Of course, the combined price of PhotoLab Elite, Viewpoint, and FilmPack, costs about the same, I believe. But since Viewpoint and FilmPack are only updated every several years, the annual cost of upgrading to new versions of PhotoLab is much lower than Capture One.
Mark
Can you imagine the uproar if DxO combined the three products into one and raised the price accordingly?
For me, it was specifically the fact that there was this expensive product which they could obviously sell more cheaply by limiting the brand of camera it would serve (a practice that made no sense to me) but because they don’t consider my camera brand popular enough, I get to pay the full, and rather substantial price. All the more galling because I have been loyal to Pentax for 35 years and am unlikely to change any time soon. If they’d had a Pentax option I may well not be here today, but we’ll never know.
First, your camera brand is not popular enough for C1 - but neither are PhaseOne bodies for the majority of us. For which Capture One was programmed originally. Of course you have a different opinion on that, but I don’t recall to have seen a Pentax somewhere else than in the 2nd hand shelves during the past 5 years. Although pretty capable cameras, this brand is no longer “popular”, just check different shopping malls.
Second, if you compare an app with a lot of features another app doesn’t have and this other app need (!) additional apps at additional costs to deliver the same spectrum of features, you’re not acting exactly fair. But I’m glad you found your RAW converter of choice.
Capture One was probably sponsored by Fujifilm, SONY and Nikon. Some customers who stepped into the C1 realm because of the cheaper versions will stay onboard, others abandon ship, so far, so normal. But if a lot of these come to DxO PL with it’s rather limited functionality without FilmPack and ViewPoint, not to mention the less than lousy DAM – that remains doubtful.
Btw., it’s not “your” brand, but Ricoh’s, and they want to go the “customizing” way, like they did with all the colourful plastic bodies. Why don’t you ask “your” brand for a decent RAW converter? I know, each Pentax user defends “his” brand til the bitter end, but somehow the question remains unresolved why “your” brand became insignificant? There was a supercool LX, a very great 6×7 decades ago and… well, the Km, Kr, Kx simply didn’t deliver enough reasons to not switch brand 12 years ago. Time always moves on. Companies less so.
Just to clear a few things up…
I have no solid knowledge about brand sponsoring but it’s too tempting to believe it.
I know, you didn’t refer to it as your’d be the owner, but we tend to be defenders of a brand although we’re just defending our decision to buy into that brand. I changed digital brands twice and added a third brand as supplement, and all I can say: No one really has an excellent user interface, Pentax also had a couple of quirks, but the K-m and K-x used AA cells instead of dedicated batteries for multiple price. And made their RAWs DNG, so no user was depending on that crap they called silkypix.
Vintage lenses are no concern at all for me. Made for film resolution and also a bit of field curvature as not many film panes were really even and true. I also own a Nikkor made in 1963, but it doesn’t stand a chance against today’s optical calculations. I once bought a Pentax 50/1.4. It arrived with fungus on the lens, had to dispose it. The troubles in AF I had with my Pentax bodies made me change systems and I don’t miss a single feature of them.
As to the OP, yes, I believe you are correct. Except they are not strap for cash but killing the golden egg laying chicken due to greed. I was Just about to purchase C1 for Fujifilm when overnight the cost went from $199 to $299 for all cameras. No, thank you, C1. I am walking with my wallet.
Getting dumped with snow here in SNJ
I too jumped to C1 when leaving Lightroom and Adobe about 10 years ago. The at that time pretty inexpensive Sony-version was a very appealing offer since I was looking for a good tethering function too. Many years there were no tethering like the one in C1. In LR tethering was just for Nikon and Canon-systems. There is no converter as competent as C1 but I never found it all that efficient so thats why I started to use Optics Pro and later Photolab in parallell using C1 mainly for tethering.
Interrestingly enough when C1 has decided to change their pricing model I have discovered that Sonys own free Imaging Edge 3.0 finally has developed to something really useful. Especially the IE Remote has a wireless tethering now with my camera A7IV that I think works brilliantly. So I have finally decided never to upgrade my C1 20.
Even in dPreview’s IE vs shoot out with Adobe Camera Raw it appeared that IE gave better results in some respects also because IE was using the settings the users applies in styles sheets etc. in the cameras. ACR is more if a general tool and IE more specialized for the developement of Sony ARW and another thing discussed in a few other treads is that this proprietary developer also has the advantage of supporting both my A7IV-files and any other new ARW-file from day one. DXO seems to lag a lot here. I got my A7IV the 4th of december and they are talking of March as the time when we can expect profiles to both A7IV and Nikon Z9. Many don’t think this is acceptable.
I have tested the image quality IE produces and it’s really good and really good enough in most cases. If it hadn’t been for the integration with Photo Mechanic I might have left even Photolab now, because this pretty hopeless handling of the profiles has really pissed both me and a lot of other people off a lot. The way Photolab is written now it refuses to open all files that lacks a approved profile in Photolabs profile database and DNG is not an option either because Photolab does only accept DNG-files made from RAW-files approved by Photolab.
I hope DXO really will listen up now and decides to open up the controls in Photolab that today prevent us from using our converter of choise even for files from all these cameras hitting the market in an never ending stream despite they lack profiles.
I am sure there are users out there with more that 50k images in their C1 catalogue. C1 certainly does have dam functionality. The idea of using the free Photo Supreme does not appeal as I would have to start a new catalogue every 5000 images. You would not expect the C1 dam to support PhotoLab or any other software as it is C1 centric - as the Lr dam is unique to Adobe and the PhotoLab library unique to PhotoLab.
Are you sure you know at least the most things there is to know about C1?
That already is plain wrong.
That is the next highly doubtful part. I don’t doubt you see the exported results of C1, DxO, SFx, but I’m not interested in quadrupling the amount of images by exporting multiple versions in various apps. So you will not see the RAW with it’s edits, you see the exported TIF or JPG, right?
I don’t want to defend C1, not by far, their ocassionally crashing app is a nuisance. But DxO’s non-reliable DAM part with more shortcomings than benefits is a bigger one. Did I mention that I hate to clutter my hard drives with a variety of apps to “work around” the image related things one app can’t do, but the other, which again can’t do something else and so on? Having their interoperating hiccups makes nothing faster or better. DxO is a nice RAW converter, nothing more.
So you’re running the server version of Photo Supreme - you said “we”?
DNG is something I stay away from, fat files with no real gain. And what is CO1? CaptureOne1? version 22 is around, right?
XMP sidecars? Only if I choose, else it’s in the catalog. I thought, you’d know about that? I agree, that catalog is nothing to write home about, but anytime better than unrelated apps. And Photo Supreme - well, glad you’re happy with, I would not pay a penny for that.
Next to “no one will ever convince me to use 2 apps for organizing and editing”. Too much work for my purposes.
Call it “filtering” and be wrong with that, I don’t mind - I don’t use keywords as main base of library organisation, but I understand the need for it when working in a team and need to find other people’s images quickly. To me, the project/folder/album/intelligent albums (that’s the filtering bit) of Aperture was absolutely the easiest way to keep pictures organized for myself. In a team – different story. And in a huge pile of files – also different story, but a 5000 limit - okay, that’s for the free version, I don’t expect that to have all bells and whistles.
Let’s just say, yours and my definition of a DAM are different and we have different needs. No, I’m not a huge C1 fan, but I’m an even less huge fan of keywording.
C1 has a respectable dam. I am sure many will agree with me. You have your views of course but they appear to be based on a desire for a free solution. Free solutions are never a complete solution they are there in the main to entice payment. Either way, this is a DxO forum and this is not a DxO subject. So we should close this now. Your argument, which I did not understand really, remains a mystery.
I know what a dam is and it is pathetically rude of you to suggest otherwise. I have used them for years both open and provider centric. However I have no desire or intention to explain myself to you and suggest the mods lock this meaningless thread.
For sure, if you don’t have any arguments, it’s a meaningless thread. I just want to know why CO1 is a respectable DAM.
I have never heard of CO1 so presume you mean C1 as in Capture One. I did use C1 for some years and was pleased with it both as an editor and a dam. However it is not a DxO product so is not really worthy of debate here. What I will say is the C1 dam is not a filter, as you put it, and is capable of handling a shed load more images than you suggest. I am no longer following this meaningless thread.
May I draw your attention to this post?
Capture One has pulled its “focused” apps and time will tell, it this brings new customers to PhotoLab. All the better for DxO if it does.
@colin_g : just because a new forum member acts a bit rude and far too convinced to posess the only truth, doesn’t make the thread entirely meaningless 
but rather annoying to follow. You can always actively ignore forum members. I agree with
as no one knows what will be the impact of C1’s marketing decisions. Many C1 users won’t run to another app so easily.
@EtMRS, thanks for your offer. It’s all clear and everyone does (and should) work with whatever means one uses - and is happy with - to get the results one likes or searches for.
I always loved C1 even with the lesser features. The last 2y the have been increasing the price for the updates. C1 updates usually are really peanuts only this year HDR and pano where added but even now i still prefer affinity for this or aurora. Removing the cheaper versions really suck as it’s not worth the update price. And skipping a year is not an option as you have to pay more if you skip a version.
I am going to move probably to pl5 waiting for a promotion to buy it. I just miss the dam in pl5 and i hate that vp is not part of the application. This is basic functionality imho
But for the rest it is nice maybe i keep the C1 express as dam and use pl5 to edit my photos.