DxO

I had a quick play around with the DxO Optice Pro 3.5 app for enhancing images. I was blow away at how easy and quick it was to use. I usually pump my curves pretty high on many images to give a more saturated feel but with DxO i can do that and more while reducing noise and lens barrel distortion.

While some of the alterations are subtle the qualuty of the final image always looks better than tweaking with photoshop. This is with a standard JPEG, I don't shoot RAW but I will for a week to see the difference. This should provide even better results.

The best part is you can easily batch the alterations and have it rename files for you. That and having complete control over the chnages or setting everything on Auto.

Here's an image i spent a few minutes working on in photoshop compared with the one DxO did in seconds. The DxO version is much nicer. Although the vignetting I kinda like this could have been left in.

Here's another image that would have required a fair amount of masking and for me wasn't worth it for this image. But DxO makes short work of it. What you can't see in these tiny gif versions is that the sharpening and noise reduction really enhance the image when viewing at 100% and i suspect when printing.

I still like the look when you increase the contrast via the curves and over saturate the images luckily this can be done in DxO aswell. It's Mac and PC and for $150 USD covers most DSLR's and lens.