While it isn’t a feature of the software, it is an important feature for usability of the software. We need more official presence from DXO here on this forum to to help clear up the confusion and answer questions that we users have. Other photo software companies have a much better online presence in their user forums…here…almost non existant.
By having a presence here in the forum, frustration would probably be reduced among the users and the users would in the end have a much better experience with PhotoLab and would be more inclined to recommend it to fellow photographers and also more inclined to purchase updates. Not to mention potential new customers who are experiencing problems and or have questions before they decide to purchase it or not would be more likely to become DXO customers.
Your primary interest seems to be more active DxO staff presence on the forum. Maybe “more official documentation” should be a separate request, so we can discuss what sort of documentation we want to see? Such documentation would likely be published at support.dxo.com or dxo.com.
Documentation requests can also be submitted individually via feedback tickets at support.dxo.com. This might be a more direct way to reach the tech writers and marketing folks than here on the forum. (It used to be.) But I would gladly participate in such a discussion here if I thought it would be fruitful. (More DxO presence here with a clear focus on producing helpful guidance would encourage that.)
I would say that both are of equal interest to me. But, I understand your point. I really don’t have much hope of either one of my interests being read and acted upon by anyone from DXO. There have been so many posts since PL6 was released with people asking questions and expressing general frustration with a multitude of topics that if DXO were actively reading the forum posts and had even a modicum of care then they probably would have participated. But, that hasn’t happened.
The more I think about it, I really don’t know why I bothered with my original post/request. There are many other requests which have been here for a long, long time and have gotten a lot of votes and nothing has been done to fulfill them.
This is sad, because I really like the results I get from Photolab.
Yes: it’s disappointing. And it’s no consolation that other raw-development/photo software companies are not much more responsive.
In my observation the best responses from the ‘customer teams’ at these companies are Serif-Affinity and Skylum: although I think the latter respond with less substance than the former. Adobe and CaptureOne sometimes respond in a user forum in my experience: but usually with “read the documents”. I’m not sure about OnOne.
I haven’t observed any of these companies responding directly to user suggestions/complaints with changes in software, even on bugs. As for their choices on functionality, I think they are swayed mostly by competitors’ choices and sales. In other words, not by anything users say.
In any software domain, for that reason, I generally prefer the ‘independent’ developer who almost always responds to users. But I can think of only two such developers in the raw-photo-development business: Brian Griffith at Iridient.com and Nick Bhatt at GentlemenCoders.com (RawPower). In the past, I’ve interacted with both and it was a pleasure to have personal, intelligent and helpful responses that included fixing a minor problem I had found.
But I doubt any independent developer could build and maintain the sort of proprietary libraries that DXO (cameras-lenses) or Adobe (camera profiles, machine-learning) maintains. That’s what we’re buying at DXO or Adobe: not (alas!) their customer relations.
That said, this forum is often fun and certainly worth following for all sorts of technical discussions.
Some user requests have a few thousand views but a relatively small number of votes. I can understand that DxO doesn’t respond to all suggestions, but if there was some kind of obligation to respond once a feature request gets more than 100 votes (100 × €200 = €20,000, so it might be worth investing some resources?), maybe DxO would look at the forum more often. Otherwise, it’s a nice and friendly playground, but without much significance for the developers.