Help with DXO PR6 workflow with Adobe Bridge and ACR

DxO PureRAW
1

Hi, I downloaded a trial of PR6 and am struggling to understand a workflow. I have two basic settings that should work with most of my images (Deep Prime 3, lens sharpness 100 for people, 150 for no people, uncompressed DNG). I use Adobe Bridge as my hub/home base and process with Camera Raw and Photoshop. I would like to send images from Bridge to PR6 as a batch, back to Bridge, raw processing (often in batch) in ACR, individual edits as needed in Photoshop.

My concern is how do I import an DNG from PR6 into ACR without Adobe overwriting PR6 edits?

Thanks!

2

Welcome to the DxO USER Forum, Bill.

The step I have highlighted is redundant ā€¦ Itā€™s PRā€™s role to carry out RAW processing.

Iā€™m not a PR user, but ā€¦ I donā€™t believe that Adobe is able to ā€œrespectā€ PR6 corrections as reversible edits ā€¦ Adobe tools will assume that the DNG file is the starting point.

3

Yes, but as far as I know (which is not a lot) Adobe ACR can do a lot more processing to a RAW than PureRAW can apply. Akin to how PhotoLab can make many more edits to a RAW file beyond demosaicing.

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my workflow is:

  1. some basic adjustments in ACR
  2. selection of a single or a group of raw files in Bridge - Drag and drop the files to PureRaw
  3. process the raw files in PureRaw and save the dng files in a DxO subfolder
  4. open the dng files in ACR from Bridge

Except for the sharpness and optical corrections which are set to zero by PureRaw, all the remaining ACR settings made in step 1 are unchanged. I continue refining the processing of the dng files. As last step if needed, I open the processed dng in Photoshop.

This works fine for me on PureRaw 4 and now PureRaw 6 (in version 2 we didnā€™t yet have the GUI interface). I really enjoy the compressed dng option of version 6 since it saves disks space.

ACR saves the settings for the raw files in a xmp sidecar but the settings are embedded in the dng.

Last point: I avoid creating masks in ACR before the PureRaw processing.

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Welcome to the DxO USER Forum, Claude.

Iā€™m not a PR user (I use PhotoLab), but Iā€™m intrigued by some of your steps ā€¦

  • What file type is coming out of ACR, to be processed by PR ? ā€¦ DNG, I guess (?)
  • Do you mean here that you are not using PR to apply sharpness and optical corrections ? ā€¦ In which case, whatā€™s the purpose of using PR ?

That doesnā€™t make sense - so, I expect Iā€™m misunderstanding your process ā€¦ :thinking:

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Adobe Camera Raw is non destructive. You open a raw file (.NEF, .RAF, .RW2 ā€¦) , process it then save it back to disk; it is still a raw file with the ACR settings stored in a ā€˜sidecar = companionā€™ xmp file.

PureRaw opens the raw file (.NEF, .RAF, .RW2 ā€¦) but reads also the companion xmp file. All these ACR settings stored in the xmp file (with a few exceptions) are written back in the dng file produces by PureRaw; so that you can reopen the dng in ACR and find back all the settings previously applied .

No, I do use PureRaw sharpening and lens corrections. But by default Adobe Camera Raw applies sharpening. To avoid oversharpening , PureRaw sets the ACR sharpening value to zero. This is transparent for the end-user => the dng file has now DxO sharpening and lens correction and ACR will not apply its default sharpening. But of course an user can still move the sharpening cursor in ACR if he wants.

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7

Is this true with lens corrections as well? When I was working on a single image and opening it back into Photoshop, it seemed to be predictable. However from PR6 > Bridge > ACR I couldnā€™t tell what was happening with lens corrections. If lens corrections is turned off in ACR, does that mean PR6 corrections are respected?

8

(1) take a picture with a zoom lens preferrably at the shortest focal length since this will likely have most distortion (good prime lenses have usually less distortion).

(2) in Bridge, open the raw file in ACR. Make sur basic adjustments (auto is fine) and create a snapshot (name it before DxO). Make sure you donā€™t apply any Adobe lens correction - we are not trying to compare Adobe and DxO lens correction. Save the raw file.

(3) drag the raw file from Bridge to PR; in PR you have 3 options for the Lens Distortion (a) Image cropped to original ratio (b) maximum rectangle (c) complete image Area; select (c) since it will reveal a black area produced by the correction; Treat the image and create a dng file.

(4) in Bridge open the dng with ACR: you should see the black area; check the Optics tab - there is no lens correction applied

You can also proceed as follows: in step (2) from ACR open the file in Photoshop; later in step (4) open the dng in ACR and open it in Photoshop. You have now 2 bitmap images that you can stack as layers on top of each other; adjust the opacity to reveal the lens correction applied by DxO.

Hope this helps.

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