Affinity Photo, Adobe Photoshop and I believe Lightroom can do everything single thing you need. But apparently, you want to best for each function which means using all of them. If you also upgrade your camera and lenses often, that is an expensive hobby. So I would say pick one and stick with it.
Since Affinity Photo is dirt cheap and doesn’t require any updates for cameras and lenses… you can just buy it once on offer and keep updating your PhotoLab license and most of your problems are solved.
I think that Affinity Photo is amazing value and I will continue to support the company but as far as raw processing is concerned, PhotoLab is in a different league. DxO usually gets me nearer to a good looking image with less effort from the outset.
I just upgraded to PL4 (for £55, I think, not £70). As well as the new DeepPRIME feature, which I think will encourage me to do more high ISO shooting, the new eyedropper tool in HSL is something I’ve been waiting for for a while. Other new features are handy: the edit history and new UI in particular. I may well not upgrade next time round given that I have now a product that does pretty much all I want. If anyone feels that PL3 does all they need already, that is fine. Having hesitated a bit before upgrading this time, I don’t regret it at all.
For me one bonus feature of both DxO and Affinity is that neither softwares use the subscription model.
If £70 was overpriced, we should expect to see DxO expanding, or retiring with their millions.
It’s expensive but I do not think overpriced for what is a major feature release. It’s a sad fact that beginning with the Apple App Store, the price consumers expect to pay for software has plummeted but I don’t believe the cost of producing it has because software is people and people are wages and wages pay for goods that are subject to inflation.
I remember when a “simple utility” would be shareware and the cost of that would be USD$30 and plenty of people were perfectly happy to pay for it. Apple’s Aperture 1.0 was USD$499. Version 2.0 dropped to USD$199. By the time version 3.0 was released in 2010, they dropped the price to $80 and everyone in enthusiast circles thought it was an absolute steal. In today’s money that’s $95.
I think Affinity’s business model is to sell for bottom dollar a REALLY polished product and make it up on volume. But… while their basic functions are excellent, they’ve barely phoned it in on RAW conversion. In fact, Affinity Photo is not a standalone product, it was designed and built to be part of a suite.
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m-photo
( Marc (macOS Sonoma on MBP16" Intel))
32
Oh well I am sorry this phrase popped into your thread here. Its more a global situation here every year, just have a look around and you will see that at every release it is the same ritual. One start to complain and others come to add more oil on the fire. Do not take my comment personally. You have the right to complain, politely of course, it is the mood of the forum that goes down (at least) once a year that I (we) do not like.
Correct. For me the .33 cents I spent to use DeepPrime for a month was worth the $10 I might save waiting for Black Friday. Thanks I’ll take the software please. DxO has made everyday with my body and lenses better. Will say once again to the DxO team. >>Thank you guys!
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m-photo
( Marc (macOS Sonoma on MBP16" Intel))
37
Oh, bummer, thanks for the tip
Well, I will just go and work my photography until the new beta round starts. No more time to try to convinced people that are not asking to be convinced. Everybody’s freeee
Goes for everyday life too, except for things that really need to change
m-photo
( Marc (macOS Sonoma on MBP16" Intel))
39
Well, in this case we need to do the stuff and be an example to convince by our actions
“It is always easier to criticize than to do the work” said one of my bosses one day.
There was time when I thought DxO was going under, and I thought “Crap, now what will I use?”!. So while I own Affinity, Luminar, and Aurora HDR, and like them all for some things, I really use DxO Photolab as my main tool, starting point, and often only tool. I tried CaptureOne and was not crazy about it. I tried Topaz Denoise and found weird artifacts at the extremes. I have no interest in an Adobe subscription (but I love their stock!).
So then I realized I was happy to keep supporting the development of Photolab.
Would I like it if they added an HDR and Pano module? Yes. I’m not sure those fall under “pixel editor”, anyways what is the healing tool if not a pixel editing tool??? PL is obviously way more than “raw developer” as it stands, not sure why the arbitrary swim lane definitions.
My one wish is that they would support Galaxy phones! At least loading of the DNG files! It’s a raw deal that iPhones get support and Galaxy doesn’t. So many good photos coming from phones theses days…
A chap I know came up with a great “swim lane” definition to distinguish applications like Lightroom from applications like Photoshop. Most people know the sorts of things Photoshop can do, so he coined a term for the Lightroom type of apps as “Darkroom” apps. I think that works really well. At least if you’re old (or curious) enough to understand the film terminology.
I do agree with you Peter, but only because my situation is a bit different. A little over a year ago, I moved from a Nikon dSLR to a Fujifilm mirrorless system with a sensor that is not supported by Photolab. This means that I hardly use PhotoLab any more. Version 4 would be very appealing to me if I could use Deep Prime, but I can’t. I still use PhotoLab for some iPhone (11 Pro Max) photos, but the main DxO product I use these days is the truly wonderful NIK collection because it is not sensor-dependent. I will therefore skip Photolab 4 and hope that at some point, DxO will support the Fujifilm sensors. Of course, it should be possible for DxO to offer superb de-noising features on cameras that have unsupported sensors, but until they either do that or support X-Trans sensors, I don’t think I’ll be updating PhotoLab. Sad, really, because I truly like the product and the company.
I couldn’t disagree more. The upgrade in processing prowess with DeepPRIME is so dramatic it’s like all of my cameras got new image sensors. DeepPRIME is worth the $70 upgrade alone, but combined with the new eye dropper functionality with the HSL wheel (thank you, DxO Labs for listening!), makes PhotoLab 4 the best RAW developer I’ve ever used!
A very good upgrade, with a more logical user friendly workspace together with some very good improvements. Deep Prime alone is worth the price, particularly if you use high ISO. No doubt other things will come in the future at a price but very good value for a RAW EDITOR. A once only cost, not a monthly subscription and if you don’t want to pay for an upgrade then DON’T !! Simples !!
Technically speaking, Peter stated happiness with version-jump-upgrade AND new camera profiles carried over to previous versions. The former is true…the latter is not.
Without the latter, perpetuity may be limited as a practical matter.
Re-read what Peter last wrote which could have used better grammar. The second sentence starts with AND.
What he is saying is that he would be good with:
a) ability to skip versions (which, yes, you CAN do) AND
b) get new camera profiles (for previous versions)
So, in practical terms you can skip versions and then upgrade when you want, like you say. EXCEPT
if you get a new camera and need a new profile. Then, as a practical matter, you are forced to upgrade just to get a new camera profile.
You are addressing (only) the former and not the latter…like I said…and like Peter said.
To the OP topic… I can understand the frustration that an update contains a few feature items and thus not appear to be worth the price of entry. I don’t begrudge DXO funding their business and providing us with regular product updates. Considering how much it costs to develop software, they are welcome and I am happy to support their new versions.
Of course we don’t always get to see the feature update we individually might want to see. Personally I want to see a big change and improvement to Projects.
But I am not going to grumble… DeepPrime is fantastic and that alone is well worth the upgrade cost (IMHO).
