This is my review of the new version of DXO Photolab 9. In this review I’ll tell you more about the software, the features and if this can be the Lightroom alternative you are looking for.
It has been a while since my last review of a version of DXO Photolab. The last one I reviewed was the 2023 version DXO Photolab 7. Why I didn’t write a review about DXO Photolab 8? Well to be honest, DXO Photolab 7 was already such a great peace of software I never bothered to upgrade. Why I wanted to try DXO Photolab 9? The inclusion of more AI tools that help with masking and upgrades to the already incredible noise reduction.
DXO’s lens and sensor knowledge
You might know DXO from their work in analysing lens- and sensor performance. This means they have an extensive knowledge about how certain lenses and sensors perform and how they interact with each other. DXO has always been strong in using this information in their Photolab software. When you import images the software will analyse the camera and lenses you have used and will prompt you to download the DXO correction modules. The modules have all the information needed to improve your images by correcting lens errors like softness, chromatic aberrations, vignetting and fringing.
The effect is quite pronounced. Turning on the ‘Lens sharpness Optimisation’ will instantly improve your image and make it more crisp. This will give you a great starting point for your editing.
No subscription
Let’s talk about one of the biggest advantages of PhotoLab9 vs. Lightroom: You don’t need a subscription to use the software. DXO PhotoLab 9 is available to buy, you pay once and can use it as long as you want. One of the reasons I didn’t upgrade from DXO Photolab 7 to Photolab 8 was that the old version suited me perfectly fine and did everything I needed it to do. In a subscription like Adobe’s Creative Cloud you pay monthly to get all the new functionality and upgrades. But do you need those upgrades?
I do think it is a shame they don’t have the ‘Essential’ and ‘Pro’ versions any more. With the older versions you could choose a version with less bells and whistles for less money. This was a perfect option for the casual user. Now there is only one version available that will cost you 239.99 euro (or 119 euro for an upgrade from Photolab 7 or 8). For comparison Lightroom will cost you 12,09 euro per month, that adds up to over 145 euro per year. So two years of Lightroom is more expensive than investing once in DXO Photolab 9.
In my opinion that is a big advantage for PhotoLab. If you use your photo editing software professionally on a daily base a subscription or 12 euro per month is probably not going to be a deal-breaker. But for more casual users it is a lot of money, and you probably don’t even need it. So buy once without reoccurring costs is a great way to save money in the long term.
New in DXO Photolab 9
There are some new functions and improvements in DXO Photolab 9. For me the most important new functions are:
- AI Masking
- Deep Prime noise reduction
- Advanced batch image renaming
- Support for iPhone HEIF and ProRAW images
I’ll come back about these new improvement later on in the review. But first lets take a look at the interface and using DXO Photolab 9.
Using Photolab 9
The DXO Photolab 9 interface has been fine tuned, but is still pretty much the same as the previous versions. And this is a good thing, if it ain’t broke don’t try to fix it. The interface will also feel familiar enough if you are coming from Lightroom or other editing software.
One thing that is different from Lightroom is the importing of images. In Lightroom you have to import the images in the software before you can edit them. This always felt a little double to me. Why import images that are already on my computer? Photolab keeps it simple. Just copy the images to a folder on your computer and select the desired folder to start editing them. No worries, Photolab will still offer non-destructive editing and will not alter your local files in any way.
After selecting the folder with your images in the PhotoLibrary module you can skip through the images to select the ones you like. You can use a star-system to choose the ones that are worth editing. Performance in the PhotoLibrary is very good with the option to quickly zoom in to the image to check for sharpness or other details. A histogram and EXIF information are available on the right side of the screen. You also have the option to add keywords to manage your images and make them easier to find.
Editing in Photolab 9
After grading the images in DXO Photolab 9 you can switch over to the ‘customize’ tab to edit the images. The layout is familiar and easy to use. On the left side you have the histogram, a small move/zoom image, a editing history overview and the preset editor. On the bottom of the screen you have the film roll with the selected images. Here you can also use the filter to select which images you want to see and which ones you’d like to hide (for instance by showing only 3 star or better images).
The right side of the screen has all the editing tools. These are categorised in tabs with light, colour, sharpness and corrections, geometry and distortion, effects (like grain, watermarking, blur, vignetting etc.) and local adjustments. Cropping, straightening images and other tools are conveniently clustered at the top of the screen.
Presets
In earlier version of DXO Photolab the software would use certain presets by default when importing images. You could turn this off, but by default your images would be optimised by the software. I never liked this, and turned it off by default as I like to start with the clean image to check how it looks first. After this I appreciate the option to use a preset to give me a starting point for my editing.
In DXO Photolab 9 you have a big selection of presets you can apply. Some of these come from DXO’s Filmpack software and will be more creative and have a bigger impact on the image. I like the DXO Style Standard – Neutral and DXO Standard best.
It depends on the camera I’ve used which I liked best. For my Leica SL2-S the DXO Style Standard – Neutral was great. But when I apply this to images shot on my Nikon Z6III the colours get way to strong for my liking. On the Nikon I like DXO Standard better as a starting point.
I recently shot a wedding of friends (together with an other friend as a second shooter) and we took about 3000 images throughout the day with both camera’s. In these cases having the presets to ‘equalise’ your images and get your editing started is fantastic. It saves you so much time. Performance of DXO Photolab 9 was great by the way, even when editing so many images in one go.
DXO tools
Besides the presets that will change multiple parameters you also have specific DXO tools. These are found on the right side of the screen among the normal editing options. You have functions like DXO Smart Lighting (increasing dynamic range), DXO ClearView Plus (quick improvement of contrast and sharpness and removing of haze and fog).
Smart Lighting works very good for almost any image, and will quickly do what you normally do with the sliders for highlights, mid tones, shadows and blacks. I always turn this on and fine-tune further with the sliders. ClearView is great for landscape images, but the standard intensity setting of 50 is a bit much for my taste. When set to 10-15 I love the effect and it will clear up your image and increase detail and colours.
AI Masking
On of the reasons I wanted to try DXO Photolab 9 was the improved AI masking function. In Lightroom the automatic masking function is already very well developed and makes editing a lot easier. This was one thing where I feel the older versions of DXO Photolab couldn’t keep up with Lightroom.
The AI masking allows you to use subject detection to mask certain parts of the image for editing. This is great for editing only the background, only the sky or only your subject. I found the selection box method to work best for masking people in the image. You draw a box around your subject and let the software take care of creating the mask for you. The mask is very precise in most occasions and will even select hairs and is able to separate them from the background. If it misses a part you can easily select it to be added.
For masking the background or sky I used the selection pointer. By just clicking on the background or the sky the software would create the perfect mask. I almost never have to add or detract parts of the mask, since it is spot on most of the time.
The masking isn’t as easy to use as it is in Lightroom, but it is close. I think the subject selection in Lightroom is still a little easier and quicker, with the icons to select the desired subject for your mask. In DXO Photolab 9 it takes a little more time to learn how the system works, but once you get the hang of it the results are just as good as in Lightroom.
Noise reduction
DXO’s Deep Prime noise reduction was already top notch in Photolab 7, but improvements have been made. You have multiple options for adding noise reduction, with increasing effect:
- Standard – basic de-noising
- DeepPrime 3 – a quick and effective noise reduction that will work great on most images with moderate to heavy noise. Rendering is quite fast.
- DeepPrime XD/XD2s – a more effective noise reduction method with more attention to restoring details. Works very well on images with a lot of noise that normally would be unusable.
- DeepPrime XD3 X-Trans – comparable to XD/XD2s but only for images made on FujiFilm X-Trans sensors (like the X-T5 / X100VI). I can’t test this since I’ don’t have a camera with X-Trans sensor.
Only the basic de-noising is immediately visible in the preview. You can choose to also render the preview for the DeepPrime options in real time but this will slow down your system as it has to render the preview with each image you open. And re-render it again when you zoom in or out. For me this didn’t work (but perhaps real-time rendering works better on more powerful and newer systems). I render the de-noising when exporting the images. This works fastest, but you can’t quickly preview the effect when editing. I don’t mind since the effect is spot on all of the time.
As for the improvements over Photolab 7; I don’t see a big difference in normal DeepPrime in DXO Photolab 9. But I do think I see some better detail restoration when using DeepPrime XD/XD2s. But as I said, the de-noising in Photolab has always been very good.
Batch re-naming
This might not be relevant to you, but I like to rename my images when exporting them. I already did this in Lightroom and always was a little disappointed that Photolab 7 couldn’t do this. That has been fixed in DXO Photolab 9.
Why would you like to rename your images? Well there can be many reasons, but I don’t care for the basic DSC_0567 or L000231 format my camera’s make since this doesn’t mean anything for me. I like to have the camera model and lens used in the name so I can quickly identify images and the used hardware. But you can also use other parameters, like the shutter speed, ISO setting, date, time or others. The options are very extensive.
iPhone images
New is the support for iPhone images in Photolab 9. You can now edit HEIF and ProRaw images from your iPhone. This is a welcome option for people that use their smartphones for serious photography. Yes, your iPhone will produce perfectly usable images right out of the box and the editing option in the phone are plenty. But you will always be stuck with the computational rendering Apple chooses for your. Editing in your own software gives you more control.
The other reason could be that you can now mix and match your smartphone images with those of your camera. And you can edit them in the same software, making the process a lot more fluid. This also helps to keep the same look by using the same presets and the same processing, editing and exporting workflow. I like this for vacation photo’s as I tend to use both my serious camera’s and my iPhone when exploring.
Is DXO Photolab 9 the right Lightroom alternative for you?
Of course this is a question you can only answer for your self. But I think DXO Photolab 9 should be considered when you are looking for an easy to use, fast, full featured and no-subscription photo editor. The fact you don’t need a subscription is a big plus, especially if you aren’t a full time professional user. But if you are a professional I don’t see any reason why DXO Photolab 9 couldn’t be considered. When editing the wedding I shot recently I had the option to edit the images in Lightroom (which I still use at my day-time job because we need certain plugins) or DXO Photolab 9. I chose Photolab since I just like the workflow better. And the results have been noting short of spectacular.
The DXO modules are a great way to improve your image quality making images look more crisp. The colours in Photolab look great right out of the box and the many presets give you a great starting point for your editing. The AI Masking is a welcome addition to speed up your editing, and while it isn’t as easy to use as Lightrooms yet it will give you the same final result already. And from my experience DXO will improve functionality with regular updates.
Pro’s
- No Subscription, buy, keep and use for as long as you’d like
- Easy to use, clean interface
- Good performance, even with big files and large series
- No need to import images, just select the folder and start editing
- Very good DXO optical modules – clear improvement of the image quality
- Fantastic noise reduction
- Great presets
- Ai Masking to help in local adjustments
- Batch renaming now available
- Works with iPhone images out of the box
- Good integration with other DXO software like Nik Collection
Con’s
- No more cheaper ‘essential’ option to reduce cost when you don’t need all the functionality
- Real time rendering of DeepPrime rendering can be too slow (but rendering at exporting is a good alternative)
Convinced? You can buy DXO Photolab 9, or just download the trial to test it for yourself. I’m sure you will be as convinced as I am.
There are affiliate links in this review. If you use those to buy DXO Photolab 9 I will make a small commission on the sale that helps me to keep this blog online. And the best thing: I doesn’t cost you anything!