Celebrating our 100,000th

DxO MODULE

The gold standard for Image Quality

20 years ago, we invented something the photography world
had never seen before: the DxO Camera and Lens Module.
But what is a DxO Module? And why is it a must-have for photographers?

For two decades, DxO Modules have given photographers industry-leading image quality that exceeds expectations.

We built a dedicated laboratory, developed custom-built equipment, and refined meticulous processes. We perform tests with an attention to detail that guarantees absolute precision. As a result, DxO software remains unmatched.

To all the passionate photographers out there: If you’re serious about getting the best from your equipment, you need DxO Modules as part of your workflow.

01

Celebrating our 100,000th 
DxO Module

  • The path to perfection
  • Bridging the gap between constraints and perfection

  • Breaking the mold

02

Inside the DxO Calibration Laboratory

  • Why a proprietary laboratory?
  • Understanding lens sharpness
  • Lens Sharpness Optimization
  • A two-step process
  • Distortion
  • Chromatic aberration
  • Vignetting
  • Sensor calibration
  • Validating the results
  • How DxO Compares

03

Conclusion

  • A milestone in precision: 
Our 100,000th DxO Camera and Lens Module
  • DxO PhotoLab 8: The only all-in-one solution using DxO modules 
  • DxO PureRAW 4: DxO Modules in every workflow
  • Essential for passionate photographers

Do you want to add DxO Modules to your workflow?

DxO PhotoLab 8

DxO PureRAW 4

The path to perfection

Passionate photographers spend huge amounts of money on their digital cameras and lenses. They constantly strive for the highest image quality, either to meet their own artistic standards, or to stand out in a competitive market.


Yet on top of budget considerations, the physical constraints of sensor technology and limitations inherent to lens design impede the path to image perfection.
So, how do we go beyond the laws of physics?


Invented in 2004, the DxO Camera and Lens Module is a mathematical model of unparalleled precision that captures the unique characteristics of a specific camera and lens combination.
It describes the properties of the sensor — its noise performance, color response, and dynamic range. And it describes properties of the lens — sharpness uniformity, distortion, vignetting, and chromatic aberrations.

The performance characteristics depend on:

  • capture parameters (focal length, focal distance, shutter speed, etc.)
  • combination of lens and sensor
  • position in the field of view

As a result, modelling these characteristics requires you to take measurements at every ISO setting, focal length, aperture, and focusing distance. Not only that, but we also need to test for every combination of lens and sensor, and for every part of the sensor’s field of view. The level of detail is immense.

“A valued partner in supporting 
image quality for Canon photographers.”

CANON

Bridging the gap between constraints 
and perfection

DxO Modules are used by DxO software — PureRAW, PhotoLab, ViewPoint, and FilmPack.

Advanced algorithms powered by machine learning draw on the data to push image quality beyond the limitations imposed by the hardware. Success relies on the precision of the measurements; the more accuracy and detail, the better the results.

Breaking the mould

In the early 2000s, digital cameras were just becoming available to consumers. With our technical background, we understood that the combination of sensors, lenses and digital processing would open up possibilities for improving image quality for photographers.

The creation of the DxO Module was a paradigm-shifting innovation, and DxO filed multiple patents in the US, Europe, and Japan. They now set the bar for the industry, recognized by experts around the world:

  • “The quality and precision of DxO modules is unmatched by the competition.” ZDNet
  • “Market-leading one-click corrections.” Amateur Photographer
  • “The more ‘average’ your camera and lenses, the bigger the improvement.” Digital Camera World

“It was clear that DxO’s approach ensured that Panasonic users would achieve the best possible image quality. 70 cameras and 89 lenses later, that has not changed.”

PANASONIC

Inside the DxO Calibration Laboratory

To mark our 100,000th DxO Module, we’re giving you an insight into the state-of-the-art facility where we conduct our detailed analyses.

Why a proprietary laboratory?

Manufacturer data is excellent, but it only goes so far. DxO's custom calibration takes this much further, making it possible to account for equipment variation, the relationship between lenses and sensors, and the realities of real-world usage.


Over the last 20 years, we’ve developed tools and established processes that are carried out by highly skilled technicians, ensuring unmatched precision.

Understanding lens sharpness

Despite advances in lens design, the laws of physics mean that achieving consistent uniform sharpness remains a challenge, particularly for zoom lenses, and at the corners and edges of images. To complicate matters, aperture plays a contradictory role: large apertures typically lead to soft corners, and small apertures can introduce diffraction.

Every aspect of the process requires a high degree of precision. With our early charts, we soon realized that we were assessing the blur of our laser printer rather than the lenses themselves. We quickly developed charts printed using razor-sharp ink on ultra-fine-grain paper mounted on extremely flat panels made from glass or aluminium composite.

These charts need to accommodate a wide range of lenses, from macro and wide-angle to telephoto. As a result, they vary in size; the smallest is just 5 cm (2 in) in diameteracross, and the largest spans an impressive 2 m (6.5 feet).

To eliminate off-axis movement, these charts are installed on precision-engineered rails. Each camera is mounted on a 60 kg (130 lb) studio stand that sits on a track — complete with a measurement guide — that runs perpendicular to the charts.

Finally, lighting is critical. Our lights have a Color Rendering Index of 100, giving consistent daylight. Additionally,, and to ensure even illumination, at least seven spot measurements are taken.

Lens sharpness optimization:
Charts, rails, and lighting

“The DxO Modules 
are of very high quality.”

RICOH PENTAX

A two-step process:
Pre-analysis and analysis

Every lens has its own idiosyncrasies that must be established, and technicians conduct a pre-analysis to identify the apertures, focal lengths, and focal distances that require the most attention.
For example, a wide-angle lens might need more images captured at the widest focal lengths across smaller increments to accurately model its performance. This pre-analysis involves taking a number of test images, some of which will also form part of the analysis.

For the analysis, test images are captured at every focal length — with the degree of  each adjustment dictated by the data gained during the pre-analysis — by moving the camera along its track. If a test chart is swapped to accommodate a longer lens, the illumination is re-tested to guarantee consistency. 


Telephoto lenses present an extra layer of difficulty as any vibrations in the building — such as walking across the laboratory, or the garage door opening in the basement — are magnified by the length of the lens and might introduce blur due to the slow shutter speeds.

Lens Sharpness Optimization: Exclusive to DxO

Less sophisticated profiles apply a single level of sharpening across the entire frame. Because of how lenses behave, this often means that the center is typically nice and sharp while the corners remain soft. Alternatively, it can give perfectly sharp corners but with an over-sharpened center.

By contrast, the detailed model contained inside a DxO Module means that DxO software makes adjustments that are far more refined, applying different levels of sharpening across different parts of the frame depending on the exact characteristics of the lens. You get gorgeous details from center to edge, and in-focus areas are targeted so that smooth bokeh is preserved.

In short, if you want the best performance from your lens, only DxO Modules can deliver it.

Distortion:
Understanding the limits 
of modern lenses

If you're photographing straight lines, you would expect the linearity to be reflected in your image. However, many lenses fail to capture this, leading to forms of distortion like bent shapes or disproportionate objects. This is especially true of both wide-angle and wide-range zoom lenses.


The approach to analyzing distortion is similar to that of lens sharpness but requires far more adjustments to the focusing distance. Again, the pre-analysis is critical as it allows the technicians to identify where a lens requires more attention. For example, a wide-angle zoom lens might exhibit significant distortion variations between two focal lengths that are just a millimeter apart.

Some lenses, particularly those with a very short minimum focusing distance, demand extreme precision to ensure that corrections are accurate across the focusing range, from the minimum focusing distance to infinity.

There are additional complications. For example, Exif data is not always as accurate as you might expect, and ultra-wide-angle lenses can give a field of view that extends beyond the dimensions of traditional lens charts.

“Any lens with a very large zoom range presents certain challenges, but the DxO Modules ensured that distortion was consistently corrected.”

TAMRON

Correcting distortion without sacrificing field of view

With the distortion calibration data, it’s possible to warp the image so that the natural proportions of a scene are restored. However, changing the geometry of the image also means changing the geometry of the frame, curving the borders. As a result, it’s necessary to crop a photo back to a rectangle in order to restore the original aspect ratio.

In short, fixing distortions in software means losing part of what your sensor captured, depriving you of megapixels. A 16mm lens suddenly becomes 18mm, depriving you of the full width of your wide-angle lens.


If corrections are not accurate, you risk losing more of your image than necessary. While competitors crop generously, DxO goes to great lengths to minimize how much of your image is lost. Often, our adjustments preserve more of your original image when compared to in-camera corrections or competing software.

Chromatic aberrations:
The challenge of color

Chromatic aberrations occur when a lens is unable to converge all of the varying wavelengths of light into a single point on the sensor plane. It can be “lateral” or “longitudinal”, and manifests as colored fringing in areas of high contrast, or shifts in color between areas in front and behind the zone that is in focus.


The degree of chromatic aberration produced by a lens depends on the aperture, focal length, and focal distance, with wider apertures producing the most pronounced effects.

Precision in every color channel

The images of the dot charts provide us with the data that we need. Examining the RAW files, we can isolate color channels and see how the red, green, and blue light is behaving. By measuring each dot, it’s possible to identify discrepancies in how each color channel reaches the sensor plane.


With this data, DxO software realigns the geometric position of each color channel ensuring that fringing is eliminated and that detail and sharpness remain untouched.

“DxO doesn’t only offer some of the best noise reduction for our Micro Four-Thirds sensors, it also ensures remarkable image quality thanks to its extensive DxO Modules.”

OM SYSTEM

Vignetting:
Understanding brightness loss at 
the edge of an image

Vignetting can undermine the balance of an image, and is most pronounced when photographing at short focal lengths, with wide apertures, or when using zoom lenses.

In order to calibrate for vignetting, it’s necessary to produce images that have perfectly even illumination. Subjects that you’d assume are homogeneous — a computer monitor or a grey sky, or even our test charts calibrated using seven spot meter measurements — don’t come close.

Instead, we use our purpose-built integrating sphere, a perfectly homogenous light source that covers the entire field of view once the camera has been mounted and aligned. Images are then captured at all apertures and focal lengths in order to map the brightness falloff across the frame.

Once mapped, the data is stored in the DxO Module, and DxO software corrects images without introducing noise or color shifts.

Sensor calibration:
The methodology

For sensors, there are two major quality components: color and noise.

The key to consistent color

To ensure color accuracy, test images are created using a color chart placed inside our high-end Spectralight, a specialized device that produces an exceptionally consistent light source.


RAW files are calibrated against a color test chart to establish a neutral baseline. With this as a foundation, specialized profiles such as DxO Natural and DxO Vivid are created, as well as profiles which match the camera's own JPEGs.

Noise and dynamic range

To analyze noise and dynamic range, a regular reflective target such as an X-Rite ColorChecker is not enough to cover the entire dynamic range of a RAW image.


In order to conduct our analyses, we developed our own proprietary uniform lightbox paired with an array of neutral density filters that absorb light consistently. This allows us to expose the sensor to varying intensities of calibrated light and establish the sensor’s black levels, saturation, and noise levels across all ISO levels. Blacks are rendered as truly black, whites as truly white, and noise data is accurately captured.


In the past, knowing the expected noise intensity at each grey level and each ISO was vital in creating classic denoising algorithms. Today these data are a key ingredients when training our neural networks to deliver DeepPRIME’s superior denoising performance.

“For anyone conscious 
about performance, DxO Modules 
can be trusted for that.”

HASSELBLAD

Validating the results:
Extensive human quality assurance

The final step is to ensure reliability by validating the results from the laboratory against real-world photographs.

The lab includes a studio featuring a carefully designed scene that contains a wide range of colors and textures, to which we add a model to evaluate skin tone rendering. In addition, we head outdoors to verify distortion corrections by creating images of buildings, and we visit nearby (empty) playgrounds with vibrant features to check that color reproduction lines up with expectations.

These final checks are carried out by experienced technicians with backgrounds in photography. This bridges the gap between lab precision and real-world performance, guaranteeing that DxO Modules deliver exceptional results in any scenario.

How DxO compares:
Unsurpassed performance

We’re confident that DxO Modules give photographers the highest possible quality, exceeding the performance of competing software.

Comparison with Adobe Lightroom

Achieve a larger field of view and benefit from the true focal length of your lenses.

Comparison with Capture One

Shoot up to three ISO stops beyond your regular comfort zone thanks to the sensor data in DxO Modules, leveraged by DxO’s DeepPRIME denoising technology in DxO PhotoLab and DxO PureRAW.

Conclusion

A milestone in precision:
Our 100,000th DxO Camera and Lens Module

After 20 years of innovation, we’ve reached an extraordinary milestone: our 100,000th DxO Camera and Lens Module. This represents millions of test images, painstakingly created and analyzed in laboratory conditions.

Seamlessly integrated into DxO software (PhotoLab, PureRAW, ViewPoint, and FilmPack), they deliver corrections effortlessly and instantaneously. They are the unique solution that unlocks the full potential of your camera and lenses.

“Their noise reduction is unparalleled, and the sharpening is exceptional. Images are sharp not only in the center but also in the corners, delivering outstanding results for our users.”

FERDINAND WOLF - PRODUCT EXPERIENCE DIRECTOR - DJI

DxO PhotoLab 8 : The only all-in-one solution using DxO Modules 

DxO PhotoLab 8 is the most advanced end-to-end RAW photo editing software. It features: 

  • Unbeatable noise reduction and detail extraction 
  • Superior science for sharper images 
  • Breathtaking color at every step: from calibration to creative tools and everything in between 
  • Lens corrections that go beyond ordinary.

DxO PureRAW 4 : DxO Modules in every workflow

DxO Modules deliver superior noise reduction, sharpness, and lens corrections while preserving maximum detail. DxO PureRAW 4 features:

  • Seamless integration with Adobe Lightroom Classic
  • Right-click or drag-and-drop from within Finder / Explorer
  • Linear DNG files sent directly to your software of choice — Capture One, Photoshop, Lightroom, etc. 

It offers the best possible foundation on which to start editing.

Essential for passionate photographers

With 100,000 DxO Modules and over two decades of innovation, we’re proud to support photographers worldwide. 


Our mission remains the same: to push the boundaries of image quality and enable every photographer to achieve their vision. 


To all the passionate photographers out there: If you’re serious about getting the best from your equipment, you need DxO Modules as part of your workflow.

Do you want to add DxO Modules to your workflow?

DxO PhotoLab 8

DxO PureRAW 4