DxO Optics Plugins for Mac Photos at £10 each

[M.Chapman]

For those that have Macs running El Capitan, Sierra or High Sierra who want excellent noise reduction and lens correction capabilities (on a budget) there are cut down bits of DxO Optics Software (including their excellent Lens distortion and CA correction HQ noise and Prime Noise reduction) available as plugins for Mac Photos for £9.99 via the Apple App Store - see here.

 

I just gave the DxO OpticPro for Photos plugin a whirl and it's pretty impressive for £9.99. It's rather simplified with very few sliders, but it seems to do a pretty good job. It includes the following adjustments on RAW format image files.

• Optical corrections - automatically fixes lens distortion and chromatic aberration
• White balance
• DxO smart lighting (automatically adjusts exposure and contrast)
• Luminance noise removal (HQ or Prime Denoise)
• DxO Clear View - effectively a haze filter

DxO also sell another plugin for Mac Photos called DxO perspective, also at £9.99. 

 

Now that Mac Photos has been significantly improved (including extensive RAW format support), the addition of these plugins provides a pretty useful basic photo editing package on a very low budget (assuming you own a Mac in the first place!!). High Sierra makes all the tools easier to access, but in Sierra they are more hidden (watch all of the video here ). For Pros it's nowhere near LR or PS in capability, but if you want occasional access to the acclaimed DxO Prime Denoise noise reduction for some tricky images could also be worth a look.

 

Mark

[Colin Woods]

I have been using DxO for years now and love it, so these plugins will be superb. Their automated lens corrections is great, I haven't had CA on a photo in ten years. The Prime NR is good too, well worth a look. If you can live without the data management of Lightroom the DxO software is well worth evaluating. Its called DxO Photolab now and finally includes local corrections. 

[John Mitchell]

I like DxO as well. The "optical corrections" plugin sounds like it might be worth checking out. As Colin mentioned, DxO's "lens modules" -- which DxO claims are based on their lab tests of individual lenses -- do a very good job on on CA and distortion along with correcting other lens flaws such as softness to some extent.