But your statement about the 5 minutes of coding and testing, which let’s face it, will be much longer, gives the impression to the uninitiated that is all the effort it takes from start to finish to get an update delivered to their computer. How about the analysis time required to determine whether the button should be greyed out, or disappear altogether, or moved to the Export To drop-down menu, depending upon the availability of the Nik collection, and the determination of which of these options would be best approach from a usability perspective. That must be decided before any coding actually begins. And you really believe there are no other tasks in the mix have have to be considered just for this update? Still think its 5 minutes from end to end? That was my whole point.
I would like to know if DXO could implement a button for FILMPACK and VIEWPOINT as well. Instead of the current implementation in Photolab that seems somewhat confusing in regards to the stand alone versions
Oh for heaven’s sake, Mark, give it up. Yes, adding complex new features to the export module or reworking the user interface for export is a lot of work. Hiding a button which wasn’t there in the very last version is trivial, adding a checkbox in preferences to control it is trivial. Both birdpictures and I are building software now, with modern development tools and this is really simple stuff.
DxO does not get a free pass to do nasty things to their users or their user interface due to financial difficulties of their own making. Please stop creating excuses for bad behaviour.
Your not a developer and you may not understand development standards. Coding a small change may only take a short time and testing it not much more than that, but actually implementing it and distributing it is not a 5 minute activity. DXO can either do it in a special release with that change alone which is a lot of work for very little gain, they could do it as part of a point update with other features if they choose to go that route, or they can wait and put it in the next version release, but in no way can they make a decision to make the change, code it today and put it right into production. That has been my point and argument from the beginning, that you don’t just code it and test it and immediately go live. Some of the posters who say its a five minute effort are implying exactly that. That is just not how it works
Mark
You could always put a piece of tape over it!
John, you are my man. I like this proposal. You have my vote😃
If DxO can’t add a checkbox to hide the Nik button (which they’ve just added) and get the release out within a day (at least in beta), it’s time they left the development business altogether.
This prancing around like you are the only developer in the world is getting really tired. I release four to six production versions of a video player every month with either new features or fixes for OS changes. And I’m not running around crying about how difficult it is to release versions: I’m busy adding features and fixing issues instead.
DxO if you’re listening, I’m very close to hard refunding Nik 2 and the PhotoLab Elite just to protest this kind of in-app advertising.
This is not supposed to be a DxO compassion club but a group of passionate photographers who use DxO tools to create better work. Seeing you, Sigi and Pascal circle the wagons and mock those of who actually care about our tools and work environment with the help of John Worsham is highly unappealing. Brown-nosing better behooves geeky losers in high school not grown-up photographers.
In-app adverts which can’t be turned off is a bridge too far. If I’m pushed to hard refund, I will never buy a second seat for anyone, will never recommend the software to anyone and will not hesitate to share my opinion about how DxO treats their customers: according to the four gentlemen above as chattel on whom to push in-app advertising. I didn’t spend €300 to look at in-app ads. And no one else did either.
I don’t think I’m mocking anyone, and I’m not an apologizer for DXO. If you read all my posts you will see that over time I have written a number of them that are highly critical of DXO. I just try to do it without getting angry or nasty as some people do.
As far as the Nik button is concerned they definitely should have implemented it differently. It definitely doesn’t belong where it is and it should greyed out or hidden when the Nik Collection is not owned by the user. But I do have some confusion over the amount of anger and hostility some have displayed because of this errant button which seems extreme… While that button doesn’t belong where they put it, it doesn’t bother me in the slightest.
Mark
Greyed out is not nearly good enough. Greyed out is a distraction and an eye sore.
Some of us are more design-centric and design sensitive than others. How anyone can work in Lightroom astonishes me. Every minute spent staring at that program is an excruciating episode of teargas level aesthetic pain.
Those of us who chose PhotoLab for its strict aesthetic and elegant minimalism are not here to subsidise its bastardisation at the hands of people with very limited commercial sense. The Nik v2 update couldn’t have been handled more poorly: overpriced while forcing PhotoLab users to acquire a second license (my thoughts have been clearly expressed elsewhere for new users the offer is fine, for those who owned only Nik v1 the offer is great).
What is clear to me at this point – even though I do occasionally use Nik – if there’s not a simple preference to remove the Nik buttons (as there are options to remove Facebook, Flickr and the rest of the social media noise from export), I will be hard refunding my Nik v2 upgrade along with the PhotoLab Elite upgrade I purchased at the same time for my second copy of PhotoLab Elite. I say hard-refunding as apparently DxO support tries to pretend that its 30 day money back guarantee doesn’t cover activated software. Another bottom-feeder strategy with which I couldn’t disagree more.
I’ll also start planning an exit strategy as I want nothing to do with a company who will push in-application advertisements on paid users and who is willing to compromise their paid users workflow for their own (minimal) commercial advantage.
We all should do what we feel is best. I understand your frustration and anger but do not share it. I will continue to use DXO products until I feel they no longer add enough value and I have a viable alternative.
Mark
You are very easily distracted, Alec, and have too fragile eyes…
Alec (@uncoy),
I have enjoyed your numerous posts and contributors to this forum and I believe that you have come to value PhotoLab as your raw developer.
I urge you to reconsider you current position on this issue and allow DxO time to implement a solution which you will find satisfactory.
Regards,
Joseph
Since DXO is now including PhotoLab Essential as part of the Nik Collection, and they want to make using the Nik Collection as straightforward as possible, I doubt they will be willing to change the display of the button anytime soon. The location of the feature rightly belongs in the Export To drop down menu rather than a separate visible button. However based on something he said earlier I believe Alex would also object to its presence in Export To if Nik is not installed,
Mark
FP and VP are completely integrated into DPL with their own palettes/buttons. There is no need for an extra button. Unless I have missunderstood your question
Regardless of your apologetics Mark, DxO either add a preference to remove the Nik button or they lose my business including an immediate refund of €100.
I’m finding PhotoLab 2.3.0 Build 38 horrifically slow (this time not with my large Canon 5DS R files but with Nikon Z6 24 MB files). Sony A7 III files seem considerably more responsive. There are endless spinning rainbows trying to switch images or flag images in the file browser. Looks like the slowness may be caused by having .on1 sidecars in the folder. Not sure why unrelated sidecars would paralyse PhotoLab but it appears they do. It appears mixing in jpeg with RAW also makes PhotoLab very slow and uncertain when switching images. Very finicky software.
My last post was not an apology to anyone for anything, and was in response to someone else’s post. I have said from the very beginning, in various threads, that the Nik export rightly belongs in the Export To drop down menu. DXO obviously decided to put the button where they did because they are selling PhotoLab and the Nik Collection together as a bundle. I’ve also suggested that it should be hidden, or at a minimum greyed out, when the Nik Collection is not installed. I have always felt that it was inappropriate for the button to be visible and active if the Nik Collection was not present. The major difference on this issue between us is that I find their approach inappropriate and you find it intolerable. Any argument we’ve had on this thread is related to the effort to roll out a change to the button’s behavior which is a different issue that I do not want to rehash once again.
I have also argued several times in other threads that DXO telling the public that the Nik collection now works with raw files is misleading at best and could easily be construed as deceptive advertising for not making it clear that any raw processing is only as a result of the inclusion of PhotoLab Essential, and that the original Nik apps still require tiff or jpeg files as input. I have had to explain this to a numerous people on other sites who were under the misapprehension that they could now use the Nik Collection to edit native raw files as a plugin to Lightroom, etc.
It additionally sounds like some of your frustration with DXO and PhotoLab is a result of continuing poor performance with your large raw files. My raw files from my 7D Mark II are much smaller, and average between 22 and 28mb. As a result I have no issues with performance, but I understand how annoying it must be for you. I also have lots of ON1 sidecars myself but they don’t seem to be having any obvious impact on PhotoLab’s performance. I presume that you are not running ON1 and PhotoLab at the same time and additionally are refraining from running other programs as much as possible when you are using PhotoLab.
Mark
Correct. I very rarely use On1 (it was just a peek at On1 to see if performance is any better). I found the orientation towards gaudy canned effects/recipes/looks awful. If PhotoLab does get replaced as my main RAW development tool, it definitely won’t be by On1. C1 performance continues to leave PhotoLab in the dust though, even on 24 MB files. Nik is slow technology as well, which is why I don’t use it much (I do like the results one can achieve). Time that DxO wakes up to the performance issues. Poor performance is probably why so few pros use PhotoLab.
I agree about ON1 and further find that it is dismally slow on my machine while PhotoLab is not. I have also had trial downloads of Capture One twice, for versions 11 and 12. I found the performance between Capture One and PhotoLab similar on my machine, but remember my raw files are probably around half the size of yours.
Mark
I don’t want to hijack this thread away from Nik but since you mentioned DXO performance I thought I would try a 5Ds raw file myself and see how it affected my performance. I was able to download a 67mb 5Ds raw file of a motorcycle and opened it in PhotoLab Elite. I am running PhotoLab on an approximately four year old Windows 10 machine with an I7-6700 processor at 3.40Ghz, and a long in the tooth nVidia GTX 745 card. Photolab is running from on an SSD drive but the raw files are on a standard hard drive, and I have 24gb of ram.
Based on your earlier experiences editing 5Ds raw files, discussed at length in other threads, I was very surprised to find that the performance editing a 5Ds 67mb raw image was very good and almost identical to editing my less than half the size 7D Mark II raw files. I noted occasionally at most a second or two difference. Where I noted a greater difference was in the exports to disk and Color Efex Pro.
Exporting the 5Ds raw file to a jpeg at 100% quality and 300ppi with no NR took 13 seconds, a little less than double the time for my 7D Mark II files. Exporting using the same parameters with PRIME noise reduction applied took 53 seconds, again, a bit less than double the time it takes for my 7D Mark II files.
Finally, after applying extensive edits I exported the 5Ds file, without PRIME, as a 16bit TIFF file to Color Efex Pro. It took exactly 27 seconds from the time I pushed the button until the file was ready to edit in Color Efex. Once editing it there I noticed a small but still very acceptable decrease in performance. I ended up with a 287mb TIFF file.
I thought you might be interested in my experience with this 5Ds file. The raw file was obtained from http://www.rawsamples.ch/index.php/en/canon.
Mark
I use a 5Ds and editing in windows isn’t too bad over my Sony a6000 or 7D2. With all you get used to the twirling disk, all process are a bit slow but not greatly more so for the 5DS. Using Prime is a bit of a killer, but you do something else.
Background processes do really need a boost, but the Mac program looks to be much worse than Windows. I was with Lightroom when they redid the program, much improved, Norton was forced to do the same some years ago (though creeping back again). Program publishers add new stuff over time, adding to rather than replaceing the internal code. Leads to slowdowns until they bite the bullet, as FoCal has just done and re wright the most of the program to get it back to working well/fast. PL is probably in need of this and probably due to the changes over time with the mac operating system that’s in even more need from the comments here on how slow it is.