Hi Joachim,
I completely agree to almost all you wrote - but not to the panaroma thing, it is that easy with some discipline and Microsoft ICE that it would not be worth the effort.
Instead, it will produce lots of unjustified complains and support efforts because even when taking the picture some discipline and care is necessary which often can not be balanced by software later.
See my workflow post #13 above. Thanks.
Your celebration of the new seems naive to me. Progress seems to mean we can kill many more millions much faster. Progress seems to mean higher populations to live in misery and lay waste to the earth like locusts. Newer is not always better.
Reading everyone’s impressions of à la carte pricing and complexity or lack thereof for panoramas.
Comparing the pricing of PhotoLab tools with that of marketing companies like MacFun/Skylum or On1 (more respect for the latter than the former) is unfair. How many times has Skylum managed to sell photographers a broken and dead-end RAW tool (Luminar) or primitive HDR tool (Aurora HDR, which is now on version five or so and seems to be retired in favour of Luminar Neo).
Heck those clowns at Skylum are now charging an extra 30% to be able to install their software on a second computer (what they misleadingly call a second seat). And discounts or not, CaptureOne works out to be more expensive annually than PhotoLab. Normally the annual upgrade costs about €130 unless one hits the Black Friday or end-of-year sale just right (I stopped maintaining my copy a few versions ago, as I was happy with PhotoLab, though C1 will probably get my money this year as C1 will still support Mojave for at leaast a year and a half).
If it weren’t for the mule-headed macOS support policy (OS-1), PhotoLab and add-ons would be ideal photo editing software. DxO has finally put the no Fuji nonsense behind them (oops, there’s still the black eye of the MIA mobile phone RAW support). Still DxO treats us better than the competition.
I agree. I own a license for Affinity Photo and use it for those things best suited to a pixel editor.
Mark
Microsoft Research no longer updates ICE. Suggestion : like Nik collection, DxO could get the rights and embed ICE in their toolsuite.
Although I agree personally as I use PTGui for Pano, I think we need to recognise that DXO needs to be competitive in the market. In the early days a raw converter was just that, load the file into LR, make global adjustments and then export a tif to Photoshop.
However, much to Adobe’s dismay 
LR ate PS’s lunch and now, with extensive local editing, colour control, sophisticated masking based on colour and luminosity, most photos can be finished in the raw converter with pixel editors relegated to compositing, extensive cloning, object removal etc. Pano and hdr were part of the pixel editors function but they have no been subsumed into the raw converter, certainly for “simple” panos where movement isn’t an issue.
That’s where the “market” is and DXO can’t ignore reality. In 2021 a certain level of functionality is expected in a raw converter and if DXO can’t meet market expectations then it will decline in market share. Not something I want to see. So although pano and hdr functionality are of limited interest to me I hope DXO and DXO supporters, like forum members, will recognise the market need over their own preferences and support increasing the functionality of Photolab…
Alec, before I block your comments again, and this time definitely not only one month, I just reply to your stupid celebration of OVFs which come either at the disadvantage of being not precise enough for teles longer than 135 mm (I mean, the real optical viewfinders a the one in a Leica M) and the other disadvantages of shutter lag due to mirror movement (as in all DSLRs) and indirect focusing and metering the exposure. Another disadvantage: Some users get blind to that disadvanteges, maybe they’ve just looked to often into the sunlight through their OVFs?
You simply sound like someone, whose experience with EVFs are limited to old and bad models. Not my problem. And calling me naïve simply returns back to the sender.
Well, Alec, that’s actually a good point, I guess I would buy this version because of its better possibilities to tune perspective issues which iis sometioimes tricky. But again, there’s a very high risc for support efforts for DXO because of complaining customers, lacking photographic discipline and expecting a tool to compensate the impossdile…
Regarding your viewfinder arguments which I share: (do not want to step into your private warfare with @JoJu though):
I use different technics e.g. for portraiture with a (D)SLR, one eye through the finder and the other open to see evtl. eyes twinkling during the shot, an electronic viewfinder of e.g. the one in my G5XII simply can not reliably do that. But it is good for travel in sunlight, better than a display. But basically, I am used to see the world through the finder as it is and not as the camera thinks I’d like to see it… I would never buy a professional EVF cam for my personal needs. But I clearly see the need of some others e.g. sports/action.
Never say never! It’s clear that the day of the DSLR, for good or for ill, is over. Over the next few years it will become more and more difficult to find a new copy of a current DSLR body, much less a new model. At the same time, EVFs are continually improving. In a few years you might change your mind.
Mark
I could care less. One less misguided, arrogant and rude German in my life would only be a blessing.
The EVF in the Nikon Z6 was considered state of the art and is roughly the same viewfinder which went into the new Nikon Z9.
OVF’s rock for sports. There is no lag. Speed of light. Too bad for you if you don’t like physics and prefer staring at laggy TV screens instead of live action.
Hi,
Maybe you didn’t try a good evf.
Z6 is considered state of the art… by Nikon maybe ? It is only 60 i/s…which i can confirm is not good for action.
Evf offers a lot more than ovf, but i will not say it is better, it is different.
As for me my 120i/s evf, my 30 i/s bursts that allow focus stacking, all sorts of pilings to reduce noise, increase definition, make disappear unwanted tourists on pictures,… the wysiwyg evf, the focus peaking,… give me interesting features and i won’t go back to ovf.
I’m not going to turn into a Sony-mbecile buying the same camera over and over again every 1.5 years hoping that finally Sony isn’t just screwing us over with a flash-in-the-pan feature of the day while leaving horrid rolling shutter on the sensor for a decade (just one example).
You know what’s great about OVF? The one on the D4 is just as good the one on the D6. And there are no technical issues with any of them. You just have to be a capable enough photographer to be able to set up your camera with the right settings for the photographic challenge in front of you as there is no real time chimping.
This whole mirrorless camera mania reminds me of the people who are keen on automatic transmission in cars. Mostly because they couldn’t be bothered to learn how to drive. The only issue is the mirrorless camera crowd sound like medieval religious mobs hunting for witches.
For the next 100 years most of the greatest images in photography will have been taken with an optical viewfinder. It will be that long before mirrorless photographers catch up (if ever) with optical viewfinder photographers. You have work cut out for you, so why don’t you get to it instead of complaining about people getting many years of use out of great cameras instead of trading their obsolete trinket MILC in every year and a half.
Speaking of which – a sensible photographers spends his/her money on lenses not bodies.
Waou you take every opportunity to be polemic
Relax man !!
And if you think you have the only truth and that people can’t express different opinions, then go and see a doctor
With your reasoning man will not have invented the wheel… and you shouldn’t have switched to digital cameras !!
So ridiculous arguments you provide.
For Sony i don’t know what you are referring to, i don’t use Sonys.
I see now that your contribution was not entirely in the same tone as some of the people who came before you. My apologies. Frankly, I do use an EVF when shooting with vintage lenses (Nikon Z6) and like it for those purposes. Just don’t like EVF at all for sports. I’m neutral about most other situations (can shoot either but like the direct contact with the subject most of the time with OVF but if light is difficult EVF gives photographer a leg up on how settings are effecting captured light).
Everyone is entitled to their opinions of course and nothing wrong with different perspectives. People should be able to exchange viewpoints without rancour.
Your tone sounds eerily similar to theirs. You just take the opposite position.
You seem to be as much of a zealot as they are.
Just sayin’.
Hi all, can we ask please refrain from all the personal insults flying around. This forum is for constructive discussions and for helping eachother. Let’s be respectful to other’s opinions and make these forums a pleasant experience for all.
Thanks you in advance
Please look at the post to which I was initially responding. Please look at my recent post to @Man
Your tone sounds eerily similar to theirs. You just take the opposite position.
I just tire of empty-handed magazine readers banging on the empty pots of “new is better”. Not always. In this case, both systems have their strengths. New/automated does not always improve on what came before.*
I don’t know why are talking about viewfinders anyway. This thread was supposed to be about Panorama Stitching until it was derailed.
My apologies for my own subsequent role in encouraging the thread to wander off-topic.
*This is particularly true for example with bicycles. Bicycles shifted very well from the 1980’s with thumbshifters and gear systems were very durable with a standard 18-gear set up (3 x 6). This did not generate enough revenue for Shimano so every three year we face a new shifting system, each worse and less reliable and more finicky than the next. Gearing is now standardised on 20 (2 x 10) or 27 (3 x 9) with paper thin hubs which wear out in a quarter as many kilometers. Gearing really should have stopped at 21 or 24. Going any higher compromises the integrity of the system. Good luck buying even an 8 gear hub (I can get them but with difficulty and not the best quality). Shimano is a near-monopolist supplier and has pushed the market from what is durable and reliable and inexpensive to fragile and expensive. Just a very concrete and specific example of how new is not always better.
Just a thought, is “Panorama” not a just a word to bring people to the point what we want?
“stitching”
plaine stitching and stacking possibility’s?
I have posted before Silkypix v10 has a multi form of use of stacking.
no panorama yet, but that could be also in multi form.
side by side, on pile stacked, and both just plain enlarging.
in this same road would be “replacement” of parts (two images of nearly the same and cut at a place and then swap one part to the other side to stich.
(Not that i want Pl to be a child of Photoshop)
Viewpoint V4 would be a nice fase to implement this.
Be carefull, this kind of tool must be COMPLETE to be usefull.
It MUST have possibility to make cleanup manually, so it needs to keep complete stack before validating the process.
An automated tool like this without manual control would certainly be more a toy than a professional tool.
I think that that the key is.
Then you have to box mark area’s and have the opertunity to select the layer for that boxed area to have the main pixel delivery. (every photo is one layer)
Same is initial lineup, you have go have opertunity making pinpoints which are important to get good alignment. Area’s of importance so to speak.
In stitching perspective correction automatisation.
Yes, exactly.