I was very surprised by such an early release, since years DXO has released their image processing software around the end of October, usually within the last ~10 days, so having it now right in the first week was very unexpected.
They still offer a 31-day trial, so everyone can give the new version a try, PL6 installes flawlessly besides any existing versions of PhotoLab, so you don't have to screw around with your existing installation.
Here are my first impressions pretty much only regarding the new XD noise reduction:
- It is slightly slower than the regular DeepPRIME, exporting a Pen-F RAW (20MP) to a full size JPG takes ~3 seconds on my computer, using the very same file but activating XD instead, the export takes ~4 seconds.
- The files indeed look even cleaner and preserve more detail, depending on the image it is sometimes more, sometimes less visible.
- DeepPRIME XD does not work on my Fujifilm X-Trans files! At least not those from X100V and X-Pro3, from what I gathered, X-T3 and X-T4 also aren't supported.
No need to worry Chris, since FilmPack is handled as a standalone application and licence, there is no need to even touch the installation: DXO PhotoLab 6 simply detects your installed FilmPack and enables it right away, that works flawlessly even for the trial version of PL6.