DxO PhotoLab

DxO PhotoLab can hand a selection of images to another application, and Macro Studio accepts them. Pick your bracket in PhotoLab, send it over, and the frames arrive in Macro Studio’s Library ready to stack.

There is nothing to install. Like the ON1 Photo RAW route, and unlike the Lightroom Classic plugin, this uses a feature PhotoLab already has, so you only have to point it at Macro Studio once.

In Macro Studio, Integrations → Set up DxO PhotoLab integration opens this page. There is no plugin to install, so that menu entry brings you to the steps below instead of running an installer.

First: turn on camera-raw mode

Do this before anything else, or the stack will not come back into PhotoLab with the right colour.

1. Install the Adobe DNG Converter if you do not have it. It is a free download from Adobe.
2. In Macro Studio, open Preferences → Advanced and turn on Stack RAW photos in camera-raw mode. It sits with the Adobe DNG Converter settings, near the bottom of that tab.

The setting is hidden until the converter is installed, so if you cannot find the checkbox, that is why. Install the converter, restart Macro Studio, and it appears.

With the mode on, a stack made from raw frames can be saved as a Raw DNG. That file carries your camera’s real identity, Adobe’s colour profile for it, and the white balance you shot with, so PhotoLab develops it exactly the way it develops your camera’s own files. That is the whole point of the round trip.

Without it there is no Raw DNG to save, and PhotoLab has no camera colour to work from. It still opens what you saved, but you are developing a picture that has already been rendered rather than your sensor’s own data, and the colour will not match what PhotoLab would have given you.

Send DNG from PhotoLab as well, for the same reason: a JPEG or TIFF has already thrown the camera colour away before Macro Studio ever sees it, and nothing downstream can put it back. See Which format to send.

Denoise first, then stack

This is the reason to send a bracket from PhotoLab rather than opening the files directly, and the order matters.

DeepPRIME has to run before stacking, and it cannot run after. It denoises and demosaics in one step, working on the raw sensor mosaic where each pixel records a single colour. Stacking has to demosaic first, because frames can only be aligned and blended once every pixel carries all three colours. By the time there is a stack, the mosaic is gone, and PhotoLab offers only its Standard denoising on the result. DxO PureRAW will not open it at all.

So for a high-ISO bracket, the good workflow is: denoise every frame in PhotoLab, send them to Macro Studio, stack the denoised frames. You get DeepPRIME’s noise reduction on every frame and a clean stack out the other end. Doing it the other way round gets you neither.

Sending frames from DxO PhotoLab

1. Select the frames of one focus bracket in PhotoLab’s image browser.
2. Choose Image → Export to → Application…, or right-click the selection and take the same Export to → Application… from there.
3. The Export to Application - Options panel opens. The first time only, use Browse to pick Macro Studio. PhotoLab remembers it, so from then on it is already selected in the Export to list at the top of that panel.
4. Set Export format before you press Export. See below, because the default is not the one you want.
5. Press Export.

Macro Studio does not get its own menu entry

Worth knowing so you stop looking for it. PhotoLab gives Nik Collection and Lightroom their own named items in the Export to menu, but an application you choose yourself never joins that list. It stays behind the generic Application…, however many times you use it. So the menu route is always the same three steps, and there is no one-click “Export to Macro Studio” to set up.

What PhotoLab does remember is your choice inside the panel, so Application… opens with Macro Studio already selected and you are one Export away.

There is a shortcut, with a catch: the Export button on the image browser’s toolbar reopens whichever export mode you used last, so once you have sent a bracket it goes straight back to the Export to Application panel. The catch is that the button is labelled just Export and does not say which mode it will open, so after you have exported to disk or to Nik it quietly means that instead. Use the menu when you are not sure.

PhotoLab processes every selected frame first, so there is a wait while the export runs. Then Macro Studio comes forward, loads your frames in filename order, starts stacking them straight away, and moves you to the Editor to watch it come together. You picked the bracket in PhotoLab; you should not have to pick it again here, or go looking for the result.

If you have Stay in the Library after starting a stack switched on in Preferences, a bracket sent from PhotoLab ignores it and opens the Editor anyway. That setting is there to keep your place while you work through a folder, and a bracket sent from another application has no folder to keep a place in.

If you wanted to change the selection first

Nothing is lost: the frames are still in the Library. Click the LIBRARY tab to go back, drop the frame you did not want, and stack again.

To take a run out of the set, click the first frame you want and press F for Set First, then click the last one and press L for Set Last. Note that A toggles, so with everything already selected it deselects instead. Reach for it to start clean rather than to re-select after a cull. See Loading and selecting for all the ways to choose a set.

Send one bracket at a time

Everything in one send is treated as one stack. Send two brackets together and you get a single stack of all of them, which is not what you want.

So send a bracket, let it stack, then send the next. If you have a whole folder of brackets to get through, Autostack is the tool for that job: it splits a folder into brackets by capture time and stacks them as a batch, without going through PhotoLab at all.

Which format to send

Send DNG. It is the only format that keeps your camera’s colour while still carrying DeepPRIME’s work, and that combination is the reason to use this route at all.

PhotoLab starts on JPEG, so you have to change this. Set Export format to DNG in the options panel before you press Export. PhotoLab remembers it, so it is a once-only job.

A DNG still holds your camera’s own unprocessed colour rather than a finished picture. That is what lets Macro Studio’s camera-raw mode take the frames, and what lets you save a Raw DNG of the stack that PhotoLab then develops like one of your own camera files.

What a DNG does and does not carry

It’s important to know that PhotoLab’s DNG carries its raw-stage work and none of your colour or tone edits.

• Travels: DeepPRIME denoising, and the optical corrections PhotoLab applies at the raw stage.
• Does not travel: Saturation, Temperature, Exposure, Contrast, and the rest of the develop panel.

That is DxO’s design, not a fault and not something either program can change. A DNG is meant to be developed somewhere else, so PhotoLab deliberately leaves the developing undone: it writes no develop settings into the file, and the white balance it records stays the camera’s own. Turn Saturation down, export, and the exported DNG is unchanged in colour.

This is the right trade for stacking anyway. The edits that do not travel are the ones you would want to make after stacking, on the finished picture, rather than on each of forty frames. Make them in Macro Studio’s Adjustments, or in PhotoLab on the Raw DNG when the stack comes home.

The other three

• TIFF is the only way to get your colour and tone edits across, because it hands over a finished picture with everything baked in. The cost is everything above: no camera colour, so camera-raw mode cannot take it and there is no Raw DNG at the end. Pick it only when a PhotoLab edit genuinely has to be in the frames before they are blended. Set Quality to 16-bit, since it starts on 8-bit compressed. Save the stack as TIFF too. If you send TIFFs and then save a DNG, you are wrapping an already-developed picture in a format your raw editor expects to develop itself, and the colour shifts. Sending TIFF and saving TIFF keeps what you see in Macro Studio and what you get back in PhotoLab the same.
• JPEG is the same trade as TIFF but 8-bit and lossy as well. It is the default, and it is the wrong answer here.
• Original file(s) - no processing also keeps the camera colour, because those are simply your camera files, untouched. Nothing extra is written to your disk, but nothing from PhotoLab travels either, DeepPRIME included. If you have not edited the frames, you may as well open the folder in Macro Studio directly.

Where the exported files go

PhotoLab writes the processed copies into the same folder as your originals, adding an _openWith suffix to each name. A ten-frame bracket sent as DNG leaves ten new DNGs beside your ten raw files, every time you send. There is nothing to configure here: unlike Export to Disk, the Export to Application panel has no destination or subfolder setting, so this is simply where the files land. They are yours to delete once the stack is saved, with one thing worth knowing first.

If you save a DNG from the stack, Macro Studio needs those exported frames still on disk to re-open it for Retouch or a Look change, because both work by reaching back into the individual frames. Delete them and the DNG still opens, with its picture and settings intact; what you lose is those two controls, for that file. Original file(s) - no processing avoids the question entirely, because then the frames are your own camera files and nothing extra has to survive. It is the same trade as the Lightroom plugin’s exported TIFFs.

Getting the result back into PhotoLab

Save your stacked image into the same folder as the frames it came from, and it appears in PhotoLab’s image browser alongside them. You may need to leave and re-enter the folder if PhotoLab has not noticed yet.

Saving never modifies your originals, so the result always arrives as a new file beside them.

A stacked file gets Standard denoising in PhotoLab, not DeepPRIME, for the reason at the top of this page: there is no sensor mosaic left to work on. That is true of a stack from any program, not just this one. It is also exactly why denoising before you stack is the right order.

If nothing happens

• Macro Studio opens but the Library is empty. Check the format you exported is one Macro Studio supports. See Loading and selecting.
• Only some frames arrived. Send the bracket again. Frames handed over one at a time are gathered back into a single selection, and a very slow handover can occasionally be split.
• PhotoLab refused to export as DNG. DNG cannot be written for every source. PhotoLab says so rather than exporting something else: files that were never raw to begin with, and raw files using Scanned Film Optimization, are both turned away. There is no camera colour to preserve in either case, so fall back to TIFF and set Quality to 16-bit in the same panel, since it starts on 8-bit compressed. The stack will not offer a Raw DNG, for the reasons above.
• Macro Studio was already open. That is fine and is the faster path. The frames go to the window you already have rather than opening a second one.
• The Raw DNG row is missing from the Save dialog. Three things have to line up, and the first two are the setup at the top of this page: the Adobe DNG Converter installed, and Stack RAW photos in camera-raw mode turned on. The third is the format you sent. Camera-raw mode needs every frame in the stack to still carry the camera’s own colour, so a TIFF or JPEG export cannot qualify, and neither can a mix of formats: send the bracket as DNG. The Editor’s Info panel has a Camera-raw mode row that names whichever one is missing.
• The colour looks wrong when you open the stack in PhotoLab. Almost always one of the same three. A stack saved without camera-raw mode, or made from JPEGs or TIFFs, has no camera colour left in it for PhotoLab to develop. See the setup at the top of this page.
• The edits I made in PhotoLab did not come through. If you changed Saturation, Temperature, Exposure or anything else on the develop side, that is expected: a DNG carries DeepPRIME and the optical corrections, and nothing from the develop panel. See What a DNG does and does not carry. Make those edits on the stack instead, either in Macro Studio or back in PhotoLab on the Raw DNG.