DxO PhotoLab 3

DxO has introduced a new version of its photo editing software, DxO PhotoLab 3, which introduced new tools, keywords and extended camera/lens support to previous versions of PhotoLab. 

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New DxO ColorWheel

DxO PhotoLab 3's HSL (Hue, Saturation, and Luminance) Tool features a new adjustment mode which is based on a chromatic circle called the DxO ColorWheel. With this tool, you can select a colour range from eight different channels, fine-tune the value, select a replacement colour, and adjust your transitions to your heart's desire. A new Uniformity setting also lets you adjust colour variations within a specific range. The Saturation and Luminance sliders now operate more independently, which offers more flexibility, especially when converting from colour to black and white and creating partially desaturated images.

New Local Adjustments Palette

As well as a new DxO ColorWheel, a Local Adjustments palette has been added so you can manage local correction masks that have been layered within a single image. With the new palette, you can make them visible, mask them, or adjust their opacity individually. The tool also lets you reverse the selected mask with a single click.

Better Repair Tool 

Continuing with the photo editing tools, the Repair Tool, which acts like a brush that can erase unwanted elements from an image, has had an update so now, you can manually reposition the area in the source image that you want to use to reconstruct an area in the image being edited. In addition to Repair Mode, DxO PhotoLab 3 also offers Clone Mode, which lets you directly replace the area you are editing. Feathering and opacity level can also be adjusted in both modes.

Keywords Introduced 

Over in the PhotoLibary, users can now use keywords along with the search criteria that are already available in the DxO PhotoLibrary (metadata, shooting parameters, folders, etc.). The keywords associated with an image can now be displayed in the interface, including when they are imported from other software programs. You can now add, delete, or rename keywords for one or multiple images simultaneously and include them in multi-criteria searches (macOS version only; this feature will be available in the Windows version in the near future). DxO PhotoLab 3 also offers more complete information and metadata display options as well as additional Projects management options.

New camera support

DxO PhotoLab 3 continues to add new cameras to the list of equipment it supports. It recently added the Canon G5 X Mark II and G7 X Mark III, the Nikon P1000, the Panasonic Lumix DCG90/ G95/G99/G91, the Lumix DC FZ1000 II and Lumix TZ95/ZS80, the Ricoh GR III, and the Sony A7R IV and RX100 VII. Plus, more than 3,000 optical modules have also been added to the database, which now includes over 50,000 different camera/lens combinations.

The software’s de-noising capabilities for RAW photos taken with certain Canon and Olympus cameras have been improved as well.

Price & availability
The ESSENTIAL and ELITE editions of DxO PhotoLab 3 (PC and Mac) are now available for download on DxO's website for the following launch prices until 24 November 24 2019:

• DxO PhotoLab 3 ESSENTIAL Edition: £86.99 instead of £112
• DxO PhotoLab 3 ELITE Edition: £129.99 instead of £169

Those looking to upgrade from a previous version of PhotoLab can do so at the following launch prices until 24 November 24 2019:

• DxO PhotoLab 3 ESSENTIAL Edition: £42.99 instead of £59
• DxO PhotoLab 3 ESSENTIAL to ELITE Edition: £84.99 instead of £119

Read our review of DxO PhotoLab 3.