HQ: this is a lighter touch noise remover, designed for images that were taken in regular lighting conditions.

You’ll see three methods: HQ, PRIME and DeepPRIME, here’s a rundown of each: Once you’ve done that you’ll see your image(s) appear as a thumbnail. I’ve installed them for the purposes of the demo so that I’m starting with the best possible base to show you the results, but if I was intending to open the image in Adobe Camera Raw to make edits after running it through PureRaw then I’d stick to using the profile corrections there instead. Whether you do this or not is up to you and will probably depend on your upcoming workflow.

If it’s your first time loading in a photograph then you’ll be asked if you want to download the modules to apply optics corrections to your specific equipment. You can click on the screen to add your photos, or select and drop in as many as you like, to get started. This is how the software looks when you first open it. I’ll pop it back into ACR at the end with the same settings so you can see the true before/after. I’ve lightened this image in Adobe Camera Raw so you can see the noise more easily, but in the demonstration the image doesn’t retain the sidecar data from ACR, so it’ll look much darker hopefully you’ll still see the difference in the noise reduction. It was taken in a dark museum with the ISO cranked up to 6400. This is the image I’ll use to demo PureRaw.

It does this with ‘convolutional neural networks’ which have developed advanced analysis from the millions of images and thousands of cameras in DxO's databases. ‘PureRAW uses smart technology to fix the seven problems that affect all RAW files: demosaicing, denoising, moiré, distortion, chromatic aberrations, unwanted vignetting, and a lack of sharpness.’ More than just a noise reduction tool, DxO claims: dng raw file after you’ve run one of its filters, retaining all your RAW information plus the noise reduction, ready to continue your workflow in your usual editing image suite. Now available as a standalone app, it’s designed to act as a first step in your editing process so that you can start with the best base possible. DxO PureRAW claims to open your RAW photographs up to new possibilities.

Dxo denoise