DxO Photolab 3
DxO PhotoLab 3’s new HSL (Hue, Saturation, and Luminance) Tool is an exciting and superbly visual way to manage colour that can help you produce more creative and natural-looking images. The new DxO ColorWheel is a fantastic new colour adjustment tool that you can use to select colour ranges from eight separate channels, including orange and purple.
The DxO ColorWheel can fine-tune colour values, select replacement colours, and it can even adjust transitions and tints for truly distinctive effects. The new Uniformity Slider helps you standardize colour variations within a specific range, while the Saturation and Luminance Sliders now work independently of each other, making them perfect tools for converting colour to black and white without the use of complex masks. The new tools are ideal for partially desaturating images.
DxO Photolab 3
DxO’s USP is the intimate knowledge it has about your camera and the lenses you use. This allows it to know the problems that occur before even looking at the photos. This all happens automatically, so soft edges are sharpened. Though I know the camera manufacturer could do this, DxO can do this for a range of different cameras all through one interface.
The main interface for DxO is broken up into two sections, photo customisation and photo organisation. Photo organisation means you can tag, and add keywords to your photos for easier searching.
The organisation side offers several options for easier navigation of your photos. Thumbnail sizes can be changed easily with the drag of a slider, windows selection hotkeys all work, so I can hold CTRL and select multiple images. While indexing I found I could easily edit a photo at the same time. A huge thing for me is that I can search by EXIF, so I can search by focal length and get results.
In regards to the editing, there are a couple of major updates in PhotoLab 3:
- Hue, Saturation and Luminance (HSL)
- Local Edits
- Repair
DXO PhotoLab 3 HSL
The biggest update is the overhaul of the HSL Tool that:
“You can use to select colour ranges from eight separate channels, including orange and purple.”
This new HSL Tool utilizes the same look and feel of their ColorWheel and allows you to:
- Select a colour range from any of the eight preset channels
- Fine-tune the value you’ve chosen
- Select a replacement colour
- Adjust your transitions.
There’s even a “uniformity” setting. This setting will bring the colours in a pre-set range closer together in value.
Local Adjustments
Nothing major has changed for local adjustments, as this tool was already one of the most advanced tools offered. They have simply made the interface easier to use, by utilising a layers panel. This means you can select each adjustment individually if needed.
DXO PhotoLab 3 Repair
There’s always something in a photo you might want to get rid of, such as a bird, a person, or a piece of rubbish. DxO PhotoLab 3 can make them disappear with their new redesigned Repair Tool.
This includes big improvements to the ‘Repair’ mode and a brand new ‘Clone’ mode. The Repair mode works as a retouching brush that samples pixels from one part of an image for you to use in an area you want to reconstruct or repair. It’s the perfect way to cover up unwanted objects and it adjusts pixels to match the colour and lightness levels of the area you’re repairing.
The brand new Clone mode is the ideal way to replace areas of an image with an exact copy of another part of a photo. Opacity and Feather settings can be adjusted in both modes, making repairs look completely natural without harsh edges or visible transitions.
Everyone who takes photos should have DxO Photo Lab. It allows for easier edits and corrections. Finally, check out our other software reviews, or find us on Facebook and Twitter.
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