These are the latest updates from the world of photo-editing software. It’s not exhaustive because some news items are more important than others, and some are just routine marketing, but if there are any big events, I’ll cover them here.
I’ve been using the Nik Collection for a long time and I thought DxO had already taken this wonderful plug-in suite as far as it could go… but I was wrong! Nik Collection 9 has some spectacular new filters and masking tools that I will give a full and detailed review. In the meantime, here are the highlights.
The DxO PhotoLab 9.6 update is not a major version release, so it’s a free update for existing PhotoLab 9 users, and a pretty substantial one at that. And there might be enough here to convince anyone thinking about getting DxO PhotoLab 9 to finally take the plunge.
Digitizing analog negatives is easier said than done. Black and white film poses no problems, but the orange/amber mask of color negative film is a real headache for photo editors, producing strong and unpredictable colour shifts even from one shot to the next. Capture One’s update promises to fix that with concrete digitizing advice and time-saving negative conversion tools.
DxO PureRAW is like a RAW file preprocessor, applying DxO’s now-legendary lens corrections and denoising to produce full-corrected DNG files that can be opened and edited as enhanced RAW files in other programs like Lightroom. And PureRAW 6 fixes a major pain point of its predecessor while adding a brand new and potentially game-changing new feature.
The latest version of Photoshop (January 2026) has a whole bunch of improvements which are not, for once, just about AI. Instead, there are new tools and features for photographers too (even if they are borrowed from Lightroom/Adobe Camera Raw).
ON1 Effects is a key part of ON1 Photo RAW and comes with dozens of customisable photo effects and filters which can be combined in almost limitless permutations. This is the 2025 version not 2026, but it’s still packed with many of the latest AI features. Best of all, it can be used as a standalone application or as a plug-in from within Lightroom or Photoshop.
DxO’s Black Friday deals may have been and gone, but there’s a new Christmas deal where you can save 20% if you buy two products, so that’s any combination of DxO PhotoLab 9.2, Nik Collection 8.2, DxO PureRAW 5.5, FilmPack 8 or ViewPoint 5. You’ll also get between 3 and 12 months of priority support, depending on the size of your order.
If you are in the creative industry as marketeer or a content provider or an advertising agency or a publisher, you will probably eventually unravel what Adobe is offering at Adobe Max 2025 and work out what will be useful to you and what will not. Good luck.
On the same day that DxO released PhotoLab 9, ON1 software has announced the latest version of its own combined photo editing and organising application – ON1 Photo RAW 2026. Unlike PhotoLab 9, it’s not available straight away… but the list of new features does look very compelling, with major updates to AI masking, Resize AI and the Effects module.
Nik Collection 8 is the annual update and refresh to the DxO Nik Collection, which consists of seven different plug-ins for Photoshop and Lightroom Classic, but which can also run as standalone applications and work as external editors for many other programs. Silver Efex gets a significant overhaul in this version, but other the big news is enhanced and updated integration with Adobe Photoshop and its masking tools.