DXO’s masking is pretty good as well though not as flexible as X7. To get a sense of the whole photo you have to export to disk, take a look and re-adjust, export again etc.Įxposure X7 masking makes using Topaz Mask AI unnecessary, it is that good. One issue I have with DXO is that some adjustments can’t be seen unless the image is zoomed to 75% which I find very inconvenient. In fact I used X7 as the target to learn DXO! Other than certain landscapes, Exposure X7 with Denoise AI is equivalent or better for almost everything else - portraits, macros, close ups, street photos- simply less work and more intuitive workflow to get good results. Not a bad reason to get it though, I really did learn a lot from using it. Having the DXO as a target has improved my processing in X7 but in the end the results are better in X7 and DXO is a good learning tool. In order to learn best practices I tried processing landscapes in DXO with deep prime, then processing in Exposure X7 and Topaz Denoise AI and getting BETTER results. The de-fishing tool is the best I’ve ever used. Some landscapes I can get equivalent results with Exposure X7 but it requires more work to do it. SOME landscapes have a better 3-dimensional feel to them.

There are 2 areas where it is better than Exposure X7 with Topaz Denoise AI and Sharpen AI. My standard of comparison is Exposure X7 with Topaz Denoise AI, Sharpen AI and Mask AI. I’ve spent a month with the trial version of DXO Photolab 5, really trying to learn it well. Exposure X7 with Topaz DenoiseAI -'Clear' module

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