Should you upgrade to DxO PureRAW 3?

DxO pure raw 3 vs Pure raw 2

DxO PureRAW 3 vs PureRAW 2 and should you upgrade? 

DxO PureRAW 3 was launched on the 15th of March 2023 and as a DxO PureRAW 2 user I was super excited when the Team over at DxO sent me out a pre release copy of the software at the start of March. In my full PureRAW 3 review (here) I shared with you my initital thought on just how good the new version was but one of the questions I have been constantly asked over the last few weeks is “Should I upgrade from PureRAW 2 to PureRAW 3?”
So I promised to upload a review of PureRAW 3 vs PureRAW 2 to show you the results side by side so you can see for yourself the differences and if it’s worth the upgrade or not. Spoiler alert it totally is…
 
I picked the 4 same photographs from my initital review as they are a combination of Architectural, Wildlife, Astro and Portraiture so there is something for everyone in there with High ISO slightly blurry shots to image with incredibly details and complexity.

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I have it all in shown in my video above.

DxO PureRAW 3 vs PureRAW 2

Processing time for the 4 shots.

The four shots in PureRAW 2 took just 28 seconds in total to process on my computer and exactly the same photographs took 33 seconds in PureRAW 3 so PureRaw 2 is slightly faster in processing the images but more importantly we need to look at the results next.
 

I have a link at the end of the page where you can download all these photographs and see them in closer detail if you want to rather then looking at the compressed versions on my website.

 

First Photograph results in PureRAW 2 vs PureRAW 3

For the first photograph I picked a crazy complex architectural image which was not only slightly soft but also noise due to the High ISO it was shot at.
You can see the original directly photograph below (zoomed in at 140%) and just below that I have the results of both the PureRAW 2 and PureRAW 3 edits.
You will notice how the PureRAW 3 edit is not only sharper but it also has less noise. For sharpness look at the statutes, stairs and candle sticks aswell as the writing over the door. PureRAW 3 is clearly a lot sharper here. 
For noise reduction look at the ceilings on the upper floors where you can see again that PureRAW 3 just does a better job at cleaning out the image.
The next photograph highlights the high ISO noise reduction even more crazily.
 
Original unedited Photo1

The above shot is the original unedited version in PureRAW 2.

The below shot is the edited version in PureRAW 2.

PureRAW 2 edit of shot 1

The shot below is the edited version in PureRAW 3. 

PureRaw 3 edit of shot 1

The first photograph results in PureRAW 3 are a good bit better and that was a bit of a surprise to me as I always thought PureRaw 2 was about as good as it could get so this much of an improvement was a bit of a shock to me.

Wildlife Photograph, shot 2 in PureRAW 2 vs PureRAW 3

The second photograph in this test is a wildlife shot of a bird which needed a high ISO to help freeze the bird in flight.
The result was a lot of very obvious Luminance and Colour noise in the photograph. You can see the original photograph below (zoomed in at 140% again).
PureRaw 2 vs PureRAW 3 Shot 2 Original

The edited shot in PureRAW 2 is below.

PureRAW 2 edited version of shot 2

The PureRAW 3 edited version of shot 2 is below.

PureRAW 3 edited version of shot 2

PureRaw 2 vs PureRAW 3 Conclusion.

As you can clearly see the edited Photograph is a lot cleaner after using PureRAW 3 than what PureRAW 2 could achieve. So why is there such a big difference in  noise reduction between the two? Well, the introduction of DeepPrime XD in PureRAW 3 has proven to be a real game changer and with it’s state of the art noise reduction it really is starting to show how much better it is with very noisy images.

Considering that DeepPrime was always one of the best noise reduction software tools out there is is some serious step forward.

My conclusion is if you use DxO PureRAW 2 I would say PureRAW 3 is a very nice upgrade and something you should seriously consider.

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I also edited two more photographs in the video and over the next week or so I will expand this post to include the other images.

Until then…

See you out there,

Kieran.

Download the High res files 

Click here to download the photographs.