Does the new dust removal option in DxO PureRAW really clean up your RAW files? YES!

DxO PureRAW 6 is the latest version of DxO’s clever RAW preprocessing software, and it has two big new features. One is its new ‘high fidelity’ DNG compression option which drastically reduces its file sizes, and the other is a new AI dust removal feature built into the PureRAW process. Who saw that coming?

What PureRAW does is to take your original RAW files straight from the camera and apply DxO’s own RAW demosaicing, DeepPRIME noise reduction and bespoke lens corrections to produce either JPEG images ready to share or DNG RAW files that can be used just like regular RAW files by programs like Lightroom and Capture One, but with DxO’s lens corrections and denoising already applied.

Now the new dust removal feature fits into this perfectly, because PureRAW 6 doesn’t just optimize your raw files for lens aberrations and noise, it can take out any dust spots while it does it. So that’s the theory – but how does it work out in practice?

Brilliantly, as it happens. It’s not the first program to use AI to find and remove dust spots – Lightroom and Capture One can do this too, but it’s great to be able to do this as part of the PureRAW process instead of having to do it later in other software.

It’s really well implemented too. If you choose the simple Process option in PureRAW you can still check and adjust the processing parameters, choosing whether or not to use dust removal and the strength of the removal process. If you choose Process with Preview, however, PureRAW will show you all the dust spots it’s located on your photo and as you move the strength slider you’ll see more spots added (just give the AI a moment or so to catch up).

It really does work, too, and seems at least as effective in my tests as the AI dust removal in Lightroom and Capture One. It’s possible, I suppose, that if you have the strength level set too high it might start removing details which aren’t dust at all, and now and again the healing process might not be quite perfect in areas of highly structured detail, but even so I think I would leave this at a high setting by default and fix any glitches later – if they are visible at all.

I think the single biggest advance in DxO PureRAW 6 is still the new compressed DNG format – previously, PureRAW’s DNG files were 2-4 times larger than the original RAWs, but now they are often smaller than the RAW files. What a result!

But the new dust removal feature comes a close second. Dust spots are a fact of life for most interchangeable lens cameras, and to have a program take them out automatically as part of a process you were going to apply anyway is just brilliant.

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If you haven’t tried DxO PureRAW yet, you can download a trial version from the DxO website. And if you do decide to buy it, use exclusive discount code at the checkout to get 15% off (new users only, sorry).