DxO PureRAW 6 Doesn’t Fit My Workflow

Unfortunately, because DxO PureRAW 6 doesn’t fit my existing workflow I am trying not to get too excited about it.

That may seem like a silly thing to say (I am prone to say silly things from time to time), especially as DxO PureRAW 6 is good – very, very good in fact, in my opinion.

In case you’re not up with the play, PureRAW 6 is not a full editing package. It is a pre-processor for RAW files. That’s all it handles – no TIFFs, no JPEGs, no PNGs, no other image formats – just RAW files and some DNGs.

PureRAW 6’s only task is to pre-process RAW files to serve up the cleanest, sharpest, most detailed and most optically correct files for post-processing in your editing software of choice.

Use PureRAW before anything else!

As a dyed-in-the-wool Photolab user, it is extremely unlikely that I will change my existing workflow to include PureRAW primarily because I don’t really need such a specialist piece of software for my type of photography.

This begs the question, just who is DxO PureRAW 6 for?

DxO PureRAW 6 is for photographers who are a lot more serious about their photography than I am.

It is for photographers who demand extremely high detail, ultimate sharpness and optical accuracy in their images; photographers, such as wildlife photographers, who use auto-ISO and occasionally end up with high ISO shots; astro-photographers and others who shoot at night.

I guess what I am saying is that PureRAW 6 is not for everyone – or rather, it is not a must-have for everyone.

In my case I feel DxO PureRAW 6 is overkill for the type of photography I do – especially when Photolab 9 does everything I need – and does it well for me.

But you may find it to be a very valuable tool in your photo-processing toolkit, especially if you are striving for perfection!

In May last year I tried PureRAW 5 out on a “set-up” shoot at ISO 3200 using my Nikon D7500. I marked it 4.8 out of 5.

For PureRAW 6 I have done a similar thing – and made another short video about it (I swore to myself I would not make any more videos for YouTube…), but this time I used my old Nikon D3000 with CCD sensor, and again shot at ISO 3200.

I think PureRAW 6 is impressive! And as you can see it works fantastically well on an older, noisy DSLR image…

All the high-tech stuff in PureRAW is outlined here, but for me the standout features are the introduction of High Fidelity Compression for output DNGs, and the new noise reduction/detail enhancing ML algorithm DeepPrime XD3.

I especially like the compressed DNG option as this would be a real space saver – and in all honesty I cannot tell the difference between the uncompressed and the compressed DNGs.

And, again in all honesty, I cannot see enough of a difference between RAW files processed in Photolab 9 using DeepPRIME XD2S and those processed using XD3 in PureRAW 6 that warrant me making a change to my workflow.

But if I did, I would use PureRAW 6 exactly as I used it in the above video.

Thanks for reading, and making it this far. Please feel free to send me feedback using the Leave a Reply form below.

( I think it is important to let you know that DxO have provided the software I use at no cost, and I am a DxO affiliate, so if you use the code RickH15 at the DxO store, new cusotmers will receive 15% discount off any NEW DxO product purchase, and I will receive a small commission at no extra cost to you.)