DxO PhotoLab 10: The Upgrade Photographers Have Been Waiting For?
DxO PhotoLab 10 Is Here — And a Few Features Genuinely Surprised Me
DxO just dropped PhotoLab 10, and after spending time putting it through its paces, I've got thoughts. I made a full video walking through the new features (link below), but I wanted to share a few highlights here for anyone deciding whether it's worth the upgrade. As always, I'm not here to sell you on the software, just let you know what my experience has been with it so far.
Full disclaimer, DxO sent me an advanced copy so I have been working with it for a few weeks now. The things mentioned here are not just headline topic items, they are my thoughts and ideas after testing it out on a few photo shoots.
Don't worry, I'm not going to cover everything — there's too much for one post — but here are the updates that stood out to me most.
Depth Masks might be my favorite addition
This one's a game-changer. PhotoLab 10 now lets you make adjustments based on how far something is from the camera, not just its shape or color. The AI builds a depth map of your scene, so you can target the foreground, mid-ground, or background and dial in exactly where an effect lands. If you've ever fought with a tricky manual mask, this is a welcomed addition.
The controls over this masking tool feel very comfortable to use and you can make a detailed selection easily. I will note that sometimes this tool moves a little slow to update, but that is not as common as you may think.
AI Masks got a lot smarter
The AI masking now recognizes individual people in a scene — and even individual features like eyes, hair, and lips. For portrait and group shots, that means way less fiddling to isolate one person or one detail. Face segmentation takes it further with selectable areas like teeth, iris, skin, and more. This is a tool that has been available in LightRoom for a long time now, and it is a welcomed addition to DxO PhotoLab.
Sadly this tool can move slow, and I have not found anything that really makes it move faster, but I think overtime this will become a more streamlined feature. We all remember the first computers right... Now we have 500x more power in our smart phones than we ever had in one of those, so all I am saying here is the speed is not such a problem.
A direct path to Affinity
There's now a one-click button that sends your photo straight into Affinity for pixel-level work like retouching and compositing. You get DxO's RAW processing as your foundation and Affinity's editing tools for everything beyond that. Best of both worlds.
Now as much as this is a headline feature and I am happy to have it, the reality of this tool is that you are just exporting an image a little faster than using the export to disk. I really relate this to more of a elevated macro action that exports and opens a program. I look forward to the day that we get a little bit more integration like a true LightRoom and Photoshop workflow. Nonetheless, this is a great step in the right direction.
Want to see it all in action?
These are just a few of the updates — there's plenty more, including color grading, U Point in AI Masks, and automatic sensor dust removal. Rather than reading about all of it, watch me actually use these tools in my latest video:
Ready to grab it?
If you're sold and want to pick up DxO PhotoLab 10, you can get it straight from DxO. And as a thank-you to my community, use code FW15 at checkout to save 15% on your purchase. The coupon only works for new licenses. If you plan to upgrade from version 8 or version 9, then you are not able to get the discount.
Stay Inspired and Keep Creating!
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