My post-processing tools

Years ago, I was using Adobe Bridge and Adobe Photoshop for nearly all my work. That was the obvious choice at the time, the software tools were reasonably priced. These were the “good old times”, no?

Today, subscriptions are everywhere. You must pay by the month. But if you stop, you lose all your tool setup at the end of the month. Nothing is left, nothing is yours.

So, I prefer tools I can buy, that will serve me for years. If the service/cost ratio is good, I’m OK with purchasing a competent tool, but I don’t want to keep my wallet open at all times.

FastStone Image Viewer

The very first step in any processing is sorting. You need to move fast, you need to find the best images, sometimes in a batch of 10 (fast bursts are lethal for the number of images).

FastStone Image Viewer is a marvel in this respect: inexpensive, very competent in display and – above all – it offers a critical feature for sorting: it can display images 4 by 4 on the same screen for quick comparison. For example, you can zoom in on all four images in parallel with a flick of the mouse wheel and compare the quality of detail in the pre-selected images. Use the “Del” key to eliminate unnecessary images, and the “*” key to mark images for priority retention.

Since the software is free for amateur users, it’s even better. But a $35 lifetime license is still an attractive price to support the ongoing development of this indispensable tool.

DxO PhotoLab

Visualizing and sorting images is not enough. You also need to be able to work on them to fine-tune the rendering. FasStone Image Viewer has some interesting correction capabilities, but while this is sometimes sufficient, I can’t rely on it and need a powerful image processing tool (including RAW).

Photoshop has long been considered the benchmark. But the other tools on the market have really come into line. Today, there are only two reasons to choose:

• The user interface must be simple and effective
• Noise processing must enable you to gain ISOs to work in the best shooting conditions.

Adobe does this very well, but so do others. In particular, I warmly recommend DxO PhotoLab (not to be confused with DxO PureRAW plugin for Photoshop or Lightroom). The quality of RAW processing is exemplary. When it comes to noise reduction, it’s often the case that DxO does better than Adobe.

I therefore recommend two options:

1. Either you’re addicted to Adobe and need to add DxO PureRAW to maintain your usual workflow with incredible image quality.
2. Or you’ve discovered (with the trial version) that DxO PhotoLab is a perfectly fluid development environment that’s at least as comfortable as Adobe’s. DxO PhotoLab is French, and for €229, the software is yours for life. Upgrades only cost €109, but are not mandatory if you haven’t changed your camera (my main reason for upgrading).

I can’t get enough of DxO PhotoLab, and version 7 (yes, I know, version 8 is already out) is simply incredible in the detail it extracts from my RAW files.

A word of warning though: you need computing power. On PCs, a graphics card less than 3 years old is highly recommended to drive the processing engine.

IrfanView

This tool is a bit of a “tool bag” for my quicker DIY projects. For example, it’s very fast for image viewing. But it’s also remarkably easy to use for cropping or resizing an image without having to bring out the heavy artillery.

What’s more, IrfanView recognizes just about any image format (photo or not), which makes life easier for quick format conversion.