DxO Optics Pro Elite is aimed at photographers who want the option of a more automatic operation when it comes to RAW conversions. This software package gives you the choice to automatically fine-tune your images – including exposure, optical and geometric corrections – with the click of a button. After loading your RAW files into the program, DxO Optics Pro Elite will detect which kit the image was taken with – via the EXIF data – ensuring that any adjustments made are specific to that equipment. With a camera and lens database of over 2500 combinations and growing, Optics Pro is able to accurately perform tricky optical and geometric corrections to your images, cleverly righting issues such as barrel distortion, vignetting and fringeing with very impressive accuracy.
Standard features such as exposure correction, contrast optimisation and dust removal are included, along with a Single Shot HDR mode that will right any under- or over-exposed areas in a shot using only data from the RAW file.
Optics Pro’s customisable interface is a great feature that allows you to tidy away any unused options and optimise your workflow. Automatic corrections are generally very good at removing Noise and correcting distortion issues, however, if there’s anything you’re not entirely happy with, you can always manually adjust the sliders to suit.
Optics Pro can also cleverly attach itself onto Lightroom 3 as a third-party plug-in to work in conjunction with the editing software, enabling you to take full advantage of both programmes from just a
single interface.
Having been subject to a recent price drop, DxO Optics Pro Elite is now a respectable £199 (from £269) and is on the right track to becoming an affordable photo editing asset. With a regular stream of updates available – the most recent adding support for the latest Panasonic GH2 and Sony SLT-A55 RAW files – paired with an active attitude towards expanding its already impressive camera body and lens database, this software can only get bigger and better.
Having access to so many automatic processes when working with a large amount of images is a great advantage, and could potentially help you to speed through your workload. And although not the cheapest package on the market, you’d be hard pushed to find another package with such accurate automated processing.
Minimum specHD Space: 200MB
RAM: 2GB
Operating System: XP (SP3), Vista, Win 7 or Mac OS X 10.5 and above
Processor: Pentium 4 or better / Intel Mac
PC & MAC
30-day free trial
www.dxo.com