<p>If your digital darkroom setup includes software from French company DxO Labs, it's probably time to upgrade, because the company has just released updates for two of its core apps. The updates for image processor DxO Optics Pro and film simulation app DxO FilmPack go hand-in-hand with each other.</p><p>DxO Optics Pro 9.1 builds on the new PRIME engine that was introduced in Optics Pro 9. PRIME greatly improves noise reduction by simply giving algorithms free rein to work on images in the background while you're performing other tasks, rather than limiting processor availability to render images more quickly. In Optics Pro 9.1, PRIME now offers better sharpness. It also improves support for the FinePix S3 Pro and S5 Pro DSLRs, both of which use Fujifilm's proprietary Super CCD SR image sensors.</p><p>Since it takes longer to process images, DxO's PRIME technology offers a loupe with which to preview noise reduction on just a small portion of the image, which can be rendered more quickly than can a whole image. This loupe now has an animated loading icon, so that you know something's happening while the preview is rendered.</p><p>Another improvement aimed at making Optics Pro 9.1 feel more responsive is that it now shows the preview image embedded inside most raw files while the raw data itself is parsed and rendered. That does mean that the initial preview reflects what the camera itself made of the scene, rather than what DxO's algorithms (and the greater processing power of your computer) will manage, so the rendering may change somewhat once Optics Pro has parsed the raw image. Still, seeing an approximation of the image straight away is infinitely preferable to having to wait around for the image to appear, so it's definitely a good change. Placeholders also now appear for images that haven't yet been processed in the image browser.</p><p><a href="http://www.imaging-resource.com/news/2013/12/05/dxo-optics-pro-filmpack-updated-olympus-e-m1-and-sony-a7r-cameras-supported">Keep reading...</a></p>