Fastrawviewer 18$ - A Grate Grate tool for Culling & Rating
PL6 Elite Upgrade 69$ - This price barely justify the new features from PL4 to PL6
Topaz Photo Ai (+ 3 others) - 159$ Still consideringā¦ Good tool for any non-raw image and smartphone photography, and a grate tool for my negative scanning project. Where my Epson flatbed V700 introduce so much noise/grains to the image file.
@Lighthunter , I can not disagree with you.
If I had PL5, I wouldnāt have upgrade.
I believe that PL is kind of a dead horse already. Dxo made a U turne from PL back to Optics Pro ( now known as PureRaw).
They quit the game of full featurd editors and now they Wonnabe kind of Topazlabsā¦
Nevertheless, I am going to upgrade from PL4 to PL6. I assume it would be my last upgradeā¦
I can understand that one can be frustrated by not getting the products for freeā¦
The BF front page says āUp to 50%ā¦ā which is anything below 50% - and DxO delivers as advertised.
What bothers me more is that we always get to read ālifelong, no subscriptionā while we get yearly paid incremental upgrades with new features that donāt quite work yet when the new release is made public. Iād really prefer to get major releases in which new features are complete instead of being deliberately crippled.
I understand that DxO needs to generate income, but Iād really advise to get off the yearly release cycle, specially if resources are too few to deliver full featuresā¦
I got caught last year when I purchased PL4 just a little too early to get a free upgrade to PL5, and then needed to upgrade when I bought a Canon R3. This time around the āupgradeā seems weak - I really only use it for the noise reduction tools (DeepPrime) - so I am going to pass on PL6 and upgrade to PL7 next year, assuming I am still using it.
I already have the Topaz suite (DeNoise AI, Sharpen AI & Gigapixel AI) and will pass on their 1-year support for these applications too since I now have Photo AI and they have made few enhancements to the toolset for almost 6 months. That said, Photo AI does not perform as well (yet).
Despite Adobeās subscription model - which many appear to hate on principle - I have stayed with LrC / PS as I they continue to offer significant enhancements (e.g., masking - no doubt because of competition) so I see real value from my monthly payments.
The Film Pack upgrade is 50%. When I upgrade from PL3 to 4 in 2020 the Black Friday discount was only approx 37%. This year itās around 30% so not as good but when was it 50% on all the upgrades given that Black Friday is fairly close after the release of PL every year?
I donāt own anything else but it looks to be around 30% for PL, VP and PR and 50% for Film Pack and the Nik Collection going by the full editions.
@Joanna I consider you as a clever woman.
First of all donāt get me wrong, every tool in PL works great. No halfbaked Whistle and Bells.
But, PL6 is like PL5 plus very marginal development of photo editing tools, in which PL5 is PL4 plus marginal development of new photo editing tools.
For few years already all other compatitors started adding Subject recognition, Face recog. Object recog. Content aware, all of those new features known as AI.
Now, I know your workflow is involved with Lightroom and/or other editing apps.
Those who use other tools, whatever is missing in PL they implement in LR. So they donāt really understand how others which quieted LR
missing those features.
For few years now I waited hopefully for new tools and all we got was a marginal improvements. I am not the only one who says so.
So my conclusion is rhat DXO decided that full features editors is beyond their efforts or beyond their knowledge, so now they want to focus on their strongest features such as optic modules, PRIME N.R. etc.
If Topazlabs can sale Photo AI (Combined Denoise, Sharpen and Gigapixel with autopilot) at 199$ , why shouldnāt Dxo too.
Maybe Iām Right Maybe Iām Wrong, Time will tellā¦
Unfortunately, DxO has pulled the āPremium Suiteā a few weeks before releasing DPL6. Hopefully, theyāll bring it back again like they did before.
The current discounts on new purchases I see in my DxO shop are
29% for DPL6
28% for DVP4
29% for DPR2
49% for DFP6
49% for NIK5
Iāve cut, not rounded, the percentages. Had I rounded the values, Nik would be at 50%.
The sensible package (DPL + DFP) gets a 37% discount.
Of course youāll all make your own decisions about the value of a PL5 to 6 upgrade, I for one do not necessarily see a functional benefit for my own particular use case. BUT, Iāve pulled the trigger on the basis (rightly or wrongly assumed) that all the development work/ feature improvements/ bug fixes will happen in 6 - 5 will surely go into maintenance support
PL5 introduced the Control Lines local adjustment tool and beefed up the selectivity of Control Points at the same time.
As nice as AI might seem, I take the view that it might appear to be somewhat intelligent but it is definitely artificial intelligence and prone to error. Having said that, DeepPRIME uses it very nicely. So far, I havenāt seen any need for it in any other tools for my work.
Well, you know better than me. My workflow is usually 100% PL with the odd use of Affinity for assembling panoramics and focus stacks. I have been known to use Topaz products, mainly for rescuing not quite sharp images and enlarging them for large format printing.
The Topaz suite is hardly a full-featured editor when compared with PL. It is just three specialised functions of sharpening, resizing and denoising.
As I said, no extra photography tool development. They just took the internal setpoints in the software and put them on a UI sliiders. Is it beneficial for the user? Of course! Was there any New algorithm of photo editing not at all. And this was my case. Dxo tried to find the least efforts upgrade that would give the user the most value. Therefore they didnāt start any new approach to photo editing (not even content aware).
Sorry , I would correct it to: others who use PL as plugin donāt get upset for the lack of some features
Exactly what I was trying to say, obviously didnāt succeedā¦
Dxo donāt want to invest such an effort to keep PL up to date on par as the compatitors.
All they want is to shift the sales to PureRaw which could compete Topaz photo AI and take some of their marketshare.
Do you know how many sales Topaz has compared to Dxo? I believe itās 10 to 100 times more.
This is a completely baseless claims. Can you back them up with factual evidence or statements? Capture One is developing at the same slow pace, as is any other editor that is not Adobe. But we are entering a recession, so everyone and everything is slowing down at the moment. As is camera and lens development.
PhotoLab is still being actively developed, features from Viewpoint are being more integrated and not taken out, and PureRaw is a side-project that barely anyone mentions on any photography site.
That being said, I have decided not to update any of my software this year, except the Affinity Suite who are the only ones that truly respect and value the customer without resorting to dark patterns.
Capture One: new functionality only interesting for professional (event) photographers. No quality or updates on the library management side which is the achilles heel. Also heavy focus on pushing expensive subscription.
PhotoLab: after 3 years of asking for meaningful updates on usability (keyboard shortcuts, interface improvements, better tools, bug fixes) I feel a bit let down this year. And I donāt expect to see any of it in PhotoLab 7 either as it seems to have no priority.
So for now I will use PhotoLab 5 (works great) and probably wonāt update any more till PhotoLab 8 or whenever usability improvements are delivered. I am already forced to pay full price anyway because I missed 2 updates so it doesnāt matter anymore anyway when I upgrade.
Youāre right. It is just my opinion.
Itās based on MY feelings and on MY interpretation of the trends and new approaches to new computational photo editing algorithms in the market.
Just as I started my ābaseless claimsā, in my post by:
again, just an opinion.
and by the way. today PL is my favorite editor for raw images.
Although somehow I believe that within 2-3 years the gap between PL and other editors will be so significant that people will use it just as plugin, if at all. I would be glad to realize that I was wrong, and we all will use it with new features and with a lot of advantages
Basically not much to add to your judgement. A supporter replied a couple of days ago on my complaint that itās imposssible to search for names of albums, projects or groups something like āwe had that in MediaProā (which I seriously doubt and dislike like any other "workaround) ābut I will pass it forward to developersā. These will be busy, as the app behaves like a nervous pony whenever I do something inside the library. Version 15 did that also for a couple of versions: Jumping to the side when generating a new album or project and double jumping when generating a new intelligent album (the dialog is just a bit biggerā¦and C1 devs apparently donāt know how to do it better than centerring the box in the whole frame.). At least when using a two screen setup. The last version of C1 15 didnāt do that anymore with Mac OS Monterey, the new version 16 on Mac OS Ventura had a comeback to old habits. Yeah, what they deliver these days is - at least compared to the well made feature load of Affinity 2.0 - a very poor performance. But DxOās library doensāt even have the basics of C1ās library.
I donāt think these discounts are good at all. Last year, PL5 cost me $109,50, and now the upgrade is $69. Iām not sure if I will buy it because with PL6, they have messed up with the colour gamut, and I havenāt found any solution that allows me to export the photos in PL6 and look the identical to PL5-exported ones
Topaz Photo AI is basically their competitor to PL6ā¦and has a similar approach re; combining their individual products into a single editor. The biggest difference being that they wrap them all up into a single bundle and give you all products on sale for the same price as PL6 alone and include updates for a year.
In saying that I have just finished a side by side test of a whole bunch of editors inc DXO, Topaz, CapOne, ON1, Luminar Neo and Affinity and the common theme was that they all had their own strengths (some more so than others), but DXO and Topaz stood out above the restā¦
PhotoAI is a seriously impressive piece of software and its automation abilities are far beyond DXO, the results really surprised meā¦BUT the automation is also its downfallā¦many (like me) like to have some level of manual control to actually process a photo (or tweak where the automation fails), and this is where DXO steps up! Keeping the traditional editing controls is really important, and I think if they just step up some of the automation and make it āeasier/more palatable to buyā then PL6 would be hard to beat!
BUT the #1 thing DXO need to get sorted, is they NEED TO BECOME A CUSTOMER DRIVEN COMPANY! Stop being so inward focused!
They have the worst service hands down, just one example is that I have NIK Collection 2 and wanted to try V5 but I kept getting an error saying the demo had already been usedā¦the response from support after nearly 4 emails was basically ācant help you sorryāā¦good to see my business is valued!
My Advice for DXO: Listen to your customers, value their feedback and provide support that makes them feel like they are the only customer that mattersā¦then you wont need to strategically schedule āannual updatesā just to keep the books looking good, because you will own the market!
Photo AI is definitely NOT a competitor to Photolab; they have very little in common. Photo AI is not a Raw processor with controls and editing tools like PL. Itās a combination of their de-noise, sharpening, and enlarging apps. Thatās it. The only part that competes with PL is the denoising. In fact, you could justify having both products if you want advanced sharpening and need to enlarge smaller files.