
These improvements in the tagging capability and usability bring the Library module closer to being perceived as a photo management application and therefore closer to being perceived as a serious rival to Lightroom. It simply builds an index of whatever directory you point it at. The PhotoLab library module is independent of the raw images. The fundamental difference between PhotoLab and Lightroom is that the Lightroom catalogue ingests your photos and arranges them in date ordered directories under the catalogue directory.

So what has improved in DxO PhotoLab 6?īuilding on its simple but powerful PhotoLibrary system, DxO PhotoLab 6 extends its range of Exif and IPTC tags, adds nesting for Projects, and introduces color labels for easier organization and management of files DxO Labs The PhotoLibrary has been the achilles heel for PhotoLab for quite a while now, it has been improved incrementally and PhotoLab 5 made a breakthrough in making metadata fields compatible with Adobe Lightroom. However Adobe have the market covered by the sheer breadth of their portfolio so for Luminar, ON1, Capture One and DxO the challenge is to extend the capability of the product while maintaining compatibility with Adobe.ĭxO have addressed this challenge by creating a smooth import/export workflow into the Adobe family – so I can for example keep my photo library in Lightroom, export to PhotoLab for Raw processing and save it seamlessly back into my library.

Taking Adobe as the target, and Luminar, ON1 and Capture One as the competition, on RAW processing I think DxO PhotoLab 6 comes out better than anyone.


This database comes from their sister company, DxOMark whose business is testing lenses, and provides the industry benchmark for manufacturers. DxO are differentiated from all other vendors by their vast database of lens and body characteristics and their ability to provide corrections for lens/body combinations.
