I could be missing something but it looks like there is almost nothing new in 5 compared with 4 - just a couple of tweaks to Color Efex. Is that right?
I donât know how many people are trying to run the ship at DxO but theyâre running it into the ground. These âupgradesâ to new versions are not upgrades at all. Each one seems to be partial upgrades to the âCollectionâ and a way for them to simply slap a new version number on it and expect customers to pay more money.
Iâve been a fan of DxO since I discovered their software (and an even longer time fan of the Nik Collection when it was packaged with Capture NX and my Nikon D90). But Iâm becoming less and less of a fan simply because of their business model.
Given there are other companies out there now producing amazing photo editing software and caring not only about satisfying but going above and beyond for their customers my attention span with DxO is waning. I love what I can achieve with the Nik Collection, but I donât think I love it enough to continue dealing with a company that doesnât appear to care.
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You are right, thereâs almost nothing new and what is should be included in a free upgrade with maintained version 4. DxO did the same thing with PureRAW 2, which have added functions that should be already included in version 1.
Personally Iâm done with DxO. Iâve been purchasing all apps from them so far and have now PhotoLab 5 Elite, ViewPoint 3, FilmPack 6 Elite, NIK Collection 4 and PureRAW 1. As it looks like that there will be 2-3 times 79⏠per year in upgrade fee, which is considerably higher that what Adobe charge for LR & PS, I will stick to Adobe and use what I already have from DxO, as long as they will work.
Alors DxO, vous ĂȘtes trop gourmand et je suis persuadĂ© que vous allez perdre un nombre considĂ©rable de clients. Il faut ĂȘtre sĂ©rieux pour garder la confiance !
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Everyone needs to vote with their wallets and I certainly would not try to convince anyone to stay with a product line if they are unhappy.
For me, the most important thing when I make a software purchase is usability for purpose. I have extensively used the majority of DxOâs competition and find I prefer using DxOâs products over all of them, especially over some of the more bloated alternatives with poorer output like ON 1 Photo Raw.
I own licenses to a number of DxOâs competitorâs products, including the latest version of ON 1 which was mentioned as an alternative to DxO products in a separate thread on this topic⊠but, I no longer use any of them. Currently my suite of programs includes PhotoLab 5.3 Elite, FilmPack 6.2 Elite, Viewpoint 3, and Nik Collection 5.
While I certainly appreciate everyoneâs concerns over DxOâs pricing model, the functionality and output quality are the primary drivers behind my purchases. As a result I am sticking with DxOâs product line despite my concerns over upgrade pricing.
Mark
I agree. Voting with the wallet is important. However, these forums are a place DxO has created for customers to present their requests and their issues. They provide no other way that I have been able to find on their websites for customers to contact them (other than putting in a support ticket).
I do believe itâs important for those of us who are dissatisfied to know we are not alone. DxO supposedly looks to these forums for ideas (at least I hope they do). But if enough voices raise issues over the way DxO is relating to their customers maybe someone at DxO will wake up and changes for the better may (fingers crossed) happen. They have a great product, but a crappy business model.
In all honestly, I prefer the results of DxOâs Nik Collection over any other software I have. It doesnât bring me pleasure taking issue with DxO. However, I also donât enjoy being nickeled and dimed. If theyâre not going to upgrade the suite as a whole, donât be calling it a major version upgrade, and most definitely donât be charging loyal customers as if it was.
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I very much disappointed that there is no native integration of Nik Collection in DXO PL in such a way that every Nik preset will be available from DXO PL palette. I really believe that they should concentrate more on their base product DXO PL and do not spend resources on new questionable products like Pure Raw.
Still DXO PL is best on market in my view, but it will not continue for long with such marketing strategy.
Reference were made to LR. It has many more deficiencies - like the primary one is using CPU single thread both for UI and processing. Excuse me, but were are in 2020s where all workstations are running with multithreaded architecture and seeing interface freezing for any point-and-click operationâŠwhat? really?
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Full integration of the Nik Collection into PhotoLab will certainly not happen in the foreseeable future, and I believe I can say with a high degree of confidence that it is highly unlikely to ever happen.
Mark
My guess is DxO is more interested in keeping the Collection independent of PL as they can sell to a wider audience when it is kept solely as a plugin package that will work with a variety of editors.
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âLong agoâ I described my gripes with Nik 4 ⊠Since then not much has changed (for me).
But compatibility issues set aside, I donât feel the new user interface to be an âdelightâ
â instead darkish, low contrast, condensed look, small lettering, short sliders, tiny symbols, an almost endless row of settings (RHS), what DxO promotes as
The modules Silver Efex 3 and Viveza 3 already had been part of Nik Collection v4 and got a couple of (minor) changes. With Nik Collection v5 the modules Color Efex 5 and Analog Efex 3 inherited the new user interface.
While we now have additional global settings like ClearView or DetailExtractor,
the Selective Adjustments (= Control Points / user defined Local Adjustments) also got Luminance / Chrominance (in reversed order to PL) and Selective Tones (Highlights, Midtones, Shadows, Blacks),
which no doubt can be helpful, but cluttering the RHS menu does not improve the overview.
And not to forget details like
- Control Points not being kept when changing presets (to be applied to the new one)
- Negative Control Points no more showing the restricted mask
(an advanced feature from Nik 3.3, also available in PL)
As Nik Collection v5 continues to delete all previous versions, make sure to keep your installable old version in case you are not satisfied when testing.
[ Iâm a long time Nik user â since Nik was NIK, long before the Google versions ]
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Agree and donât need this in NC, because I already apply those in PL.
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Iâm venturing a guess is that DxO is going to start focusing on making the Nik Collection their primary offering and Photolab will just get tweaks (possibly the reason for a spiffy new Nik Collection webpage). I suspect the plugins are most likely where their business lies because they work with other companiesâ apps - if only DxO could market them fairly to their already loyal customers.
It is not evident, for me it looks like there is some kind of license restriction from Google - ok, we will sell you Nik but under the condition that it will not be integrated into the native workflow of the products which were not utilizing Nik before. Otherwise, it is difficult to understand why re-coding of Nik could not be done for DXO PL.
Most of what the Nik Collection offers is already in PhotoLab+Viewpoint+FilmPack, which all work together in PL. If anything, I think the Nik Collection is being updated to work better on modern workstations and is getting some of PLâs feature set added to it. I donât see PL and Nik getting merged and donât see one pushing the other away. PL has more development going into it while Nik is an add-on to a RAW developer or a RGB set of independent tools that are becoming more able to work in series in a mult-app workflow. IMO
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Why is that? Do you believe a large amount of Niks usefulness is already in Photolab / PL with Filmpack?
I believe you guess is incorrect.
Mark
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No, my guess is based on being a retired software designer and development manager with over 30 years of experience and a beta tester for multiple software publishers.
Mark
Agree. I have trouble using DxO PhotoLab these days due to the low contrast (I can still get the job done, but itâs unnecessary eye strain).
The modules Silver Efex 3 and Viveza 3 already had been part of Nik Collection v4 and got a couple of (minor) changes. With Nik Collection v5 the modules Color Efex 5 and Analog Efex 3 inherited the new user interface.
Thanks for the detailed report for those of us on Nik v3.
- Control Points not being kept when changing presets (to be applied to the new one)
I like to change presets quite a few times in Silver FX when working on an image. This is very bad.
- Negative Control Points no more showing the restricted mask
(an advanced feature from Nik 3.3, also available in PL)
Thatâs another step backwards. Updates to Nik Collection donât seem to be DxOâs best work. Thereâs genius in the layout and workflow in PhotoLab but somehow DxO has not managed to make the excellent Nik significantly better than it was when created by Nik Software and bought by Google in 2012 (who did nothing with what was world-leading photo software at the time).
Iâm also very disturbed my Nik Collection becoming less compatible over time rather than more compatible with a wide variety of applications and plugin hosts.
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Why do you believe full integration is unlikely? Is it a technical issue, a business issue, or both? Personally, I find the current integration of NC very clunky, to the point i use it less often.
Because the effort required for full integration of this massive amount of software would be way too extreme. The annual updates to the Nik Collection only add limited new functionality to a subset of the Nik modules. Complete Integration of the entire Nik Collection into Photolab would require very significant design modifications and an overall effort dozens of times greater then the normal annual upgrade to Nik which would still have to be performed.
In addition, the PL interface would become bloated with hundreds of additional filters and features. Performance would suffer and the learning curve would become extreme. All this cost and effort and time would only be useful for those who use PhotoLab and the Nik Collection. It is simply not going to happenâŠever. The best we can probably hope for is that some future version of the Nik modules will accept .DNG files as input and return updated .DNG files for further editing in PhotoLab. What could also be done in PhotoLab would be the creation of Preset libraries which could be similar to those in the Nik Collection but that would not be an integration of Nik functionality.
Mark
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That makes sense. Thanks for taking the time to reply to my question. Much appreciated.