DXO Pure Raw Workflow

I’m having to adopt an entirely new workflow to accommodate DXO Pure Raw. Since 2007 when I bought a Canon 40D I have been using Adobe’s Digital Negative Converter to process my raw images. At that time I was unable to afford the Photoshop upgrade with the version of Camera Raw that could process the 40D so my only option at the time was Adobe DNG. Since then Adobe came up with the subscription option and I have since then had the most current version of all the Adobe products.

However I have recently been won over by the cleaner sharper images produced by processing my raw images with Pure Raw.  Pure Raw is simple enough to use, you can browse and select or drag and drop the raw images you want process into the image window. However, processing is a bit slow if you want to use the Deep Prime AI model for the most benefit. At about a minute per image to process, it would be prohibitive to wait 2,000 minutes for a complete conversion on a big project of 2k images so I had to think hard about how to handle such a load.

Eventually I decided to abandon DNG and just copy the images straight off the SD card into a raw folder on my desktop computer. At that point I can bring up Adobe Bridge to do all my key wording and initial processing for easy organization and future reference. Once the key words have been supplied I go through the project labeling and ranking the images until I’m ready to start creating the high resolution JPG images for printing and uploading to image agencies.

At that point I take a look at the metadata and decide whether I want to use ACR and Topaz to process the image or go to Pure Raw. I don’t see much difference between ACR with Topaz and Pure Raw on lower ISO images, so I can just use ACR to process those. Higher ISO images look better with Pure Raw so for those I import them one at a time into Pure Raw for processing.

From there I click the process button to start the Pure Raw conversion which provides me with the option of selecting the Deep Prime AI conversion, the output format for which I like DNG, and a file location for the new DNG file. In addition it is possible to also export the results directly into Photoshop which brings up the ACR or lightroom module where I can adjust colors, exposure, contrast and saturation, plus all the wonderful masks and corrections that are now available in the current ACR and Lightroom products. 

I was able to capture some nice images to work with this morning on my sunrise hike in the high country. I even captured a new bird species for my eBird Life List, an Olive-sided Fly Catcher 🙂 A beautiful big buck mule deer also loped across the high meadow and stopped to pose for me a few times 🙂

Also don’t forget to check out my books and calendars on Lulu Press and Amazon including my latest, “Wildlife Photography in the Colorado Rockies”!

As always, the best of these images and hundreds more are available for purchase on my website as wall art on glossy metal or acrylic sheets, stretched canvas and traditional matting and framing. Tons of cool household and gift items are also available with any image you like including coffee mugs, t-shirts, blankets and pillows, battery chargers, phone cases, stationary and much much more! Just click on any image you like and all the choices, sizes and prices will appear! For my viewers interested in images for commercial use, please visit my image licensing portal! Also, if you would like to see a more complete record of today’s images please follow my Instagram account!

Many of my adventures have also been captured on beautiful HD video on my Youtube Channel! If you enjoy my content please subscribe to my channel, subscribers have a big impact on channel rankings!