I picked up a Sony a6700 as it is much lighter than my Nikon DSLR, and I am very happy with it. I shoot RAW + JPG and don’t like to do much image manipulation. The only reason I shoot RAW is if I really want a high fidelity image or mostly if need to rescue issues such as white-balance, blown high or lows, .. etc.
However, I am not happy with DxO photo lab as it looks to add considerable noise for the RAW processing. I have attached 4 images. The first two are 100% crops of a JPG and RAW (ARW) file rendered by DxO. All corrections are off! You will see that the ARW file has a bunch of added noise.
The second two images are from the MacBook Pro’s Preview app. There is no added noise to the RAW file.
I reviewed this image with a different RAW editor, and there is no noise either. I then went back and checked my Nikon RAW files. There is no DxO issue added noise either. So, this may only be a Sony thing.
I am not a Mac user but my understanding is that the MacOS preview app applies basic, automatic adjustments to raw files by default. If that is true, did you disable those adjustments for the images you posted? Further, it is not uncommon for multiple raw viewers from different sources to present the look of the same raw file very differently. DxO did not add in color noise to that raw file. It is more likely the Mac viewer altered the image or used the raw file’s internal jpeg.
Please let us know which other raw editor you used that showed no noise in the raw image. Keep in mind that most raw software automatically applies adjustments to raw files on startup. Would you be willing to share the ARW raw file with us so we can try to assess what is happening here?
Thank you for taking the time to reply. I’ve uploaded the RAW and off the camera JPG to this message.
Tom, the other RAW converters I used were PhotoscapeX and RawTharapee. Both showed default images similar to the Mac Preview app.
Here is one epiphany. The color noise looks much worse on my MacBook screen than on my stand-alone monitor (BenQ). Ergo, I need to do some color management for this MacBook (I’m new to the Mac myself).
Another epiphany is that DxO’s Lens Sharpness Optimization adds a lot of noise. It is supposed to be profiled from my camera and lens model. The following two images are with the Lens Sharpness ON and OFF. I’m going to keep this off.
Tom, you are spot-on about the denoising. I usually leave this off because (a) I wish to avoid all the over-head processing when just using the PhotoLibrary to cull images. And, (b) I have never seen a RAW file more noisy than the corresponding JPG. I’m guessing this Sony does a good job denoising when producing their JPGs. The following image is with DeepPrime 3 (and Lens Sharpness!).
You will notice that each raw file looks different because there is not a standard for the presentation of raw data. You will also notice that all three of them show noise in your image. PhotoLab did not add noise to your raw file. If you are not going to apply DeepPRIME to raw files that need it to avoid overhead, that is your choice. In PhotoLab 9 the DeepPRIME variants can be set on in preferences so that they are applied to the image automatically in real time in the editing window.
I believe you are correct, and I was incorrect thinking this was a bug. My apologies for providing a sensational headline as I over-reacted.
I don’t believe that I have ever seen an off-the-camera JPG that had less noise than the corresponding RAW with my two other older cameras (Panasonic ZS100 and Nikon D7500). I have been using DxO PL since version 2 and really like the product. I made a bad assumption with this new camera.
Thanks for helping me on this,
Tim
p.s. I am, however, pleased that this new Sony has nicer looking jpgs SOOC than what I am used to.
p.s. The CPU overhead I am referring to is when I am viewing a large number of images in the PhotoLibrary part of DxO as it renders away - creating a .dop file for each image. Ergo, I keep the Auto-Apply presets very simple.
It is a different story when I am editing in Customize. I do not worry about the CPU load here.
