PR4 XD2/XD vs PL5 DeepPrime

DxO PureRAW
1

Hi all,

Been away for a while so lost track of everything in DxO land.

I took a step away from photography beyond just using my iPhone and thus not using DxO or LR.

I have now come back to using a ‘proper’ camera and reinstalled PL5 (the last copy I purchased) so I had something to start with.

My intention is to use LR again as my main editor as I just ultimately got along better with it so decided to try PR4 rather than upgrade PL to v8.

Now my MacBook Pro is old and completely not suited to the task of editing really, in truth it never was even back when PL5 launched but whilst slow PL5 ‘works’ and I can export a file with subtle edits and DeepPrime applied.

For reference it’s (PL5) taking about 3 minutes to process a single Sony A7iv RAW(L).
Fortunately I don’t export many at present and am still just finding my feat again and playing about.
Again for reference I am not yet sending anything to LR as until I figure out my DxO set up I am not subscribing to LR.

Anyway, onto my question.

Is XD & XD2 as featured in PR4 and I presume PL8 vastly better than DP in PL5?
And if so enough that you would want to or even feel it necessary to upgrade?

The reason I ask is I downloaded (trial) PR4 with the intention of comparing a file from PL with one from PR and it didn’t go well.

I loaded up a file form my A7iv, in thisinstance it happened to be a shot that I had taken in APSc/crop mode so was a 19mb RAW(L).
In PL5 with no edits added just Lens corrections and DP applied it took the roughly 3 minutes I have come to expect to export to a jpg (100%).
In PR4 with nothing applied and everything left at ‘base’ with just XD2/XD applied I never successfully exported the file to a jpg (100%). After 20 minutes it was still saying ‘just under 2 hours’ to finish a single file.

I tried a couple more files to rule out that file. All the same. Time slowly creeped up to around 2 hours for a single file.

Now I know full well my Mac is not up to speed anymore but it does meet the minimum specifications so I’m struggling to believe DxO would expect that to be acceptable time vs them just raising the minimum specs.

So I guess my question is two parts.

Am I doing something wrong? That time seems completely silly really.

And, ultimately, is the NR in PR4 (XD2/XD) noticeably better than the original DP found in PL5 that an upgrade in both software and ultimately Mac is worth it?

I know ultimately that the MacBook needs retiring back to just school work for my kids and something more suitable to the task I want purchasing but for now id rather avoid that outlay whilst getting back into things.

And for clarification:

Camera: Sony A7IV running latest F/W.
Files: Compressed RAW(L).

Mac: 2019 Intel i5 with 8GB Ram running MacOS Sequoia.

So, any thoughts or things for me to check/try greatly appreciated.

2

check there for system compatibility:
https://support.dxo.com/hc/en-us/categories/4406548305809-Compatibility-system-requirements

dxo support only last 3 apple os, i know some run PL6 on apple silicon but maybe others can chip in what they running. PL5 didn’t want to run on my mac m2 but i did fresh install of everything not copy/paste from time machine.

3

The issue is most likely just your hardware. It is clearly not up to the task of processing DeepPRIME, DeepPRIME XD, or DeepPRIME XD2S. The XD and XD2S algorithms require much more computing power than the original DeepPRIME.

Generally, that is achieved via the graphics card, but newer Macs also have other ways of achieving faster throughput. I am not a Mac user but perhaps some Mac users can chime in with the specific minimum hardware configuration you would need to get faster processing times for all the DeepPRIME variants.

Just to give you a comparison, I process DeepPRIME XD2S raw files from my Nikon Zf in around 9 seconds via the Nvidia RTX 4060 graphics card installed in my Windows 10 machine.

Mark

4

Well. Technically it still meets the minimum. In reality though I think it’s time for DxO to list higher specs.
PL5 runs perfectly fine under MacOS Sequoia (updated too vs installed fresh under) too. No real need for DxO to prevent it. By all means don’t offer support but for it too no longer install is poor imo assuming that’s what’s happening.

Although as I will cover at the bottom I think there may be an issue with PR4 in my environment at least.

I agree. My hardware is dated and not really suitable, but for the purposes of testing and prior to the outlay of new equipment I wanted to see where things were at.

It seems however that even when I come to replace my equipment I will no longer be able to install PL5 as it isn’t supported on the latest MacOS at least as far as installing it goes so all this will ultimately be moot as I will need to purchase either PR4 or PL8 anyway if I wish to continue using DxO in my workflow.

I have done a little more testing today anyway I am suspecting that PR4 either has a bug that doesn’t like my hardware or that depending on specs DxO should just disable DeepPrime XD/XD2 much like they do with standard Prime for Fuji X-Trans files.

No matter what I do PR4 fails the export and sometimes causes my Mac to lock up completely forcing me to reboot.

I decided to download PL8 to trial and see if that exhibited the same issues. To my surprise it does not.
Now by no means is it fast. I didn’t expect it to be but it does successfully export files using DeepPrime XD/XD2 whereas PR4 doesn’t under any circumstances work with XD/XD2 but will manage to export ‘standard’ DeepPrime.

So my conclusion is that something is amiss in PR4 that isn’t affecting people on newer or better equipment.

Anyway for a laugh here’s some numbers:

4 files were used with no edits adde3d just lens corrections and DeepPrime applied.

  1. Panasonic GX9 (24.1mb file size)
  2. Fuji XT-4 (46.2mb file size)
  3. Sony A7IV (uncompressed RAW) (68.9mb file size) taken specifically to test whether file 4 was causing issue being compressed.
  4. Sony A7IV (Lossless RAW(L)) (40.7mb file size APSc crop mode)

PL8 using DeepPrime

  1. Took 1:50
  2. Took 1:05
  3. Took 2:42
  4. Took 2:44

These times were all within seconds of what PL5 took for the exact same files/settings.

PL8 using DeepPrime XD/XD2

  1. Took 11:30
  2. Took 4:54 (surprised by this one)
  3. Took 19:01
  4. Took 19:13

So yes. an age to process and had I been doing a batch of files it would have been painful to say the least but it did successfully process them unlike PR4.

Now the important bit I guess. To my eyes and with the files I used I couldn’t notice any discernible difference between DP and XD/XD2 at 100%.
So in someways I’ve answered my own question in whether it may or may not be worth it but that ultimately once I change my computer I am going to have to decide whether I buy into DxO again regardless due to the aforementioned inability to install PL5 fresh on MacOS Sequoia.

For now then I will continue to use PL5 for as long as it remains working with MacOS Sequoia and trial LR again for 7 days and see how I feel and once I change computer I will try PR4 again if possible.