DxO Labs today announces the immediate availability of the new version of its flagship product – DxO Optics Pro v4.5 – for both Windows and Macintosh computer systems.

New features include a plug-in for Adobe's Lightroom application, a Flickr.com plug-in, an automatic cropping tool and improved speed and performance.

The main new features is the inclusion of a plug-in for Adobe's Photoshop Lightroom application allowing photographers to integrate DxO Optics Pro and Lightroom into their workflow.

The new plug-in will allow users to send images straight from Adobe Photoshop Lightroom to DxO Optics Pro for processing and save corrected files directly into their Lightroom library (with the image metadata intact).

“DxO’s goal is to enrich and support the workflow platform that Adobe Photoshop Lightroom provides today’s professional photographers. The new DxO Optics Pro Plug-in for Adobe Photoshop Lightroom is the first step in tightly integrating DxO image science into this very popular photographic software embraced by photographers around the world”, says Luc Marin, vice president of the Photography business at DxO Labs. “In order to provide this support for Adobe Photoshop Lightroom so quickly we were able to creatively develop the plug-in for Lightroom before the software developer’s kit, or SDK, was even available to us. Once the SDK is made available, we will engineer an even more elegant plug-in solution than it is already and completely maximize the interoperability of these two digital imaging tools. Of course, we will continue to focus on our forte, advanced automated image processing, and we will integrate with other software when it makes sense.”

Other plug-ins included in the box include the Flickr Export Plug-in that allows automatic login, tagging and fast uploading of DxO Optics Pro processed images to Flickr.com.

The software has also been updated to include more automated features including an Automatic Crop option. DxO Optics Pro v4.5 maximizes the remaining image surface, respects the height/width ratio and preserves the geometric centre of the image providing users with an immediate view of the final effect of the crop.

The upgrade to DxO Optics Pro v4.5 is free for all users of DxO Optics Pro v4.x (4.0, 4.1, and 4.2).

>> Reviewed - DxO Optics Pro v4.2 - Mac Review