The French software manufacturer DxO is now offering version 6.3 of its RAW processor PhotoLab. The last major version 6.0 was released in October 2022, so only minor corrections were to be expected. With its own color space “Wide Gamut Color” defined in version 6.0, the company has come up with a little trick.
Although the comparison of modern displays with a color depth of 10 bits and more and printers has become better and more affordable in recent years, one problem remains: No monitor can display print effects such as neon colors, high gloss, matt or metallic layers in the way the human sees. This used to be the domain of integrated Pantone color systems, but these have now become chargeable.
Therefore, the simulation of printing inks and paper can now also be set in PhotoLab in the digital pre-press, the soft proofing. DXO writes about special colors that cannot be displayed on the monitor in one white paper not to your own wide gamut color, but to numerous colors that occur in nature, such as flowers or animals, which can now be displayed more precisely.
For Windows and Mac color spaces
To do this, the image does not have to be converted into a new color space in advance, it is just a preview that also works with existing JPEG and TIFF files and the corresponding ICC profiles for the printer or monitor. The technology works with both the AdobeRGB color space for the display, which is common in the Windows world, and Apple’s Display P3 for Macs. The function is described as “pen and paper” in the German version, with a somewhat unfortunate translation; the English version is more precisely “ink and paper”.
DxO has also added an option to the image cropping tool. The correction of the distortion by the lens can now also be switched off in order to select a section from the entire sensor data. The new downloader for the combination of camera and lens starts at a similar point, which now provides the corresponding profiles when importing the recordings. To do this, however, the information must also be available in the images, which should be the case with your own raw recordings.
PhotoLab 6.3 is free for owners of version 6.0 and higher via download available, the new software costs 139 euros as an essential version for two computers, the elite version for three workstations costs 219 euros.
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