If you shoot a Fujifilm X100V, or are looking to pick one up used, the natural comparison is the newer X100VI. And yes, there’s more to the upgrade than just the sensor.
It’s not my objective here to give a direct comparison of their specs and features.
Instead, I want to show some examples of a surprisingly easy way to improve the X100V’s image quality without forking out the big bucks for the rather pricey and still-hard-to-find X100VI.
There’s a much cheaper option. And if you’ve been shooting with the X100V for a while, this also works with all those RAW images already sitting in your archive.
The new type of RAW denoising software
Camera sensors keep improving with each generation, but something else has changed faster: the software.
In the last few years, there’s been a genuine generational leap in what can be pulled out of a RAW file after the fact — cleaner shadows, less noise, sharper detail — and it works just as well on files that are 10 or 20 years old as on ones you shot yesterday.
If you have an archive of Fujifilm X100V photos or are trying to extend the limits of the sensor, this is worth knowing about.
The software I’m focusing on here, and the one I use most often in my own workflow, is DxO PureRAW. And at the heart of PureRAW is a technology that DxO calls DeepPRIME. (I wrote a broader comparison of these tools in my look at the current crop of denoise tools.)
The catch is that it only works on RAW files. That’s not a limitation of one app — it’s where the gains of this type of technology come from.
Tools like DxO PureRAW and Lightroom’s newer generation of denoise tools work on the sensor data before it has been demosaiced and baked into the pixels, and that’s where these newer machine-learning models have the advantage over the older generation. You can still run the older style of noise reduction on JPEGs and TIFFs (using other apps, not PureRAW), but you’re working with already-cooked data, and the results are a different league. So this is the payoff for deciding to keep all those RAW files from years ago.
You’ll see the most dramatic improvements in high-ISO frames and in shadow detail. That’s where older RAW files degrade most visibly. In many of today’s cameras, ISO 3200 looks fantastic. But in many older digital cameras, ISO 3200 was the bleeding edge and came with pretty heavy noise and graining.
But the improvements aren’t only limited to high ISOs. Even at the camera’s base ISO you can see useful improvements, albeit usually more subtle.
But in my experience, more often than I might have expected, the improvements can be dramatic, making an old, noisy, unpublishable file into something much, much better. I’ve recovered a lot of old images this way.
So whether you’re trying to push the Fujifilm X100V further than its sensor was ever meant to go, or dig some old RAW files out of the archive, here’s what the results actually look like. If you’d like an even closer look, you can also download the RAW/DNG files; I have more information on how you can get those at the bottom of the page.
The Fujifilm X100V: Sensor and ISO range
A quick look at what we’re working with here.
The X100V has a 26.1-megapixel APS-C X-Trans CMOS 4 sensor, and it produces images that are 6240 × 4160 pixels.
Its base ISO is 160, and the standard sensitivity range runs from ISO 160 to 12800, with extended settings down to ISO 80 and up to ISO 51200. It came out in 2020, so there are plenty of RAW files from it sitting in archives by now, including my own.
One thing that’s specific to Fujifilm: this is in their X-Trans sensor lineup, and X-Trans files haven’t always worked with PureRAW. Almost every other camera’s sensor uses what’s known as a Bayer pattern, which arranges the red, green, and blue pixels in the same simple repeating pattern.
But Fujifilm X-trans sensors use their own, more scrambled arrangement instead. There are some definite advantages to that choice, but it also means the tools that turn the sensor data into an image have to be built and trained separately for it, and for a long time DxO’s weren’t.
PureRAW added support for X-Trans since version 2, and the current DeepPRIME models are trained on X-Trans data specifically. So the results you see below are from that dedicated support rather than something adapted from Bayer files. It’s still worth knowing, though, because it explains why Fujifilm owners have sometimes been left waiting for new features, and why the newest 40-megapixel X-Trans 5 HR bodies, like the X100VI, weren’t supported until 2025.
The examples below run from ISO 3200 down to ISO 160, highest first, since that’s where the differences are most obvious.
| Sensor | 26.1 MP APS-C X-Trans CMOS 4 23.5 × 15.6 mm |
| Resolution | 6240 × 4160 pixels |
| Pixel pitch | ≈ 3.8 µm |
| Base ISO | 160 |
| Native ISO range | 160 – 12800 |
| Extended ISO (low) | 80 |
| Extended ISO (high) | 51200 |
| ISO in these examples | 3200 – 160 |
And a reminder that PureRAW and its competitors only work on RAW files.
Results
Shot 1: ISO 3200
Shot 2: ISO 2000
Shot 3: ISO 1600
Shot 4: ISO 1250
Shot 5: ISO 800
Shot 6: ISO 160
Verdict
The X100V has an excellent sensor to begin with, and the results of the denoising aren’t as dramatic as with some other cameras. But there is some definite improvement, not just with the noise reduction but also in making the details a little crisper.
But one thing I’ve found is that with the Fujifilm X100V RAW files, the files PureRAW-generated DNG files that render noticeably warmer (yellower) in Lightroom than the originals. I’ve deliberately not corrected it, because the point of this series is to show what you’ll actually get. It isn’t white balance metadata (Lightroom reads the same As Shot values on both files); it’s in the pixels DxO writes for this camera.
As it happens, I actually prefer it, because the Fujifilm RAWs render by default a little cooler than I’d like.
But either way, it’s a convenience issue rather than an image-quality one. That’s because the PureRAW files are still DNG raw data, so changes to settings like tint and white balance are non-destructive (as compared to a format where they’re baked in, like JPG). So it’s easily corrected or adjusted in Lightroom and other RAW editing apps using the white balance and tint sliders.
You can try it on your own images
I’ve found PureRAW to be very useful in my own workflow and have been a paying customer since version 3 in 2023.
But it’s all well and good to see how it works on a small sample of my images; the real test is what effect it’ll have on your images.
If you want to try it on your own files, DxO offers a free trial of PureRAW. Or, if you want a full RAW editor alternative to Lightroom, the same DeepPRIME engine is built into DxO PhotoLab.
How these examples were made
- Camera: Fujifilm X100V (firmware Digital Camera X100V Ver2.00)
- Input image format: Fujifilm RAF
- ISO range: 160 – 3200
- DxO PureRAW (v. 6.5) — DeepPRIME XD3 (Luminance 40, Force Details 0) · Lens softness: ON · Chromatic aberration, vignetting, distortion: ON · Dust removal: OFF · DNG output (uncompressed)
- Rendering: Adobe Lightroom Classic 15.5, identical develop settings for each before/after pair, with the lens corrections handled by each side’s own engine: Lightroom’s lens profile (distortion + vignetting at default) and chromatic-aberration removal on the Lightroom side, DxO’s on the PureRAW DNG (Lightroom’s lens corrections switched off there so nothing is corrected twice); Lightroom’s sharpening and noise reduction switched off on the DNG (PureRAW already did those); no output sharpening
- Lightroom lens profile: built-in — Lightroom applies this camera’s lens corrections automatically from data in the RAW file (they can’t be switched off), so the Lightroom side is corrected in every comparison
These are all photos I shot myself, in ordinary shooting conditions, not test-chart frames.
Every before/after pair was rendered from the same file with the same settings; the only variable is whether the file went through PureRAW first.
PureRAW lets you dial each tool up or down. For the purposes here I’m using my standardized settings that amount to sensible defaults rather than chasing extremes: DeepPRIME XD3 noise reduction at its default strength, lens softness, chromatic aberration, vignetting and distortion corrections on, and dust removal off.
I’ve used the same settings for every frame, so the comparisons are apples-to-apples. And to keep it fair on the optics, the Lightroom side has Lightroom’s own lens profile switched on (distortion and vignetting corrections at their defaults) and chromatic aberration removal on in every comparison, so each side has its optics corrected by its own tools. I’ve also tried to include a variety of different ISO settings and scenes.
Why I’ve chosen these settings here
PureRAW does more than noise reduction. Its tools fall into two groups.
The sensor corrections — DeepPRIME’s noise reduction and demosaicing — work on what the sensor recorded.
The optical corrections — lens softness, chromatic aberration, vignetting, and distortion — fix what the lens did to the light on its way in. The sensor corrections are the main event in this post, but I’ve left DxO’s optical corrections on as well. I can’t really think of a good reason not to fix chromatic aberration in every photo (we’re not doing lomography here!), and it’s a setting I always enable by default on my own photos. For my own photos, I am, however, more choosy about when to apply vignetting and distortion fixes, because to my own eye, those optical “flaws” are sometimes positives and something that I want to retain. But for the purposes here of using a standard set of settings to make comparison easier, and because these types of optical profiles and corrections are defining strengths of DxO’s software, I’m applying those fixes in these side-by-side examples.
Lens softness correction is such an integral part of how PureRAW’s output looks that turning it off would misrepresent the tool. And DxO’s optical corrections — built on the enormous body of lens and camera test data that was their original claim to fame — are a genuine strength that separates PureRAW from Lightroom’s built-in tools.
The images above
In the examples above, I’ve included two types of comparisons:
- My edit, upgraded: the before is my finished Lightroom edit, plus Lightroom’s own lens profile (distortion + vignetting at default) and chromatic-aberration removal, switched on for every comparison; the after is the same edit applied to the PureRAW DNG, with Lightroom’s sharpening and noise reduction — and its lens profile and chromatic-aberration removal — switched off on the DNG, because PureRAW has already done those jobs (leaving them on double-processes the file — the most common reason PureRAW output looks over-sharpened). So each side has its optics corrected by its own tools, and everything else is identical on both sides.
- Untouched: both files with no editing at all beyond those lens corrections, at Lightroom’s default settings, so you can see what PureRAW does on its own.
With distortion correction on both sides, each frame is shown as its engine renders it corrected — geometrically the same on both sides, so it doesn’t skew the comparison.
There’s a technical note worth knowing: at identical settings, an unadjusted PureRAW DNG renders about 0.1 stop brighter than the original in Lightroom. That’s because PureRAW writes its own baseline exposure into the DNG (here PureRAW’s DNG carries +0.07 EV; the camera’s file has no such tag, and Lightroom applies its own hidden baseline for this camera). So rather than trust the tags, I measured the difference for each pair (central area, linear light) and offset the DNG’s exposure by exactly that amount (-0.10 EV) — you’re seeing PureRAW’s processing, not an exposure difference.
Color shift: significant. Measured over the central 60% of each pair in linear light, at identical Lightroom settings, PureRAW’s DNGs came out warmer (yellower) than the Fujifilm X100V originals: ImageMagick measures it as red-to-green +6.5% and blue-to-green -3.5% (median across the frames). Left uncorrected in every comparison on this page — see the note above the results. Because the DNG is still raw, a white balance adjustment fixes it without any quality cost; it’s an extra step per image, not a degradation.
How PureRAW fits into a real workflow
I’m using these with Lightroom Classic, but PureRAW isn’t limited to only Lightroom-centric workflows. You can use it as a standalone app, and the underlying DeepPRIME technology is also built into DxO’s own full-suite editor app PhotoLab (which is itself well worth a look if you’re after a Lightroom alternative).
In practice, PureRAW is a pre-processing step, not an editor. You can run it as a standalone app (just drop RAW files on it, pick a preset or adjust the settings, and run process) or straight from Lightroom Classic via its plug-in — select the photos, send them to PureRAW, and it hands back the processed versions reimported into Lightroom.
Either way, the output is a new DNG file for each RAW: PureRAW never touches your original. If you’re using Lightroom, the DNG is created next to the original with your existing edits carried across, so you’re not starting over — you just switch to the new file. (TIP: make sure to save any Lightroom develop settings to the file before sending it to PureRAW or the settings won’t be applied to the PureRAW version automatically.)
With this workflow, there are two key considerations to factor in:
- File storage: those DNGs are linear (already demosaiced) files, and they can be considerably larger than the RAWs they came from — the ones in this post average about 1.5× the size of the originals. If you run it across a whole archive, that adds up quickly. So I don’t run it across everything.
- Processing time. DeepPRIME is computationally heavy. So most of the time I’ll only apply it to selected images rather than everything. Running it across dozens or hundreds of images is entirely possible, and I’ll sometimes do that if I have the time, but it takes a while (depending on the speed of your computer) and eats storage space.
What PureRAW doesn’t do
It’s also worth being clear about what this isn’t, because the marketing can blur the lines:
- It doesn’t add resolution. The DNG has exactly the same pixel dimensions as the RAW. It cleans up and sharpens what’s there; it doesn’t upscale. (That’s a separate job for tools like Lightroom’s Super Resolution or Topaz Gigapixel.)
- It doesn’t fix blur. Camera shake, motion blur, and missed focus stay exactly as they were. The “lens softness” correction is a profile-based sharpening for the lens’s known optical softness, not a deblurring tool.
- It doesn’t recover what was never captured. Blown highlights are still blown, and a badly underexposed frame gets cleaner, not correctly exposed — that part is still done in your editor.
A note on the “AI” label
PureRAW and its rivals describe themselves as AI-powered. Which is the marketing buzzword of the day. But it’s worth being precise about what that means here, because “AI” can be a double-edged sword, and the kind of AI we’re talking about here is a different thing from the AI most people now have in mind.
This is more accurately referred to as machine learning. What that means is that DxO trained a model on a very large set of paired examples — noisy sensor data and what the clean version should look like — and the software uses that training to make a better-informed guess about what each pixel really was.
It works from the data in your file and nothing else. It doesn’t invent content, it doesn’t pull in imagery from anywhere else, and it can’t invent a detail out of nothing — where the noise has genuinely destroyed information, you get softness or waxy texture, not made-up content (a good reason to not push those sliders all the way to the right). Push it hard enough on a truly ruined frame and you get mush or waxy textures, not fabrication.
That’s different to how generative AI works. Think ChatGPT or Claude or SeaDance or Nano Banana. That’s a fundamentally different type of technology, one that synthesizes new pixels. And that isn’t what PureRAW uses and isn’t what’s happening in any of the comparisons above. Your photo is still your photo.
Download the RAW and DNG files
If you want to take an even closer look at the results here, I’ve posted the full-size original RAW files and PureRAW’s DNG output for the examples above for subscribers to my newsletter. The download index is here: RAW file downloads for subscribers. The page is password-protected; the password is in the newsletter’s welcome email.
