At the bottom of the right-hand files pane are three important buttons Add images, Add images and Quick settings, and Process now. Note that these buttons will be grayed-out and inactive until you have at least one image selected (in the case of the first two), or at least one image in your project (for the last one). Add images will add one or more images selected in the file pane the usual selection shortcuts apply: Shift + click to select a whole range and Ctrl + click to make multiple selections into your project. Add images and Quick settings does the same, except that it allows you to choose presets to be associated with particular images. The simplest way of adding images is just to drag them down from the file pane into the Project pane. This , of course, does not work if you want to associate a preset with the image.

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The thumbnails and their buttons To remove one or more images from your project, you simply click on the orange icon displayed in the centre below each thumbnail; if multiple images are selected, clicking the on any one of them will delete the entire selection in one go. You can select a group of adjacent images by dragging a rubber-band box around them with the mouse, or by holding down the Shift key as you click on the first and last images in a series. Multiple non-adjacent images can be selected by holding down the Ctrl key while you click on them. The buttons associated with each thumbnail offer the following functions: to remove the image from the current project to rotate the image for correct viewing orientation to create a stack (active on the last-selected image of a multiple selection) unstacks a stack of images (active when a stack is selected) Above each image, only visible on mouse-over, are a line of stars (grayed out at start-up) to indicate the selected ranking of this image for processing you can click these stars on or off at any time. In addition to these buttons, certain icons may appear above each thumbnail follow the link to discover the meanings of these, as they give important information about each image. The color of the frame surrounding the thumbnail also has a significance. Fully automatic operation Once youve selected and added to your project all the images you want to process, if you have no need to make any manual adjustments to your images, you can simply press the Process now button, and processing will take place automatically. You will only be asked to intervene manually to input particular data in the event of certain corrections where DxO does not have enough information to process correctly.

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Chapter 3 Organize your images on an electronic light-table
Once you have established a Project (either by re-opening an existing one, or by creating a new one), you can use the Organize workspace to organize your images and their subsequent processing. If you only have a few images to process, you may be able to skip this stage completely, but it is extremely helpful where your workflow involves much larger numbers of images! In the Organize workspace, the top half of the screen (as always, resizable) is available as a sort of light table to display one or more images selected for preview. You can transfer any image to the preview window simply by leftclicking once on the relevant thumbnail. You can select multiple images to preview at the same time, and if for any reason you want to empty the preview screen, you just have to click on a blank area of the thumbnail pane.
The big picture As soon as there is an image in preview, the icon buttons originally associated with its thumbnail appear at the bottom right of the workspace, along with the current filename on the left. At the left-hand end is a thumbtack button that will stick down the preview image; this means you can move around between
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the thumbnail images in your project pane, without the preview pane continually refreshing. At the top of the workspace is a header bar. On the left-hand end of it are two buttons: a hand tool that lets you grab and drag a zoomed-in preview image so as to be able to examine any part of it; has no effect in Zoom-to-fit mode. Next to it is a magnifying glass tool that lets you to zoom in to any part of the image by successively clicking on it; holding down Shift as you click turns it into a zoom out tool. In all cases, the minimum zoom size is Zoom to fit (i.e. determined by the size you have set your preview pane to), and the maximum is 200%. Alternatively, over on the right-hand side, a drop-down list lets you choose the zoom ratio of the preview image zoom to fit will show you the whole image, resized according to the format of the image and the screen space available, while the various other ratios allow you to examine part of the image in greater detail; as an alternative to selecting from the drop-down menu, you can use the zoom in and zoom out buttons. There is also an button that toggles on/off the display of image EXIF data on the left-hand side of the preview screen. Adapt your workspace Also on the right is a little icon you can click to activate a background brightness slider, allowing you to set the background visible around the image anywhere you like between black and white (at start-up, the default is around 18% gray). This is helpful as a neutral reference when assessing or adjusting the color balance of your images. If you have a large number of images to process, you will find the Organize workspace very useful in allowing you to examine and organize your images in this way, and from the ones you have loaded, make a second, finer selection using the larger light table; you may well want to reject certain images and discard them from your project, stack them, and/or assign a processing priority by ranking your images later, at the processing stage, you will be able to choose which ranks to process, or not. Both these commands are accessed under the Image drop-down menu, or via the thumbnails themselves. Once you have had this chance to compare and organize your images, you can of course start automatic processing right away (Start Processing command from Workflow menu, or keyboard shortcut Ctrl + R) but its more than likely that youll want to move onto the next step, which is to make manual adjustments to some of the correction parameters, or apply some preset corrections to your images.

Crop last, but not least, here you can edit the composition of your image, with the option to constrain the proportions to those of the original shot or certain preset formats, or to allow unrestricted cropping to custom formats. Click on the Crop Tool (top of the main window) to access this function. When you have finished making any manual adjustments and/or applying any presets, the next logical step will be to start processing your images. You can click on Ctrl + R at any time, or select the Start Processing command from the Workflow menu, but, more than likely, youll want to move onto the next step by clicking on the Process tab to select the appropriate workspace.

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Chapter 5 Process as many images as you want with just one click
The top part of the Process workspace is divided into three areas, plus the familiar Project pane at the bottom. In the left-hand area 1-SELECTION, you can implement the star ranking you set earlier (and can still do in this workspace, since the thumbnails are still available); this is where you select which rank of images to process. There is a button for All, or you can again click to activate 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5 (individually, or in combination). Process the stars You can select a higher-ranking star alone to specifically exclude lower rankings; so will process only those images ranked. You can also make multiple selections, just by clicking on the corresponding stars; so for example , will process only images ranked either or. To process all images ranked up to , you need to select. Minithumbnails of the selected images will appear in the column below. Alongside button, which allows you to select only unranked the star buttons is another images for processing.

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The centre area 2-OPTIONS, under Destination directory, has radio buttons for using either the default project directory or a specific directory the browse button to the right opens a browser window where you can select an existing directory or create a new one. Define output formats Below this are three buttons for adding and/or selecting one or more output image formats. Each button (JPEG, TIFF, DNG) opens a dialog box with settings appropriate to that format. A summary of all available formats is to enable or disable them for this batch. shown, and you can click on or You must have at least one output format active for processing to commence, otherwise you will see an error message when you press Start. The right-hand area 3-PROCESSING has a big Start button, and gives status information about the progress of your project, along with controls to either pause or stop (i.e. abort) processing. As soon as you click on Start, if you have not already saved your project since the last changes were made, you will be prompted to save it before proceeding. You are kept informed of progress in processing your project by means of two progress bars, the top one showing the overall progress of the project as a whole, and the lower one indicating progress on the current image. During processing, upper Pause and Stop buttons allow you to halt processing temporarily or abort it altogether. Lower buttons similarly allow you to Pause processing of the current image, or Skip it altogether. While processing is under way, the thumbnails of all images included for processing carry a [two cogs] icon. Once processing is completed, these change to a indicating that processing has been successful.

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Chapter 6 View the results of your work (with a little help from DxO)
The View workspace has the now-familiar three resizable panes; the top lefthand pane shows before/after pair thumbnails of all your processed images, with buttons to skip to Last batch and All batches. The image pair being viewed has a highlighted background. The header bar in this workspace has, on the left-hand side, a [projector] button that gives access to the options for running a slide show of the processed images. To the right of this is shown the (original) filename of the image displayed. To the right-hand end of the header bar are nine buttons, plus the usual group of zoom controls. Heres what they do: and display previous / next image
and display next / previous output image if you have selected more than one output format for a given image, lets you view the JPEG / TIFF / DNG images in turn. When you have reached one end or the other of the image series, the relevant button will be grayed out.

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Chapter 7 How to go further
After going through a full typical session, you may want to explore more options. The powerful new DxO tools bring you many functions that you can fine tune in your own way. In the following chapters (that youll find only in the electronic version of this user guide), you can discover the various settings that can be applied to your photos and how you manipulate the corresponding palettes. Remember that your original picture is never modified: you can always create a new project, along with different settings applied to the same image or group of images.
Your workflow Another point of interest concerns the way you integrate DxO Optics Pro to your personal workflow. You may use an image management software to download, index and preview your photographs. You may also invest in some heavyweight treatment and correction software, (whose name begins for instance with photo and finishes by shop). DxO Optics Pro must be used ahead of the latter, whose importance will be greatly reduced and, concerning the database software, you should make sure that the EXIF information stored in the image file has remained untouched. If not, youll prefer running your pictures through DOP before managing them with another package.

Thank you for using DxO Optics Pro V4! You will find more information on the pdf version of this user guide, and in the Frequently Asked Questions available on DxOs website: http://www.dxo.com/en/photo/support

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Chapter 8 Menus
File / Edit / View / Workflow Image Menus
The File menu includes commands to :
Create a new project [Ctrl + N] Open an existing saved project [Ctrl + O] Save the current project [Ctrl + S] Save the current project under another filename Along with a list of the most recently used projects Exit is also available from this menu [Alt + F4]
Its important to note that a project saves all the current settings of your user interface, along with the list of images selected and the Output formats settings, but does not save duplicate copies of these images. So saving a project is fast, and does not use up a significant amount of disk space. It is very handy to be able to keep all your settings and come back to them later. The command, Export image for ICC profile permits you to create a version of the image selected, adapted to the creation of an ICC color profile from third-party software. Two options are possible: Export in linear RAW respects the information received by the captor, without interpreting the colors other than for the White Balance adjustments, in order to create a specific profile for
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the camera body used for this image. Export in DxO Natural: converts, on the other hand, the colors abstracting from the cameras rendering: the profile can be applied to an image no matter what camera body was used to create it. In order to call up such profiles, you only need to import them under the tab DxO Color of the step Adjust. The Edit menu
A very useful pair of commands, Undo [Ctrl + Z] and Redo [Ctrl + Y] apply to the last action youve performed. The classic Cut [Ctrl + X], Copy [Ctrl + C], and Paste [Ctrl + V] commands allow you to edit certain items like numerical values, names etc. The Copy settings [Ctrl + Alt + C] and Paste settings [Ctrl + Alt + V] commands allow you to copy all the correction settings from a given image onto another image or group of images. The Preferences command accesses adjustments to certain overall working parameters, via three tabs:

General tab

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Here you can select the working language, choose whether you prefer to use metric or imperial units for measurements, and select if you want the camera shutter sound to play at start-up. You can also select / deselect automatic checks for software updates. Processing Mode Radio buttons here allow you to choose which mode of processing best suits your way of working, if necessary changing the choice you may have made at the time of installation. Please refer to the description of these three modes given earlier. Changes made here only come into effect the next time you start the program, so if you want them to take effect immediately, you will need to exit and restart the program. Performance tab Settings for optimizing performance during batch processing. A slider lets you choose between maximum reactivity or fastest processing speed, with a checkbox to allow the setting to be determined automatically for your particular machine. The GPU acceleration checkbox activates the graphical processor available in the users computer.

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The Workflow menu includes commands for switching directly between the five workspaces (exactly the same effect as the tabs):
Select [Alt + 1] Organize [Alt + 2] Enhance [Alt + 3] Process [Alt + 4] View [Alt + 5] You can select these at any time, and your workspace layout changes to suit. If you have already selected Auto mode (Edit > Preferences), you cannot access the Enhance tab, which will disappear, and the Enhance command here will be grayed out. This setting can be changed in Preferences, under the Edit menu. In addition, there is Start processing [Ctrl + R], which you can use in the event of fully automatic processing of a particular batch of images. Image Menu The Image menu offers the possibility of rotating your image left (counterclockwise) or right (clockwise) in order to be able to view portrait images with the correct orientation.

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Likewise, you can use the commands here to rank a selected image or group of images according to a rating of one to five stars; when you get to the processing stage, you can select which images you wish to process in a given batch according to your defined star ratings.
If you have at least two images selected, the Create stack command becomes available, and will make a stack of the selected images; likewise, if you select an existing stack, you can use the reverse command, Unstack images, to open out the stack again into its individual images. The Display information command has the same effect as the button on the toolbar, toggling on/off the display of the EXIF and thumbnail information in the preview window this command is only applicable in the Organize and Enhance workspaces, and so is disabled in the other three.
The Help menu offers access to an About DxO Optics Pro information screen containing information about the exact software version, important if you need to contact DxO Technical Support. There are also direct links to the general DxO website, and the software update and technical support pages.

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Chapter 9 Using Auto, Guided and Expert modes
Processing mode The first time you run the program after installation, you will see this screen:
Here you are prompted to choose the processing mode that is most suited to your preferred way of working: Auto mode DxO Optics Pro will determine automatically the optimum correction settings for your images, and the only input required from you will be to fill in certain information where EXIF data is missing or insufficient. In this mode, the 'Enhance' step is disabled (its tab will be grayed out), and after selecting and organizing your images, you will move straight on to process them automatically. Guided mode In this mode, the Enhance step will be available, but instead of having access to the full set of manual correction adjustments, you will be offered the choice of applying the four main groups of corrections according to drop-down lists of preset choices, including of course access to your own saved presets. You will be able to switch over to Expert Settings mode at any time via the button available under the Enhance tab. Expert mode
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As you might expect, this mode gives you access to all the manual and automatic correction settings. The Enhance tab will be enabled, and the full range of correction tabs will be accessible. You will be able to switch over to Guided Settings mode at any time via the button available under the Enhance tab. By default, the Expert mode is selected, and once the application has been run for the first time, you can always change the settings again in the future under Edit > Preferences > General.
Open a project window When you launch DxO Optics Pro for the first time, you will see the following screen:
(To avoid seeing this screen each time you launch the application, uncheck Always show this dialog box) Open a recent project lists the five most recent projects, for fast access to your work in progress. Open a new project lets you start a fresh project, and prompts you to name and save it, before you start your actual image enhancement session.

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And lastly, Open an existing project opens a browser window where you can locate and open an existing saved project.

DxO Optics

There are four corrections under this tab. Note that certain of these will only be available if the appropriate lens correction module is loaded; where this is not the case, some of the corrections will appear grayed-out and be disabled.
Distortion There is a check box to enable this correction, and if the check box is unchecked (correction disabled), the correction will remain grayed out. Geometric distortion may be pincushion, barrel or even for some lenses a mixture of the two! In each case, the analytical measurements carried out by DxO Labs make it possible to correct the distortion in such a way that straight
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lines in the original scene are correctly reproduced as straight lines in the photo. The Distortion tab has just one slider for the degree of distortion correction; the range is 0 to 100 %. The default setting is 100 %, and you should only depart from this in special circumstanceseither to avoid cropping of important detail near edges, or for creative reasons. TIP
Distortion correction involves a non-linear change in the magnification, which produces curved edges to the image and empty black spaces. To restore clean, straight edges and maintain the images original aspect ratio, some cropping of the image is inevitable; at very wide-angle (and especially with fish-eyes) this may be quite significant, so remember to make allowance for this when framing such shots.
There is a check box to enable or disable Max. image. Normally, during distortion correction, the corrected image is re-cropped back to the original aspect ratio; in certain cases, this may mean that the image is cropped tighter than is strictly necessary. Using Max. image releases this constraint on the aspect ratio, so the cropping is just the bare minimum required to straighten the edges of the image. You are then free to crop the image manually to suit your taste or requirements.
Chromatic aberration There are two controls for chromatic aberration; to the right of them are the usual check boxes for automatic setting, which have to be unchecked to enable the manual controls. The first slider / edit box, with a range from 0 to 200 %, adjusts the correction intensity for all types of chromatic aberrationit basically affects tiny colored transitions, which may generally be assumed to

DxO Lens Softness

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Unsharp Mask

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Chapter 13 DxO Noise tools
DxO Noise tab DxO Noise is a calibrated correction, in other words, the correction algorithm is specifically tailored for each camera, and so this correction will only be performed for images from cameras that have been calibrated by DxO.
Remember that these corrections will not be visible in the main preview image, but only by using the Zoom tool. Once again here, there is a check box to enable this correction, and if the check box is unchecked (correction disabled), the entire panel will be grayed out. All five controls under this tab have individual Auto boxes to their right that have to be unchecked in order to enable the manual controls; there are Uncheck all (= all manual) and Check all (= all automatic) buttons at the top that can be used to uncheck / check all the controls at the same time. In order to judge the effect of your noise adjustments, it is essential to use the Zoom tool, which gives an accurate preview of final image quality. Choose an area of your image where you can best assess the noise to make your adjustments, and then if necessary move the zoom area around in order to examine other critical areas. The degree of Luminance noise correction can be set using the slider / edit box, with a range from 0 to 100 %. Although DxO Optics Pros luminance noise reduction is intelligent and discreet, it is still advisable to use the minimum amount of correction that produces acceptable results, to avoid any danger of unwanted effects on fine detail. To minimize such effects, there is a Fine detail slider / edit box, with a range from 0 to 100 %. The default value is 0, but you can increase this setting in situations where you might need to restore some of the fine detail that can be attenuated during strong luminance noise reduction, creating an undesirable plastic or waxwork look.

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The degree of Chrominance noise correction can be set using the slider / edit box, with a range from 0 to 100 %. This is useful for reducing or eliminating colored noiseto which the eye is particularly sensitiveand you can usually safely use quite high settings with little risk of unwanted side-effects. Impulse noise correction can be added using the slider / edit box, again with a range from 0 to 100 %. It offers very effective reduction of impulse-type noise (which only affects certain specific cameras), but should be used judiciously, because of the slightly greater risk of its having a visible effect on wanted picture detail. Note that when processing Raw images this control is not available (it will be grayed out), as this correction is applied automatically as part of the Raw conversion process. The Gray equalizer slider / box has a range from 0 to 100 %. This makes it possible to clean up unwanted colored noise from midtones, and has the effect of slightly de-saturating neutral tones around mid-gray, to minimize spurious color effects in these sensitive areas. You will probably be able to leave it at the default setting, unless you notice the effect it can have of desaturating certain pastel tones. Look at the pictures below, which illustrate the effect of this noise reduction, particularly visible in the shadow areas.

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During exposure adjustments, you may well find it helpful to use the highlight / shadow clipping display, available via the buttons beneath the Histogram display. These displays are intended to give a temporary pictorial indication of those parts of an image that are clipped (i.e. dark areas that have reached minimum black level or light areas that have reached maximum white level). Clicking on the highlight clipping button displays a picture that is mainly black (= areas with no clipping), in which certain small areas will display as white (= highlights where all three color channels are at maximum) or as different colors (= only one or two color channels are at maximum). This enables you to spot at once precisely which parts of your picture are clipping, and hence make a more informed decision as to what corrections to apply. The exact opposite is true for the shadow clipping buttonin this case, the picture displayed is mainly white, with small black or colored areas indicating clipping.The middle button restores the normal display. Its important to note that shadow and highlight clipping displays are computed in the final output color space, and hence these displays, and any adjustments performed based on them, will be affected if the output color space is subsequently changed. Highlight recovery Highligh recovery is only available for raw images (it is disabled when working on an RGB [JPEG] image). A drop-down menu offers the choice of None / Slight / Medium / Strong intensities of correction. On this image, note how checking the Highlight recovery box produces a slight reduction in exposure and retrieves highlight detail that had appeared to be lost; this is one of the great advantages of working with raw images, since with an RGB image, once highlights are blown, there is no possibility of rescuing the lost detail.

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Chapter 15 DxO Color tools
Color rendering Color rendering lets you apply a specific look to your Raw images, starting right from the very look of specific camera bodies, referred to here as color rendition profiles. This functionality will slightly differ if you have activated the DxO FilmPack (see chapter 19). As usual, there is a check box to enable this function, and a combo box lets you choose between Original, Neutral, and Realistic, along with specific color rendition profiles for 7 families of cameras currently supported by DxO Optics Pro. Realistic is the flat color rendition profile, without any interpretation, with a gamma valued at 2.2. Neutral has the same color rendition, but with a contrast slightly increased. The command Import an ICC profile available in the menu Color rendition profiles allows you to load a specific profile created from a test image, with the adjustments entitled either Realistic or Linear Raw (see the creation of profiles in Chapter 8).

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The implication of this is far-reaching; it means you can shoot with multiple bodies from different stables, and yet always produce results with consistent color rendition. You can apply the color rendition profile of Brand X to a camera from Brand Y, so all your pictures look as if they were taken using your Brand X. Alternatively, the two more neutral settings cancel out even these tiny variations between cameras, to produce a technically precise, neutral result. Color modes Color modes offers you three combo boxes where you can make some preset and repeatable choices about the overall look of your image. These color modes are available for both Raw and JPEG images. Choices of high / medium-high / medium-low / low are offered for both contrast and saturation. Special offers original, two style presets: portrait and landscape, together with black & white and sepia effects. Portrait and landscape each apply a fairly subtle color/contrast preset that has been developed to be generally suitable for these two broad types of picture; these are extremely convenient as a quick and repeatable solution for those who do not need or wish to make individual corrections of these parameters for each individual image. As their names imply, B&W removes all the color from the image, while sepia tones the whole image with a pleasing sepia effect. SmartVibrancy Moving the slider controlling SmartVibrancy to the right will enhance the colors to make them more appealing, while avoiding undesirable side-effects. On the opposite, moving it to the left will reduce the strenght of the colors in an oversaturated image. Multi-point color balance (MPCB) One of the brand new features in DxO Optics Pro version 4, this offers a sophisticated way of achieving exact color matching between shots, even where a neutral color reference is missing. The system allows you to pick up to four colors and set the color you want each of these to be reproduced as, and then DxO Optics Pro will make a best-compromise calculation to adjust the color balance of the entire image whats more, it can do this across a whole string of images, making it is easier than ever before to match critical colors between different shots. on the To use this function, you first need to click on the appropriate button left-hand side of the Enhance header bar; this will open the DxO Color correction panel and check the Multi-Point Color Balance enable box, if it isnt already. It will also put the preview display into twin-image mode (before and after correction).
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On the MPCB panel, you have four pairs of color patches labeled 14; these will show the color points you pick in your image, and beneath each of them there is an X to delete them. There are also corresponding Edit RGB boxes where youll be able to directly enter numeric red / green / blue values. As soon as you left click on the left-hand image, you will select a color to go in the top (before) color patch, and a color wheel will appear on your image, like this:

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Chapter 16 DxO Lighting tools
This DxO Optics Pro feature merits a little explanation. Natural scenes rarely exhibit ideal lighting conditions; light sources are often directional and sometimes quite harsh. Whats more, when taking pictures we are often more concerned about capturing the right moment, and pay little attention to potential lighting problems. To compound the problem, the dynamic range of sensors cant compete with that of our eyes. All this can result in some shots exhibiting under-exposed, dark or shadowed regions with missing details. To a certain extentbasically, when the wanted image signal is sufficiently above the noise levellighting problems can be corrected afterwards, given appropriate image processing. Pixel-precise image segmentation technology lies at the heart of DxO Lighting, to deliver automatic local contrast adjustment and thereby reveal hidden detail in dark areas. Simply put, DxO Lighting first breaks the image down into a number of areas in which luminance values have a certain range; it then processes each of these areas in the most appropriate manner to reveal detail. In general terms, lightness and tone curve slope are slightly increased in dark areas to bring out detail, yet avoid the signal clipping that could occur if the overall gamma were adjusted.
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Auto settings intensity Slight / Medium / Strong Theres a simple check box on the right for Auto, which has to be unchecked to enable the slider for Strengthas usual, the slider is disabled until the Auto box is unchecked. Slider range is from 0 to 150 %, and theres also an edit box for direct entry of the correction value. Look at the effect on the four pictures below:

Lighting slight

Lighting medium

lighting strong

There is the same basic check box for Auto or manual, and the slider for Correction strengththe slider is disabled until the Auto box is unchecked. Slider range is from 0 to 150 %, and theres also an edit box for direct entry. Checking the Fine controls box opens up a sub-panel with a whole new group of controls. First come the buttons for Manual / As shot / Auto that uncheck / check all of the Auto boxes at the same time, and a central As shot button that resets all sliders to their default positionsvery useful!
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The White and Black point sliders operate in a complementary fashion; each has a range from 0 to 255, or you can enter a whole number in the edit boxes instead. These controls have the effect of stretching the images lower tonal range up towards white, or vice-versa: stretching the upper range down towards black. This is similar in many ways to what might be achieved using a tone curve adjustment and is probably easiest to visualize in conjunction with the Histogram display. Selecting or deselecting Auto for either automatically selects / deselects it for the other too. The Brightness adjustment acts basically like an overall gamma control, the slider and entry box having a default setting of 1.00, with a range from 0.50 to 5.00. The Preserve shadow feature (checked by default) operates at higher positive gamma settings, where shadows tend to become washed-out, and intelligently decides to what extent the darker tones should be held back as shadows. The Radius slider / edit box affects the way DxO Lighting makes its decisions about what areas represent shadow or not, and how to apply the gamma locally in the image; it has a range from 0 (entirely global) to 15 (fully localized). And last but by no means least comes the pair of sliders / edit boxes for Local contrast (range from 0 to 100 %) and Global contrast (range from +50 to 50 %). As you might expect, the Global contrast control uses an S-curve to affect the overall contrast of the image, with a useful bi-directional range allowing both contrast enhancement for slightly flat images and reduction for contrasted ones. The Local contrast control, on the other hand, is more subtle in its effect, altering the contrast in a spatially determined way that takes account of the area around each pixel, having something of the feel of dodging-and-burning.

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stick down one end point with the mouse, then set another end point to define your line, shown by a bright green line on the preview image. As soon as you click the second point, the image will rotate in such a way as to make your chosen line horizontal (or vertical). If you make a mess of it the first time, you can click on Undo [Ctrl + Z] and then reset your second end point. All the remaining three options change the display into twin, side-by-side images, showing the original preview image on the left and the result of your correction on the right. Once the defining points have been set, three new buttons appear at the bottom left: Check, Accept, Reset. In each case, click on the Check button to check the effect in the right-hand preview image, and then either Accept the correction, or click on Reset to go back to the original settings and try again. These three modes also have a check box for Keep image centered, which can be helpful when shooting architectural pictures, for example.
Force parallel (vertical) Force parallel (horizontal) Force rectangle The first two keystoning correction options Force vertical / horizontal act in a similar way, except that in these cases you are asked to define a pair of vertical / horizontal lines that you wish to be parallel, and hence, you need to define two pairs of start and end points. It doesnt matter if you define the lines in the same or reverse sense, the end result doesnt change. Only the relative angles of the lines counttheir lengths have no significance. If you define a pair of horizontal lines for vertical correction (or vice-versa), your image will be rotated to suit. If your picture contains both vertical and horizontal keystoning at the same time, you will need to use the fourth option, Force rectangle. This lets you define four points that form corners of a quadrilateral that you wish to correct to be rectangular. Note however that this is rather more powerful than a simple manual combination of both vertical and horizontal keystone correction, since it can also introduce an element of skew into the correction. As the four corrections under this button are mutually exclusive, if by any chance your image contains both keystoning and a horizon that isnt level, you will either have to first perform one of the corrections using the top left-hand buttons and then the other in the Geometry panel of the right-hand palette, or perform all your corrections using the panel controls. Since the Level horizon command only works with a horizontal line, if the problem with your picture is in fact a leaning vertical, it will make most sense to correct any keystoning first using the left-hand button, and only then go and correct the leaning vertical in the right-hand Geometry panel. Alternatively, you can cheat by using the Force rectangle tool, though this gets a bit fiddly!