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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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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I count the days up to the 3rd wednesday of October 
You forget that DxO already supports these OS and is a cross-platform application. Wow, if every developer gets this lazy (I understand you are a solo operator with all those limitations of time and expertise) and only offers us what Apple serves on a silver platter, the software scene will go downhill quickly.
If DxO releases Catalina only Photolab 5, DxO will lose my financial support and I will be very active to make sure any potential buyers know just how poorly DxO supports its paying users (by forcing users to upgrade OS and computers every year).
iMacs and MacBook Pros that are nearly ten years old
iMacs are e-waste machines. Anything goes wrong with all the hardwired components one can throw them away instantly, makes no sense to repair them. All those laptops have soldered in everything. The computers I own run Photolab 4 (and everything else) very well. There is no issue at all with performance. All four of those computers are limited to Mojave though.
A huge amount of productivity is lost by this annual update frenzy. Two year update cycles increased the productivity of the labour force. The one year update cycle with all the broken software and software conflicts now (across at least two platforms for everyone, desktop OS and mobile OS, if not three, add tablet OS) means productivity decreases every year. Admittedly Facebook and social media play a role in decreased productivity as well.
I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: DxO does not owe Apple any favours and there’s no reason DxO should be trying to sell new hardware for Apple. DxO does not owe its developers that many favours (they are paid no?). The people DxO owes favours to are us its users (we pay them) and even more Photolab evangelists (we spread the word; I hope DxO marketing department don’t think that paid advertising works and particularly without grassroots support).
If DxO wants to run the most user-hostile support for existing OS policy among photo processing tools, then DxO should pay the price for such a policy.
Small players like DxO should really be working to broaden the tent, not build walls around it and ejecting users.
@StevenL I hope someone at DxO is listening.
Offering unlimited backwards compatibility is expensive. Every time a software company adds in another version, that then means maintaining dedicated test machines for the older OS versions, having to write yet more conditional code and re-writing tests to include to manage that conditional code, running those test on more machines, managing regression testing for issues tha might affect one version but not another, etc.
One could argue that you are being perfectly well supported for PL4. Unlike Adobe, who stop your software working if you stop paying, DxO allows you to continue to use a certain version for as long as you like - thus they are supporting paying users. If you don’t want to buy the next version, then you will no longer be a paying user of PL5 and DxO will not be obliged to support your use of PL5. It is not DxO that are forcing users to upgrade every year, it is people who want the latest and greatest version that do that to themselves. If PL4 does what you need, do you really need PL5?
Not forgetting that Apple are the ones at the root of the upgrade churn. If you use Macs for your living, then you should know what you signed up to and planned their upgrade into your running costs. Yes, I do appreciate that it is hugely wasteful to have a machine that is demoted to scrap for no other reason than the latest version does things better/faster/etc but, I could say, if that is an issue for you, why not move to Windows?
I used to maintain the Windows computers for a local company and would have to visit them usually once a week to fix problems, tidy things up, etc - which was nice easy money for me but cost them. One day, the motherboards in both of their main “server” machines failed. I recommended looking at Mac computers to replace them and, despite early reservations about being more difficult to use (because they were unfamiliar), after about 3 months, they realised that they were no longer having to call me in because everything “just worked”. So, for them, yes, they had to pay for Apple computers but they also didn’t have to keep paying me. Hang on a minute - I just sold myself out of an income 
Don’t forget it is because they are small players that it is all the more difficult. But, possibly to your dismay, I can see the why’s and wherefores.
I would also ask what you would do if Apple decide to stop supporting Mojave in a year or so’s time now that 64-bit only and M1 architecture have become the norm?
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My deepest apologies, Joanna, these are largely silly questions to which you already know the answer if you’ve been reading my posts. As you have a horse in the race (your application which does not offer any backwards support at all), it seems to have slanted your perspective on software compatibility hopelessly.
To answer this specific question: when Apple discontinues support for Intel CPU and Photolab discontinues support for Intel CPU, I will be very open to arguments about OS versions incompatibility. Because then, unlike now, such arguments would make sense. When we get there in five years, I’ll cross that bridge.
Not forgetting that Apple are the ones at the root of the upgrade churn
Trying to point the finger at Apple is a poor excuse. The other photo software development companies manage to support OS’s back to Sierra.
As you know well, Photolab is full cross-platform software with a large development team. To suggest that Photolab is completely dependent on Apple’s tools for core functionality and performance is risible.
Adobe
Bringing Adobe into the question is pointless. I don’t use and won’t use Adobe software on principle. Who cares what Adobe does or does not do? A more user-unfriendly (takes over one’s computer with background processes and launch agents) and spyware driven set of software (uploading everything to the cloud no matter how hard one tries to stop it) which cannot be bought but only leased cannot be imagined outside of direct ransomware.
move to Windows
Again, why are you trying to make decisions for me or take my hardware and software away from me if I won’t agree to play upgrade musical chairs. Not to mention, that if you’d been paying any attention when reading my posts you would have seen that there is absolutely nothing I like about Microsoft (apart from backward compatibility). Windows 8 and Windows 10 are telemetry ridden spyware from the beginning. Before Adobe became a wicked software company, Bill Gates created the rules for evil user-unfriendly, state-sponsored spyware. I’d be moving to Linux if I move.
But I have no intentions of moving. I paid for the machines on which I run Apple’s OS, I paid for some of the OS directly and paid for the other OS indirectly. Why should I give it up due to someone else’s update circus?
No, one cannot safely use an older version of Safari as a main browser. Chromum and Opera continue to support back to El Capitan 10.11.
The good versions (relatively headache free and stable) of OS X have been final versions of 10.6 Snow Leopard, 10.8 Mountain Lion, 10.11 El Capitan, 10.14 Mojave. Running anything else (and I had a large dose of High Sierra, which broke lots of second monitor display port sorts of things, or Yosemite which broke lots of core networking) was mostly a pain-in-the-neck. If one values stability and reliability, one should never install any version of OS X which is not on the last or very last point update.
Apple is on a user-unfriendly path of releasing sub-standard software which alienates existing longtime users. Apple is blessed by the core UX standards and the absence of meaningful competition. Windows is ugly old spyware Windows, while Linux is hopelessly fragmented with almost no desktop commercial application support. Taking Apple’s abuse of market position as a model for anything would be a mistake as RAW development and keywording tools are not monopoly or duopoly situations.
your software
By making your software latest OS only, no support for previous systems you are basically cutting yourself off from your market. I’d say your market is the same people who use FastRawViewer who have one of the best backward-compatibility records in the business. Last month Iliah just launched v2 which moved the minimum system requirements up to 10.12 Sierra. That’s one (High Sierra), two (Mojave), three (Catalina), four (Monterrey) back from current. Iliah had the good manners to apologise. V1 supported 10.6.8 Snow Leopard.
Libraw.com’s Iliah Borg is a one-man shop with cross-platform apps.Yyour complaining that it can’t be done and it’s too hard suggests you don’t understand your market and may be inadequately qualified to build or maintain such software.
run Photolab 4
Yes, DxO can choose to cut me off after I’ve invested more than €500 in their software. And I can choose to be unhappy about this and share my experience about how DxO treats its users.
DxO and Photolab have enough enemies on the photo forums and among pro photographers. Making more among their most ardent advocates is an extremely poor strategy. Over the last twenty years, the French have become accustomed to coming in second or third tier more and more often in terms of software and technology. Upside-down strategies like this (cutting off loyal users to suit a multinational who could care less about DxO) are why. DxO are not a monopoly nor a duopoly (nor does DxO have the backing of the US security and regulatory agencies) and cannot get away with the same anto-user behaviour that Google, Facebook and Apple allow themselves.
DxO should be widening the tent not pushing people out. @sgospodarenko
Hi,
The dates of availability of the differents versions of PL:
PL1 - Wednesday, October 27, 2017
PL2 - Wednesday, October 24, 2018
PL3 - Wednesday, October 23, 2019
PL4 - Wednesday, October 21, 2020
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October 27, 2017 was a Friday.
October 24, 2018 was the 4th Wednesday.
October 23, 2019 was the 4th Wednesday.
October 21, 2020 was the 3rd Wednesday.
The only consistency I can find is “the last full week of October” (where “full week” is Monday to Sunday). October 2021 ends on a Sunday so who knows? Well… we know who knows. 
“About two weeks away” seems a reasonable approximation now.
Unless something has changed it will likely be either Wednesday the 20th or the 27th. Not very long in either case.
Mark.
This kind of questions are doomed to be swirl in what if’s.
Leaking and teasers are prohibedded for the EA members so we won’t lift any curtains of new features nor confirm any statement’s.
So the only answer would be we able to give honestly is “We suspect it to be launched in october.”
And " i think you will like it."
And when it’s launched and in the open, only then and not earlier, we will help every one to find the highlights and improvements. 
So everyone can decide themselfs if they want to upgrade or wait for the v6.
Sorry if i disapoint anyone at this moment.
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Besides hardware support, another factor is software. Typical users have many applications on their machine and not all of these applications run under all versions of the OS. This is a reason why I had to chose to “stay behind” by a version or two in the past. Running a virtual machine may help but is not always the solution to such problems…
While I agree with you about the cost of keeping compatibility, not keeping it has a cost too, possibly losing some users. I guess (and hope) DxO is doing market research on this. But even when the result says 95% of the users will be ok, it is still better not to lose the last 5%.
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Yes, it is better to not lose those 5%, but in the end each company has to make a cost-benefit decision which may include factors that are unknown to us. Since some have argued that other software firms are able to provide support for more OS versions than DxO, it might be helpful if DxO could explain their reluctance to providing similar support.
Mark
Anyway, isn’t PL5 development a done deal by now? Can’t and won’t speak to your contentious Apple / DxO issues. But can say that I have been running LR and PL on various Windows PCs for a long time and without significant issues. The Windows side of the forum has featured lately a few graphic card / motherboard queries about DeepPRIME but little else. My legacy scanner / photography applications, some ancient, still run on WIN 10 and WIN11, and drivers are usually installed directly or are easy to obtain. Recent updates to WIN11 went smoothly for me and PL4E seems to work just fine. So, I guess that sums up MY digital photography experiences with the evil ones. Sorry, not (yet) buying the Microsoft conspiracy theories.
I have a MacBook Pro mid2012 under Catalina and I will be able make it work with PL5.
The result is that this computer will have had a life span of 10 years(*); that’s not bad I think!
Of course, like Alec, I would have liked the support to last longer but Joanna’s arguments seem to me to be largely valid.
It’s the same with my other favorite software, 4D, which cannot guarantee backward compatibility beyond 2 versions but still works with old versions.
- I expect to buy an ARM Mac in less than 6 months.