DxO PureRAW 3

Andy Westlake tries out the latest, most sophisticated version of DxO's raw pre-treatment software

- Andy Westlake

Two years after its original launch, DxO’s PureRAW software is still unlike anything else on the market. Like its predecessors, the latest iteration, DxO PureRAW 3, takes camera raw files and converts them to DNG raw files for use in your favourite imaging software. Crucially, it does so while applying the firm’s impressive lens-correction and noise-reduction algorithms, which can give dramatically better final output compared to developing your files using Adobe Lightroom or Camera Raw. The resultant 16-bit linear DNG files can still be adjusted in exactly the same way as the original camera raw files, in terms of white balance, colour and tonality. This allows you to get the benefit of DxO’s image-processing expertise without changing your existing workflow.

New features 

Compared to last year’s version, DxO PureRAW 3 comes with some significant updates. Firstly, it gains DxO’s latest DeepPRIME XD processing algorithm. The XD label indicates that this is designed deliver extra detail compared to the existing DeepPRIME, at the expense of longer processing times.

The second major update concerns how lens-aberration corrections are applied. Previously, you didn’t get a whole lot of control over this. But now, lens softness can be corrected across a choice of four levels; vignetting and chromatic aberration corrections can each be toggled on or off; and distortion correction can be applied with a choice of three cropping modes.