Any news on the next version (5) of photolab?

in general Dxo releases its new version in October.
it is currently quite calm and silent.

Do you have any news on a release date and especially any specifications for new products?

It will be released “soon”. If I told you any more, I’d have to kill you :crazy_face: :joy:

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thank you!! :blush:

wait and see

Hi,
Usually I believe it’s the 3rd Wednesday in October at 3:00 p.m.

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ok

Do you have any clues on any new features?

Details on the new features in PL 5 will be available three weeks from today assuming it is released on it’s normal annual schedule.

Mark

thank you!

@sgospodarenko @StevenL

Most important part – system requirements. My main computers Mac Pro silver towers which cannot be upgraded past Mojave. I have no plans to change these computers as they are the best Macs ever made and replacing them with the new Mac Pros would cost a minimum of €8500 and that’s before the storage drama (apparently these Mac Pros won’t accept normal SSD).

If Photolab 5 comes out and will not run on Mojave I an unlikely to buy or recommend Photolab to anyone for a few years before I eventually decide to move to Linux or buy a more recent Mac. I’d evaluate my unpaid work promoting Photolab at between $2000 and $5000/year depending on the year. There’s a fair number of us who are both Photolab evangelists and running older OS (since when does a three year old OS quality as old or obsolete: Mojave was introduced in 2018).

Let me bring you up to date on what competitors system requirements are like on Mac:

Capture One: Sierra 10.12
Lightroom: Mojave 10.14
Affinity Photo: Mavericks 10.9
Photo Mechanic: El Capitan 10.11
FastRawViewer: Sierra 10.12
Luminar AI: High Sierra 10.13
ExposureX7: High Sierra 10.13

Don’t narrow your market unnecessarily or drive your existing customers and fans away.

Apple does not pay DxO to promote its latest OS or sell its hardware. No matter what you do, Apple doesn’t care and Apple won’t love you. You’re French, foreign and will always be unloved in the Silicon Valley-centric software world. Be true to your users as we care.

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Unlike in the past when I bought every DXO update blindly, this time I would test it in advance, which has proven itself for me since the “update” of the Nik Collection to version 4.

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Strongly agree with your point. My exact thoughts for the past few months. I have always been one to purchase their products early on but my experience with Nik Collection 4 update changes that. First time in a number of years that I will change my approach to upgrading DxO.

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Can you go back when trying a new version, changes to tools may not alow use in the earlier version?

It is best not to use a trial of the next version on already edited images because the DOP file and database may contain adjustments the do no exist in the older version. Make copies in a separate folder until you are happy you want to buy the full version.

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Won’t be buying any upgrades until DxO can work with Fuji files. I’ve just upgraded cameras to the Fuji X100V and X-Pro3 from my 2012 era Olympus OMD E-M5s. Hopefully, DxO will see they are missing out on a very large potential customer base. I’ll keep using it for my Olympus files as I like the look it produces, but no more upgrades. Trying out Capture 1 for the Fuji files.

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Interesting you took a different approach. I’d started using DxO on my Canon sports photos and liked it very much. Canon didn’t have anything outside of 1DX II with good video at that point nor mirrorless so I tried out Fuji for video and carry cameras. I liked the cameras but I was so frustrated by not having Photolab to process my photos (RAW to Iridient Developer, jpegs to Photolab workflow didn’t work for me) that I gave up Fuji altogether.

After the poor ergonomics of a Sony A7 III (terrible for left eyed shooters with noses), tried a Nikon Z6 and liked both image quality (stills are similar but video highlight rolloff is much better with a Z6 than an A7 III) and ergonomics very much. Tired of two sets of lenses and two sets of menus, moved completely to Nikon for sports and carry camera and video. Canon’s video cripple hammer and poor mirrorless cameras (first round) succeeded in driving me away from the brand despite first class lenses.

Given the choice between Fuji cameras and Photolab, I chose Photolab. I understand why DxO doesn’t want to deal with Trans-X sensors directly (conflicts with their processing algorithms, I’m sure DxO has done soime internal tests). What I don’t understand about the Photolab Fuji approach is that when Photolab could easily support Fuji files demosaiced by Iridient X-Transformer, they don’t.

Just found this thread. Small change from what you wrote, based on past experience, I’m sure I will buy the license for PL5 regardless, but I would very much like to be able to use it for my Fuji X100f files. I’m finished with buying new Fuji cameras, as I prefer the standard way of controlling it, and dislike touch-screens.

Joanna has been constantly teaching me about using various features in PL4. Assuming those here in charge have been reading this, maybe what Joanna wrote could be accessed for each tool somehow? DxO is free to use those images if it would help, as you would have the description, the before image, and the after image.

I doubt it will happen, but I wish PL5 could open my Leica M8.2 files, even if it doesn’t do any automatic correcting. I would prefer to do ALL my editing in PhotoLab, and ignore the other editors I had to buy to work with images that PhotoLab didn’t accept.

Not much else to say. I’m curious if PL4 and PL5 will both be able to work on images after the new installation, or will my version of PL4 be removed when I update? …not much more to say. I have no plans to wait until I try it - the day it appears, I’ll place my order.

The same applies here but your remark might come a bit late if the release is just a few weeks away.

Ralf

@uncoy and mikemeyers: I still like DxO a lot and find it better than Capture1 (which I’m now using) in some ways. However, I needed to replace my much loved OMD cameras and there are no new cameras coming from OM solutions (Olympus) until later next year at the earliest. I got hooked on the Fuji X100V so when I wanted a little more range than just 35mm focal length I decided to stay with Fuji and build a new set of cameras and lenses.

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It’s not the first time I’ve made remarks about supporting recent OS beyond the current -1 recent policy.

Moreover, I would be very surprised if there are any features in Photolab 5 which require 10.15 Catalina (which Photolab is more or less obligated to support). It’s an own goal if DxO does not support Mojave. If DxO is not supporting Mojave it’s because DxO developers feel they must be on the very latest Apple OS (it’s a kind of power trip developers go on) and are imposing their tastes on DxO users (who profile as an older demographic who do not like to swap out their computers and/or OS pointlessly).

There are few of these would-be developer types/tech fans/Apple evangelists on these forums who would also like to try to convince us that anything tech more than two years old should be thrown out for “security” reasons (Apple’s security has been largely security theatre for years: just one example, the T2 chip which was supposed to add security means that all Macs with T2 chips are insecure as they can be rooted at boot) or “obsolete” justification.

It’s laughable and sad to watch these guys compete for bragging rights to have the latest iPhone, latest OS beta, latest MacBook, most install/compatibility issues. All the while they poison the planet faster than ever with electrowaste. My advice to these individuals is to take some responsibility for your ecological footprint and grow up. It’s like primary schoolchildren bragging about whose dad has the fastest car.

So if the plan is to release Catalina only (I believe DxO is deliberately holding back Photolab 5 @StevenL for Apple to take OS 12 Monterey out of beta so they have their excuse to not release a Mojave version), DxO should rethink that decision and spend the day or two they need to make sure Photolab 5 runs on Mojave.

If Photolab 5 does not run on Mojave, DxO will lose my money and my support. I’ll be spending some money on C1 v21/v22 (making the competition stronger with my money and not DxO) and if noise reduction has improved with C1 consider moving to a company who cares about compatibility and supporting their users and not pushing new Apple hardware. While Capture One is behind on noise reduction, C1 is well ahead with colour tools and advanced masking. Photolab is more intuitive to me and does allow working without a catalogue (the forced half-hearted DAM workflow in C1 is extremely disruptive) but attempting to obsolete three work machines for me (home, office, portable) would be €6000 motivation to learn C1.

And it’s a long term issue. If DxO will abuse its users this year with compatibility, we can count on them continuing to do so. In general, DxO’s behaviour with support for iPhones has been execrable as well. There are dozens of votes for support for iPhone DNG, whether normal or ProRAW. So many of us have iPhones as second cameras and would just like basic DNG support in Photolab. That support works great (I had an iPhone 8+ briefly before upgrading to an 11 Pro Max and was able to test the Photolab results on iPhone images) but still DxO withholds such support. Little abuses/power trips from the Photolab development team like this really start to grate overtime.

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@renetheberge

I needed to replace my much loved OMD cameras and there are no new cameras coming from OM solutions (Olympus) until later next year at the earliest.

A pen e-p7 was released in June. The OM 1D will be out in March 2022. The development announcement will happen in November most likely.

Actually no, it’s not just that. I have been “forced” to limit my app to Catalina because Mojave doesn’t support the speed of thumbnail loading that comes for free with Catalina. There are already APIs available for Big Sur that I would have greatly benefitted from but felt that, even though Catalina is already current version - 1, I could still produce a usable product by staying with Catalina. I haven’t dared to try Monterey yet for fear of upsetting my development environment too much.

I would love to support unlimited backwards compatibility but Apple also impose hardware compatibility limitations and, with the advent of 64-bit only architecture, that meant I had to upgrade my laptop in order to continue developing.

Now I’ve also got M1 architecture to take into account going forwards. I am disappointed that DxO are not supporting older versions but I fully understand why.

Apple’s official support for Catalina is

  • MacBook (Early 2015 or newer)
  • MacBook Air (Mid 2012 or newer)
  • MacBook Pro (Mid 2012 or newer)
  • Mac mini (Late 2012 or newer)
  • iMac (Late 2012 or newer)
  • ‌iMac‌ Pro (2017)
  • Mac Pro (Late 2013)

Which means you can run it on iMacs and MacBook Pros that are nearly ten years old.

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