The folks at DXO have updated their well known optics package to version 9.5.  It's available for download now at their website, either as a trial or as a purchase.  Customers licensed for DXO Optics Pro 9 receive the update at no cost.  So what makes this update worthwhile? There are a number of great tools built into DXO Optics Pro.

DXO is best known for their incredible lens correction capabilities.  Unlike other products that use a general lens profile database, DXO builds profiles for lenses mounted to specific bodies.  The software downloads the profiles you need based on the EXIF data stored in the RAW files.  It makes for very comprehensive corrections.

DXO also includes their perspective correction algorithms that are richly used in DXO's Viewpoint software.  They are very good, even better than the correction algorithms in Photoshop CC, which is already superb.

DXO recently introduced their Smart Lighting algorithms.  They are programmatic adjustments for highlights and shadows and do a very good job very quickly.  Of course, there are also full overrides for the Smart Lighting settings.  What's great about this function is how well it works without you having to muck around with sliders and correct for colour shift if you push too hard.

DXO is not so well known for their noise reduction algorithms.  Most of us think of Nik's Dfine when it comes to robust noise reduction.  DXO has excellent noise management built in to the software as well.

What makes v9.5 so significant is that for the first time, DXO Optics Pro has a Lightroom plugin!  Now you can roundtrip directly from within Lightroom.  This is a very important shift and will definitely encourage more folks to try out DXO Optics Pro.

One last thing about DXO that is also not well known.  If you like to convert your RAW files into the open DNG standard but are not completely enamoured by Adobe's DNG Converter or the converter in Lightroom, you may want to check out the DNG conversion in DXO Optics Pro.  It is very effective but bear in mind that the file sizes are quite large as should be expected from a high definition uncompressed RAW file.