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DxO PhotoLab 10 Adds AI Depth Masking, Still No Subscription
DxO has released PhotoLab 10 with new AI masks that recognize depth and individual people in a photo, keeping its one-time license model at $249.99.
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France's DxO Labs released a new version of its RAW photo editor, PhotoLab 10, on September 1, 2026. The update adds AI-powered masking tools to its arsenal, features that until now were associated mainly with Adobe's subscription-based products, while keeping DxO's one-time license model.
Depth-Based Masking
The headline addition in PhotoLab 10 is Depth Masks, masks built from how far each element in the frame sits from the camera rather than its shape or color. An AI algorithm analyzes the photo and generates a detailed depth map, letting photographers edit the foreground, midground and background separately without manually tracing outlines.
The feature works even when the RAW file doesn't contain depth data embedded by the camera itself. Mask edges can also be softened through feathering, which is meant to avoid hard, artificial transitions between distance zones.
Person and Face Recognition
The second major change is an overhaul of portrait masking. AI Masks can now identify each person in a frame individually, rather than treating a group of people as a single object. Photographers can create one mask covering everyone, merge selected people into a single mask, or generate separate masks for individual people and their features.
Facial segmentation goes down to individual elements: eyebrows, eyes (split into iris, pupil and sclera), facial hair, teeth and lips. The limitation is that the system recognizes only human faces, not animal ones, so animal eyes still need to be selected manually.
Color, Dust and Other Additions
Beyond masking, PhotoLab 10 gains a single-wheel color grading tool that handles shadows, midtones, highlights and global adjustments in real time, with a "Move All" option that preserves saturation and luminance. The feature was carried over from Nik Collection 9.
The app also gets automatic, context-aware removal of sensor dust spots, a new Control Brush that combines U Point technology with a brush tool, elliptical control points with rotation handles instead of only round ones, and a Crop as Shot function that preserves the camera's original frame ratio.
Position in the RAW Market
DxO PhotoLab competes with Adobe Lightroom and Capture One mainly on its licensing model: users pay once for a version and can keep using it without a monthly fee, unlike the subscription-based Lightroom. Until now, though, advanced AI masking, including person and depth recognition, had mostly been a strength of Adobe's subscription tools.
Reviewers note that integration with the Lightroom ecosystem remains limited, since PhotoLab 10 still can't directly import Adobe presets, though DxO is reportedly working on a preset conversion tool. Noise reduction in the new version uses the same technology as PureRAW 6, so there's no quality leap in that area.
Why It Matters in Poland
For amateurs and professionals who prefer to pay for hardware and software once rather than through a subscription, PhotoLab 10 is one of the few options combining advanced AI masking with no ongoing monthly cost. At $249.99 for a new license or $129.99 to upgrade from version 8 or 9, it lands in a price range comparable to a year of Lightroom Classic, without needing to renew the fee annually.
For newsrooms, portrait studios and event photographers handling large volumes of shots with people, what matters most is workflow speed: masks generated automatically from depth data and recognized people can cut retouching time compared with manually drawing selections in older versions of the app.
