PL2 on old computer/PL3 on new computer

[asvensson]

Capture One is 3 times the price at 410$

In the EU now PL3 Elite is EUR 149, and Capture One is EUR 428 so, yes, almost three times more expensive. You do need to add ViewPoint and FilmPack to get equivalent functionality though, so make that EUR 189 currently for the DxO Photo Suite that has all three, which is a great deal.

This is with the current discounts on PL, and not so much on Capture One. I paid EUR 125 for Capture One Pro 12 for Sony and then EUR 120 for the upgrade to full Capture One Pro, so EUR 245 in total, which is actually less than I paid for Photolab + FilmPack + ViewPoint, although that’s due to having bought the three separately and FilmPack being half the price of when I bought it two-ish years ago. I didn’t think I wanted FilmPack until I discovered that I had no channel mixer without it. IIRC, it would have been around the current EUR 189 for the Suite had I known.

Unfortunately, you can’t buy anything at asking price anymore; there’s always a better deal if you time it right. With Capture One, I installed the free Express version for Sony, it offered 50% off for the Pro version, and full Pro from there made it a pretty good deal.

You could had just use your free PL2 that came with Nik and upgrade to PL3 Elite for 99$US instead of 149$US and not affecting your other license.

Yup. I’m not interested in Nik, so I haven’t purchased it, but getting another full license is the way to go if you don’t want to give up your current Photolab license.

You do also need additional license for FilmPack/ViewPoint as well though (if you use those), in which case the cost ends up being more than the Capture One upgrade (currently EUR 127 for the Capture One Pro 20 pre-order), although in practice I don’t think you’ll run into problems running with the same activation keys since DxO doesn’t seem to count activations of FilmPack/ViewPoint the same way they do with Photolab, today at least. It’ll work, just like running your old Photolab still works even when it’s not licensed, but if you want proper licenses then you have to pay.

It’s just the inability to redeploy the old version of Photolab as I wish that I dislike with DxO’s upgrade model.

you still can use your old version on 3 computer depending on your license, that been said on another thread.

Yes, with the limitations that have also been discussed, that you’re limited to existing installations of the old version. (And that it’s not formally licensed at all.)

I’m not championing Capture One ahead of Photolab - I have both, I like both - but the licensing is different, and the cost isn’t that different if you want to retain the license for the old version after an upgrade. (Depending on which variant of Photolab you need.)

[mikerofoto]

agree with all of that, if you shoot sony or fuji C1 is a good deal (no x-trans in PL). I did not took into account VP and FP with PL because I don’t have them. its hard to get everything in only one software and I’ve been used to that, having used Lr & Ps, you just need a good Raw developer to start with and a second software to suit your needs if something is missing.

[mwsilvers (Mark - New Jersey, USA)]

agree with all of that, if you shoot sony or fuji C1 is a good deal (no x-trans in PL). I did not took into account VP and FP with PL because I don’t have them. its hard to get everything in only one software and I’ve been used to that, having used Lr & Ps, you just need a good Raw developer to start with and a second software to suit your needs if something is missing.

I’ve had Viewpoint 3 and FilmPack 5 Elite installed sInce PhotoLab 1 was released. I couldn’t imagine using PhotoLab without them. Many people seem to believe that FilmPack is all about film emulations. It is true that there is 82 of them, but they are only a part of what FilmPack is about.

FilmPack also adds a fine contrast slider, filtering, film grains, a B&W channel mixer, creative vignetting, blur, frames, textures and light leaks. They all work on your images regardless of whether you use any of the film emulations.

Viewpoint is also critical to what I do, and I use it quite often. I don’t understand why many people don’t want Vewpoint installed to correct perspective issues. Both VP and FP are completely integrated into PhotoLab so that all three work together like a single program. Very cool

Mark

[OXiDant (Peter)]

Same reason i choose the plv1 suite elite as startingpoint.
I did as thorow list of difference in FP and VP against the base elite PL and i don’t use all the filmemulations much , nearly none, actualy (i hope with your presets i do more…).
Those extra things as fine contrast, special good selective contrast for skins and faces, advanged sliders to acomplish the selective tone sliders. And i think toy look is also a creative FP tool.

I did a lot of testing with the lenscorrection and perspective corrections in manual mode of my then main rawconverter and the VP’s controls when such easier to get some result. One thing is less good or at least i need to learn it better. Horizontal shift. Rotation.

[mikerofoto]

I got FP and VP now as 30 days trial and yes they add more like you said. But regarding FP, you can achieve those within the Nik collection (if you have it), that’s why I never bother looking at it.
I know VP can add a lot. I never got it because I do it in other software, now that PL has a great color wheel and a better clone/repair tool, I can do more within PL, so I’m kind of looking for VP.

[OXiDant (Peter)]

this i use a lot:

and this:

Rest is good too but more as a creative matter, finishing touch so to speak.
Marks presets are great for faster choosing a film preset look. much faster then the back and forwards in the “list” pulldown.

I made a top to bottom rundown in importance workspace (some things are on auto so i don’t have to look at it much:

And i have perspective around 80% automode without autocrop so i can see in one click a corrected image and then i decide how much “image” i want to lose for perspective correction. And start from there: building lines with the 2 4 tool or using advanced sliders. homing in on a view which looks good to me from a point of view.
One thing with DxO’s optical correction you gain some angle somehow against my other raw converter. in fz200 at the cost of some vignetting:

and VP in action:

Just automode 80%

A two lines along the house behind the white camper and a small horizon correction.

That’s the beauty of VP, hit auto, see what happens, use % slider to adjust Auto or start from scratch with the manual tools to line up the viewlines.

.

[mwsilvers (Mark - New Jersey, USA)]

As I have mentioned in response to other users of my FilmPack presets, and perhaps to you as well, if you run into any problems with them please let me know as soon as possible so I can correct.

I created 82 of them in several sessions over a few days. As a result, there is always the possibility of an error creeping in when you are doing a lot of repetitive labor-intensive tasks. I did test them, so I’m fairly confident that they’re all okay, but I’m not perfect and I was starting to grow impatient by the time I finished them

Mark

[mikerofoto]

Channel mixer and advanced contrast setting should be included with PL Elite, what software don’t have channel mixer?

Its like you’re torturing me to get VP =]
I know, that would be best to do it from the beginning.

[Scribe]

Channel mixer and advanced contrast setting should be included with PL Elite, what software don’t have channel mixer?

I agree with you on this point !

[OXiDant (Peter)]

My thought also, i would smack all creative film things in NIK.
But they have FP, and if you strip it from the creative gimmics as bleeding light, borders, film emulators.
The raw supporting things stay above the waterline.
So if you think of using pl as main raw to endproduct software the DxO PL v3 suite version is the way to go.
If you have a policy of raw to tiff to jpeg and want to use optical lens sharpening and prime denoise base dxo plv3 is enough.
So yes pf and vp are both embedded pluging’s for rawfile supported editing.
Again as you need a one step rawprocesor and choose dxo’s pl for that the suite version is the most sensible choise.

Sorry.

[mikerofoto]

creative film things in NIK

They’re not exactly like what you get in FP, but now DxO own Nik so they might get those extra film effect and come out with FPv6.

[sgospodarenko (Svetlana G.)]

Hello Peter,

Out of my own interest;
How does this 3 install thing work?
Is there a master slave kind of numberisation?
Like first install is master second and third is slave?

• No Masters or Slaves, just 3 separate activations absolutely independent. @asvensson is correct here - it’s just a counter on the server and if you decide to install and activate it on the forth machine - you will get the message that the limit is reached.

Regards,
Svetlana G.

[OXiDant (Peter)]

Ah, great! So it’s independent. No only one active at the same time policy. That’s generous.
Then i have no need to “keep” older versions longer then needed for comparison in the first stage of use of the new one. The learning curve so to speak.

[asvensson]

In case anyone’s interested, here’s my recent experience on resetting the PL 2 activation counter in preparation for moving PL 2 to an OS that I can also run PL 3 on.

It was easier said than done. At least, it was not as easy as the last time I needed this. (Maybe a year ago.)

The first answer from support was that it was done, but it clearly wasn’t since I didn’t need to reactivate when starting Photolab. (Which I did to test that anything had actually been done.)

The second answer was that they’d just added some activations. How many I asked, since I needed three to more all of my activations, but no response.

After some prodding, the next answer was that they couldn’t reset the activation counter at all without knowing the machine id’s in question, which then became mac addresses, and I would also need to confirm that Photolab had been removed from all the disks in question. That this is a completely meaningless requirement - (a) I have images of my boot disks that go back several years, many of which contain an activated Photolab, and can undo the formal requirement directly after fulfilling it; (b) I can lie - was of no matter: policy is policy.

They could usually make an exception in case of theft or fire though, but that didn’t generate any feelings of gratitude at this point.

Eventually they did reset the activations, but it took over 24 hours to get it done. Just to be able to reinstall/activate Photolab on new disks.

I think this is pretty poor. Of all the commercial software I own (not a huge amount, Photolab, C1, Exposure, Affinity Photo, some older Adobe, and a few more), Photolab is the only one that requires me to contact a human at all for this kind of thing. Literally everything else either has activation/deactivation functionality built into the software (C1, Exposure), liberal licenses (Affinity Photo), or some other method that doesn’t depend on a human during business hours. Even Adobe’s chat has been more efficient the few times I’ve used them, which is saying something.