DxO Pure Raw and Canon CRAW files: size of dng output???

[ReadyDiverOne]

Hello all. I am thinking about using DxO Pure Raw to denoise my raw files before developing them in LR Classic. Right now, I use Topaz DeNoise AI and I love it. But I don't love that it creates very large tiff files as output files. My question is whether the raw dng files output by DxO will be the same, ie, small, size as the Canon CRAW input files.

I shoot the Canon R5 and sometimes shoot in Canon's CRAW format; this reduces the file size by almost half, from 45-50 mbs to 22 mbs or so. When I import these files into Lightroom Classic natively, that is, using the Copy or Move option, the resulting dng files are indeed about half the size of what a full size raw file would be, @ 22 mbs. BUT, if I import them using LR's "Copy as DNG" option, the resulting dngs are full size files, 44 mbs and larger.

So my question is: if I import my CRAW files into DXO Pure Raw what size will the output dng files be? Will they be half size or around 22 mbs like the original Canon CRAW file, or, like LR, will they be the larger, full size @44 mbs files size?

I apparently previously downloaded a trial version of DxO so I can't do the obvious thing and run a test on trial version. I've also emailed DxO support.

Many thanks.

 

[Jake Shoots Birds]

I cannot speak to size, but since RAW files are uneditable if you're going to use software other than Lightroom to do your noise reduction then you're going to get a new file, whether it be TIFF, DNG, PSD or otherwise. I suspect that the resulting file will be similar in size for each format regardless of the software that produces it, all other parameters being equal.

 

[Hali]

I have DxO pure raw and ran it on an image just to see. I used CRAW with my R5 and the original file size (which I had imported as a CR3 not a DNG) was 30.30MB. When I ran the DxO the resulting file size was 157.21MB and a DNG. Here is a screenshot of the process window. You only have a choice of DNG and JPG and the DNG file size is pretty big

 

[Jake Shoots Birds]

You only have a choice of DNG and JPG and the DNG file size is pretty big

But at least the DNG retains all the sensor information. So it seems that there's no advantage to one over the other with regard to having to create a new, large file.

 

[TonyB]

I used DxO Pure Raw v1 for a while and went back to Topaz. With Pure Raw you have no control over the amount of anything it is applying to your photos. You have to trust their algorithms completely. With Topaz, you do get control over the function (NR, sharpening, etc). Now that Adobe Lightroom has camera matching support for the R5 and profiles for most RF lenses, I didn’t see a reason to upgrade Pure Raw to v2. I also found that if you decide to start with Pure Raw in your workflow and process all your raw images before importing to Lightroom, that’s a lot of wasted disk space. In addition, I found that Lightroom works best when it creates the DNG file. LR was sluggish at times when dealing with the Pure Raw DNG files, possibly due to the size (?). For these reasons, I’ve stuck with Topaz and selectively applying the various tools as needed. In fact, I haven’t installed Pure Raw on my new Mac Studio and don’t miss it.

 

[KEN_A]

I started with Pure Raw v1 and then went to Topaz as it has the extra control as TonyB says. Did not upgrade to PR v2. As stated above these programs really do increase the file size and I only use if really necessary. You also you need a fairly powerful Computor to run these. My 10 year old PC struggled with PR taking 20 minutes to process an R5 file. There is a huge amount of processing going on. Early in the year I invested in a new powerful PC specific for image processing. The same file in PR takes less than a couple of minutes, but the cooling fans really wind up dureing the process.

 

[Philnick]

I've been using DxO's PhotoLab for several years - it's the program from which PureRAW was extracted -and it affords lots of fine control over the denoise function.

I tried out the trial version of PureRAW and was amazed that they had removed all that control from PureRAW as well as the many other functions of PhotoLab that are similar to Lightroom, which I also have.

I let the PureRAW trial expire and stuck with PhotoLab as my principal editing program, though I sometimes send DNGs from PhotoLab to Lightroom (it has a button to do that) for things PhotoLab doesn't do, like creating panoramas from multiple shots.

Things that recommend PL to me over LR:

1) As a test lab, DxO creates its own auto-correction profiles for things like geometric distortion and vignetting.
(They're sometimes a little slower than LR to add a profile because Canon tends to help Adobe with this while DxO has to get its hands on the item to test it.)

2) I can create named groups of settings to apply to pictures - and can make any of them the default when opening pictures.

3) No "catalog import" step - it just browses the disk directly to select shots to work on.

Though I shoot JPEG+RAW, I put them in adjacent folders, so - for working speed - I can choose shots to work on by browsing the JPEG folder before finding them in the RAW folder - I have an old laptop that was running Win7 when I got it, though it's running Win10 now.

 

[Philnick]

PS Searching on DxO's website for cRAW brought up nothing but a post about PureRAW that said that it didn't support cRAW, so I never shot any cRAW until reading this thread (I normally shoor RAW + Large JPEG), so I shot some test cRAWs and found that PhotoLab had no problem with them.

So I went to their help link and asked what features of PhotoLab wouldn't work with cRAW, since it seemed to work even with its most advanced denoising - and I attached one of my test cRAW files.

I also asked whether the statement of incompatibility on their website was just obsolete.

They wrote back to me the next day saying that the R7's cRAW files are supported but some older bodies' cRAW files aren't yet, and pointed me to their public "Supported cameras and lenses" page, saying that the R7 has no entry in the Notes column saying that its cRAW files are not supported.

 

[Hali]

PS Searching on DxO's website for cRAW brought up nothing but a post about PureRAW that said that it didn't support cRAW, so I never shot any cRAW until reading this thread (I normally shoor RAW + Large JPEG), so I shot some test cRAWs and found that PhotoLab had no problem with them.

So I went to their help link and asked what features of PhotoLab wouldn't work with cRAW, since it seemed to work even with its most advanced denoising - and I attached one of my test cRAW files.

I also asked whether the statement of incompatibility on their website was just obsolete.

The wrote back to me the next day saying that the R7's cRAW files are supported but some older bodies' cRAW files aren't yet, and pointed me to their public "Supported cameras and lenses" page, saying that the R7 has no entry in the Notes column saying that its cRAW files are not supported.

That's interesting. I shoot with an R5 and an R6 both on cRAW and I use DXO prime raw alot and have never had a problem.

 

[Philnick]

I just went down the list of supported Canon cameras on that page and found that:

(1) the only models that had notes saying certain formats were not supported were DSLRs (not mirrorless models), and

(2) none of the notes referred to cRAW - the formats that were listed as not supported were "mRAW and sRAW" and in one instance HIF.