Starting from the top, the first panel is for fixing Distortion. NB: You can click on any of these screenshots to see a larger version. On its own, though, it will only open JPEG and TIFF files, not raw files. If you run it as a standalone program DxO ViewPoint 3 does include a basic file browser. Whether you’re launching it as a standalone app or as a plug-in, it opens with your selected image in the main window and a vertical tools panel on the right hand side. It sounds a complex job, but ViewPoint 3 makes perspective corrections pretty easy. You know where you have a person or an object near the edge of the frame that’s distorted into too wide a shape? It fixes that, which is a pretty useful thing to be able to do with group shots, for example, or off-centre composition. ViewPoint already does something else that the others don’t – volumetric distortion correction. These include new, automatic perspective corrections (Lightroom already has these, so there’s an element of catch-up here), automatic horizon straightening and a new creative blur (bokeh) tool for creating tilt-shift effects or defocused backgrounds. Some of the new features in version 3 might help. What it needs to bring, then, is either an easier workflow, better results or features the others don’t have. Lightroom has its own perspective correction tools, as does Photoshop. ViewPoint serves a very useful function, then, but it’s not unique. ViewPoint is designed to correct the converging verticals and other exaggerated perspective effects you get with wideangle lenses – DxO Optics Pro only corrects lens aberrations like distortion, chromatic aberration, corner shading (vignetting) and edge softness. See also: Best image editing software – what to look for, how to choose.

It works as a standalone application, as a plug-in for Lightroom, Photoshop and Elements and as a fully-integrated panel within DxO PhotoLab, DxO’s flagship optical correction and raw processing tool. DxO ViewPoint 3 is the latest version of DxO’s perspective and distortion correction program.

Dxo viewpoint 2