It shouldn’t be limited to one, but support both. I merely meant to say that the biggest benefit for most people would be to export their RAW to HEIF.
Apple’s market share, in sales, during both 2018 and 2019, has been around 10-15%.
The other brands don’t support HEIF.
Most people up here have cameras which shoot RAW and JPEG, hence exporting RAW to HEIF would be the biggest gain, both from a consumer perspective (taking into account Photolab’s key audience), AND from a competitive perspective.
Actually my initial request (which actually has it’s frist birthday next week) was for import only 'cause (guess what) my iPhone created those HEIC. Also competitors (e.g. Luminar) can (could at that time) actually read it.
However: with growing support for HEIC (e.g. by Canon), I think its a very legit feature request to also enable exporting.
So feel free to “misuse” this thread also for exporting - this is not DXOs JIRA-Task after all…
@Marie Sorry to say, but just “reading HEIF” would be a HUGE disappointment.
Most people here, will benefit from exporting.
Apple´s market share in sales is currently 10-15% Q on Q (according to the data I linked in an earlier post).
Nearly everyone here is using RAW.
Therefore, the gain for your audience is MUCH bigger if you were to introduce HEIF exporting, as well as from a competitor perspective.
Most solutions have HEIF import (e.g. Lightroom), but no ways to export…
Could you please confirm with your developers. If no export, what is the reason for this?
To be frank, I am analyzing Lightroom, C1 and Photolab. The first one introducing HEIF export, will have me as a customer.
Please note: I don´t like the 8bit quality of JPEG, and TIFF is WAY too large. HEIF would be the perfect format.
Reading HEIF along with support for recent iPhone is the place to start IMO, as everyone who has been capturing HEIF files is dead in the water when it comes to DOP at present.
HEIF export would be great, but I don’t see it as critical.
You do know that most solutions already support HEIF import? E.g. Lightroom, Pixelmator Pro etc. The real gain to be made is Export. I really don’t get why this wouldn’t be implemented at the same time.
For one, it would give the developers amazing “bragging” and advertising rights, vs. competitors.
Pixelmator Pro does support HEIF export. However, only 8bit, which does cripple the format all together. Sure, the file size is a bit smaller, when compared to JPEG, however, the much better quality (16 bit for one), is a much bigger gain.
Possibly it could be. But I have been conditioned over the years by the chronically low resources of DxO.
Example: Local Adjustments… it took until v3 to be able to invert masks… and still we can’t duplicate masks or name them(!)… It never occurred to me that this basic control would not be a part of PL’s feature set when I requested “invert mask” capability. And “Local Adjustments” are a marquee feature for PhotoLab.
So the track record here (and going back to Optics Pro) is one of reduced expectations - and possibly this is the reason why there is this import vs. export HEIC feature request - I know it is for me. In any other program I think having both capabilities would be a given.
AFAIK the iPhone does not support 16-bit HEIC export in its OS (at least I have not seen an app that does - I would be happy to be shown otherwise!).
So to maximize PhotoLab I would be using a Raw import from the iPhone and then have the space-saving high quality 16-bit export from PL, which has enough data to be manipulated and/or edited again if necessary.
Software development is complicated and neither Adobe, Capture One or any other major software supports HEIC export as of today.
DxO is actually listening to community for development and as long as they are not regressing I am happy with how things are.
From my point of view, they need to carefully balance:
Marquee features to attract new users to keep the company healthy and growing e.g., HEIC import support, some intelligence/AI features, camera support (X-Trans support would be major growth opportunity)
Quality of life improvements for existing users e.g., better keyboard shortcuts, HEIC export support, improvements to existing tools, Mac/Win parity
I think they are doing a quite OK job when you take into regard the trouble which they went trough with DxO One hardware failure and DXO Mark split.
Have faith and try to be constructive. They are definitely listening to us unlike some other companies.
I can’t believe how slow they have been at providing HEIF support to their products. I’ve been waiting 2 years for OpticsPro for Photos. I have over 2 years of photos I cannot use it on unless I convert everything to jpg (as told by support). Apple provides the libraries for reading and writing HEIF right in Xcode, so I’m not sure why the feet dragging.
Be patient. This feature will likely come to PhotoLab 4 at the earliest so you’re looking at October.
As of now neither Lightroomor Capture One support HEIF export but “it’s easy because X Tools has it. These two companies have way more resources than DXO. These companies generally also want platform parity between Mac and Windows. Oops, the challenge just became 10x more complicated.
These things also have to be compatible with marquee features like noise reduction. Maybe they want to make sure HEIF is compatible with PRIME unlike JPG. Again, software development is way more complicated than you guys make it to be.
True, but export doesn’t need the program compatablity which could be added latter. The much better quality of saving in HEIF could be usfull for many of us. The ablity to use it in importing would have a smaller base at pressent, but one thats growing.
I would like WCG and HDR (PQ and HLG) support.
What would also involve HDR support in the whole workflow…
Nowadays, photos are more likely to be viewed on a display than printed.
And more and more we have Wide Color Gamut (WCG) and High Dynamic Range (HDR) displays at our disposable. Think TVs, smartphones, tablets (WCG only), etc.
I don’t understand we’re still limited to those 8-bit, SDR, sRGB JPEGs…
HEVC (HEIC is just a still subformat of the x265 encoder) is heavily patent and royalty encumbered. Large companies like Canon, Huawei, Toshiba, Samsung and Mitsubishi participated in the patent pool and enjoy favourable rates. Apple and Microsoft have cross-licensing ammunition. There’s no real issue for big players are royalties are capped at $100 million/year.
GPLv2 software (open source, look it up the license if you’re not familiar with the GPL) does enjoy free access to HEVC. The programmer must publish his or her code in open source. That does not cover PhotoLab. It does cover RAWtherapee and DarkTable so one is likely to see an optional add-on there first.
Frankly, while I’m someone who does have images in HEIF due to Apple, I’m not sure I’d like to see DxO PhotoLab supporting HEVC Advance and its members attempts to privatise the saving and publishing of images. Other unencumbered formats are certain to follow.
