DxO Launches Optics Pro 8 Image Processing Software

Working with your photos after moving them from camera to computer took a leap forward yesterday with the launch of DxO Optics Pro 8, a major update of the French company's image quality processing software. Available beginning on Oct. 29th for the Mac and Windows platforms, DxO Optics Pro 8 automatically adjusts contrast and light, applies advanced optical corrections, and offers more precise color management than its predecessor. Aiming for enhanced performance, version 8 also sports a redesigned user interface.

DxO Optics Pro is based on the company's unique approach to image processing, and is built on a database of extensive camera and lens calibrations from DxO's labs in Paris and Seattle. The software integrates tools delivering automatic RAW and JPEG image processing, including optical and geometrical corrections, exposure and contrast, noise reduction, and color and detail preservation.

The new DxO Smart Lighting feature brightens photos by optimizing contrast and lighting. The technology adapts to image content, allowing users to adjust image contrast using a single slider. DxO Smart Lighting automatically recovers details in highlights and shadows under a variety of shooting conditions. For advanced users, DxO Optics Pro 8 is introducing a Selective tone tool for applying precise corrections separately to highlights, midtones, and dark zones.

DxO?s biggest claim to fame is its extensive database of lens and camera performance characteristics, currently about 9,000 strong. Exhaustively detailed, it includes measurements of how zoom lenses perform at every focal length throughout their entire zoom range. But the company has big plans, it intends to vastly expand its camera-lens performance database to more than 20,000 entries by the end of 2013.

Other new features include the ability to display thumbnail images in real time and a new integrated print module allowing photographers to directly for printing RAW or JPEG images on the fly.

DxO Optics Pro 8 is being offered in two editions, the standard, which includes support for consumer and popular-priced cameras, and an elite edition that supports high-end Digital SLR cameras. Special introductory pricing of $99 and $169, respectively, runs through Nov. 15. After that, pricing goes up to $169 and $299, respectively.