Ok, that's the new star of the show. It's supposed to be even better than Deep Prime. The main novelty compared to Deep Prime is that Deep Prime XD tries to guess, on a larger scale, where are the areas of details that have to be sharpened a little bit more, and what are on the opposite the area of low details, uniform colors or bokeh that can benefit from being smoothed a little bit more. Most of the time, it will be spot on. The wildlife photographer will probably like it a lot. It will smooth the background a little bit more effectively than Deep Prime and sharpen the fur or the feathers a little bit more.
But what about more complex subjects, where areas of details and areas that can benefit from being smoothed a little bit more are not that obvious, not that well separated from each other ? What about faces in low light ?
Well, Deep Prime XD creates sometimes a few unwanted artifacts while Deep Prime doesn't.
First sample :
This is a shot from my portfolio. I took it at an insane 64K iso, but I like it, so I kept it. On screen size, it's still ok for my taste.
Let's zoom in on the bride :
Deep Prime, 40 luminance :
Deep Prime XD, 40 luminance :
Ok, sure, she was not totally sharp right from the beginning. But there is a strange artifact on her mouth, slightly present with Deep Prime but way more visible with Deep Prime XD with default settings. Changing the "Noise model" slider to – 100 mitigate the effect, but not entirely :
Deep Prime XD Noise Model -100, 40 luminance :
Another face :
Deep Prime, 40 luminance :
Deep Prime XD, 40 luminance :
Nothing is right. Some areas of his face are strangely sharpened, not to mention the other people on the picture. Deep Prime XD even try to recover some non really existent details on the roof on the top right of the face. I much prefer the Deep Prime version here. There is undoubtly no more details on it, but sometimes it's better to let noise in areas than trying to guess what is details and what is not. You can play with the sharpness sliders to mitigate the effects of Deep Prime XD, but the harm is done.
Deep Prime XD Noise Model -100, 40 luminance :
The artifacts are gone, but the smoothing is too severe everywhere in the picture. It's not a solution for me.
In my opinion, Deep Prime XD is a step in the Topaz Denoise territory, where I can often see this kind of artifact. What is noise, what is details ? The software guesses for you. Undoubtly, Deep Prime allows more noise in the final picture than Deep Prime XD. But I trust Deep Prime more. Its intervention stays near the pixel level. With Deep Prime XD, I have the strange feeling that a little guy inside my computer is looking at my picture, and while he drinks a few beers, says : "hmmm this is noise, let's remove it" "Hohooo, this is some details that I don't want to lost, let's enhance it!".
Imho, It's not meant to replace Deep Prime but to complement it. As a wedding photographer, I won't use it. All my pictures benefit from Deep Prime, I know that. All my pictures are converted to DNG using Deep Prime, and I finish the job in C1. I just can't use Deep Prime XD with the same regularity, because it will harm some parts of the picture.
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