Wasn't Photolab 8 a pretty good upgrade?

There was a similar case lately when shadows were pushed up heavily. Probably you used SelTones Blacks and/or SmartLighting for shadow recovery. Both add strong edge microcontrast, which combined with XD2s may lead to posterization. This happens only in extreme cases. DP leaves some noise behind, so the microcontrast does not produce posterization (that badly). To fix the problem, use the ToneCurve for very deep shadow recovery. See
Visible Posterization in PL8, in Bokeh Areas (there’s a ToneCurve preset there which you may adapt to your case) and
Selective tone versus Tone curve .
To put it short: probably it’s not an issue with XD2s but with microcontrast in Blacks and SmartLighting. XD2s just makes it possible.

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