Is This the Best Lightroom Plugin?

A few months ago, I started processing all my raw photos with a new Lightroom plugin. It led to a significant increase in image quality, as I show in this article.

Imagine buying a new camera with more than three stops of improvement in low-light performance. In addition, replace your lenses with prime ones. That would be quite an investment, right? I did that switch for just $119. How is this possible, you might ask? It wasn't the literal switch I described above. I achieved the equivalent by installing DxO PureRAW4.

I started using AI in my photo-editing workflow when Adobe introduced its AI Noise Reduction feature in Lightroom. It was a game-changer, especially for my woodland and night photography. At first, I didn't know if I needed a plugin to take over the noise reduction from Lightroom. But, since DxO PureRAW4 does not only remove noise from images but also improves sharpness and detail, I thought I'd give it a try. For the first 14 days, you can do so for free.

DxO PureRAW4 Results

I was surprised by the results. I first used it for some photos taken at ISO 800. Not only did those look as if they'd been shot at ISO 100 afterward, but they were also a lot more detailed. I continued to push the plugin: How would it fare against Lightroom when processing a night photo shot at ISO 6400? You can see for yourself - left is Lightroom, right is DxO.

I used a strength of 100 in the Lightroom AI Noise Reduction to completely remove the noise. In DxO, a "Luminance" setting of 85 combined with a "Standard" setting for "Lens softness" was enough. The processing took roughly the same time for both versions, which on my Dell XPS 9510 is around 30 seconds.

The comparison shows a 100% crop of the upper right corner of the image. Corner areas usually show the most noise because they are inherently darker due to vignetting than the center areas. You can see that both results look perfectly clean while not compromising any detail in the stars. With DxO, I still have a bit more headroom to play with, and it seems ISO 6400 isn't the limit for my night photography anymore. The raw without any NR applied will put those results into perspective.

What I also love about DxO is the possibility to fine-tune the details. I typically use "Standard" as a setting for "Lens softness," and also the "Luminance" setting can stay at its default value of 40 for 90% of the photos I edit. But similarly to when I increased the noise reduction in the night photo above, I can also enhance the details for problematic images.

On a recent trip to Fuerteventura, I shot a beautiful sunrise one morning. For the final photo, I switched to the long lens for a detailed shot of the mountains rising from the clouds. I guess I was still a bit tired because after I focused, I decided to zoom in a bit more. Sure enough, the photo was soft.

Below, you see a comparison between the best I could do with Lightroom's detail sliders and DxO with its "Lens softness" set to "hard." You can see the sharpening fringes at the high-contrast edges this setting introduces. I show how simple it is to remedy in the feature video. What's remarkable is the amount of detail I suddenly have in the photo. It's as if I had set the focus properly in the first place, and I now have something to work with.

The capability to dramatically improve sharpness and noise in a photo makes PureRAW 4 the perfect extension to use on woodland images. It's also easy to combine it with focus stacking software like Helicon Focus, as it offers batch processing. Under "File - Plug-In-Extras - Process instantly with DxO PureRAW 4," you can apply your settings to several images.

This way, you can make DxO part of your raw editing workflow. Use it to transform your raw photos into DNG files. You can further optimize those in Lightroom or Capture One before feeding them into Helicon Focus. Since Helicon Focus also supports a DNG workflow, it's a natural fit between the two plugins. Because of this, it has never been easier to create photos like the one below, which involved high ISO settings for the foliage and focus stacking for depth of field.

With this software, I no longer worry about windy days when photographing in the forest or other moving elements. If necessary, ISO 1600 is now an option that gives me clean and detailed results on my Canon R5. Even ISO 3200 is no longer an obstacle. It is great because now I don't have to worry about getting a new camera. Using software like DxO PureRAW 4 has bought my Canon R5 a few more years.

And if you're wondering if a DNG conversion degrades the image quality of your raw files, I have used DNGs for 15 years and never noticed problems. I only use lossless compression and never tried the "lossy" setting.

Conclusion

While DxO delivers impressive results, I found that, same as Lightroom's AI Noise Reduction, you must be careful with Milky Way photos. You'll see artifacts around the structure of the Milky Way if you use those AI tools. You can use the preview mode of DxO to fine-tune the settings - it works much better than Lightroom's AI Noise Reduction preview. Disabling the "Lens softness" correction does the trick. It also helps to perform image averaging for such photos because it doesn't introduce artifacts.

There is another little caveat, at least on my system. PureRAW 4 crashes about 20% of the time during the processing of the photos if I use the AI-powered DeepPrime XD2. Repeating the same processing will usually work, so it's not a big deal for me. But test it on your system with the trial version first. Also, install the latest drivers to avoid problems.

You should also be aware that the results from such AI tools will vary based on the cameras and lenses you use. As they have been trained on photos taken with different camera lens combinations, some might give better results than others.