Last Rays at the Beach

[AlanLichty]

A coastal sunset scene that got swept up in processing experiments with DxO PhotoLab (PL) comparisons. The scene is a December sunset at Harris Beach State Park on the Oregon coast that had some challenging light. I have thousands of unprocessed images from Harris Beach so that stash has been a good collection for finding images that work well for comparing versions of this application.

This particular case was one where the result below came from PL8 instead of PL9 which for my use pattern seem to be almost identical. For my own workflow I typically use DxO PureRAW 5 as a denoise tool and then export the RAW file back into Lightroom as a DNG. If the light needs taming a bit more than usual for LR I use PL8 instead of PureRAW (both have the same DeepPRIME 3 denoise module) and then go back to Lightroom.

PL9 has a bunch of new AI masking tools that I did spend some time with yesterday but they don't really offer much for how I use the software. I prefer Adobe's tools for image edits involving masking at both the RAW level (LR/ACR) as well as rasterized (PS) so your mileage with PL9 may vary depending on your own workflow.

C&C always welcome.

 

[Aaron Cowan]

Fantastic light! So many parts work well: the layers of the clouds and the reflection, the two rocks in the middle of the frame. Well done

 

[Mike Lewis]

Regardless of what software suite you might have used to bring this final result to us, it worked VERY well! Lovely color, light, and shadow. I can smell the ocean looking at this one

 

[AlanLichty]

Fantastic light! So many parts work well: the layers of the clouds and the reflection, the two rocks in the middle of the frame. Well done

Thanks Aaron - this particular sunset was one of the better ones I observed out along that beach.

 

[AlanLichty]

Regardless of what software suite you might have used to bring this final result to us, it worked VERY well! Lovely color, light, and shadow. I can smell the ocean looking at this one

Thanks Mike - I wouldn't mind being out along this stretch of coastline sniffing the Pacific again myself. Hard to go wrong when Mother Nature serves up a sunset like this one.

 

[Jameel Hyder]

Fantastic light and reflection. One of my favorites from the many you posted from that location.

 

[AlanLichty]

Fantastic light and reflection. One of my favorites from the many you posted from that location.

Thanks Jameel - That sunset was one of the better ones I ever managed to catch down there. The colors kept going for almost another 20 minutes after I took this shot.

 

[JimFox]

Regardless of what software suite you might have used to bring this final result to us, it worked VERY well! Lovely color, light, and shadow. I can smell the ocean looking at this one

Alan, definitely did a great job bringing this to life.

But it's nice when we can get reports on new or updated software being used to process an image, and how the software was used. At least I enjoy hearing about it. Even though I am basically 100% Photoshop and ACR for my processing, I have tried some of the other programs out there once in a while. And Alan can save me some money as we get reports on the software used.

 

[JimFox]

Very cool work Alan! I definitely like the look of this a whole lot, though I did have to search for those rays. They are there, but I am enjoying the explosion of color you got over the rays.

 

[AlanLichty]

Very cool work Alan! I definitely like the look of this a whole lot, though I did have to search for those rays. They are there, but I am enjoying the explosion of color you got over the rays.

Thanks Jim - I'd love to be able to queue up more nice evening light like this particular sunset offered up. I have already posted several different takes on views of the beach and the various hues that appeared during the course of the evening when this was shot but its fun knowing I have even more from that shooting session still unprocessed. This particular processing session reinforced my thoughts that the new PL9 release isn't particularly meaningful for my use case. I like DxO's stuff but that doesn't mean I need to grab every new variant they release.

 

[JimFox]

Thanks Jim - I'd love to be able to queue up more nice evening light like this particular sunset offered up. I have already posted several different takes on views of the beach and the various hues that appeared during the course of the evening when this was shot but its fun knowing I have even more from that shooting session still unprocessed. This particular processing session reinforced my thoughts that the new PL9 release isn't particularly meaningful for my use case. I like DxO's stuff but that doesn't mean I need to grab every new variant they release.

That's a cool beach to spend time at no matter the weather, but you definitely scored.

Yeah, I just looked, I have PureRaw3 and PL7. Maybe when PL10 comes out I might give the Trial a shot, I would mainly like to use it for my timelapses, but that means I mean more consistency from it from photo to photo, otherwise it adds flickering to the end video I create. But then I am pretty happy with Photoshop and ACR. Adobe has really made great improvements to ACR, so maybe I don't even need to bother about it. PureRaw was faster, but it kept adding textures where there was none, so for me that was the issue at night when the light is low. PureRaw probably is great for 90% of use cases, but it's not good at midnight.

 

[AlanLichty]

That's a cool beach to spend time at no matter the weather, but you definitely scored.

Yeah, I just looked, I have PureRaw3 and PL7. Maybe when PL10 comes out I might give the Trial a shot, I would mainly like to use it for my timelapses, but that means I mean more consistency from it from photo to photo, otherwise it adds flickering to the end video I create. But then I am pretty happy with Photoshop and ACR. Adobe has really made great improvements to ACR, so maybe I don't even need to bother about it. PureRaw was faster, but it kept adding textures where there was none, so for me that was the issue at night when the light is low. PureRaw probably is great for 90% of use cases, but it's not good at midnight.

I logged well over 2 months worth of nights in the campground that is a 5 minute walk to this beach so had lots of chances to get some good color shows over the years I had my RV.

PureRAW 5 does have some significant improvements over PR3 with DxO's DeepPRIME denoise module. That does spill over into PhotoLab 8 since both applications use the same denoise software module. PL7 had the earlier version of that as well. Not sure how well either application is a perfect fit for your time-lapse work since I am only using it on static images. Both work great for stitched panos but I rarely go more than 3 or 4 shots in my stitch work. Also quite rare that I am up shooting deep into the night when I could be getting my beauty sleep which I obviously need

 

[JimFox]

I logged well over 2 months worth of nights in the campground that is a 5 minute walk to this beach so had lots of chances to get some good color shows over the years I had my RV.

PureRAW 5 does have some significant improvements over PR3 with DxO's DeepPRIME denoise module. That does spill over into PhotoLab 8 since both applications use the same denoise software module. PL7 had the earlier version of that as well. Not sure how well either application is a perfect fit for your time-lapse work since I am only using it on static images. Both work great for stitched panos but I rarely go more than 3 or 4 shots in my stitch work. Also quite rare that I am up shooting deep into the night when I could be getting my beauty sleep which I obviously need

I think I will wait until next year and see your review of PhotoLab 10, and see if it's worth the $100.

And I realized all the sleep in the world wasn't going to make my mug look any better, so I decided capturing Milky Ways was a better use of the night time as opposed to wasting it useless beauty sleep.