I am currently within the 12 month period of my purchase of PL4 (first time I have purchased Photolab).
After the 12 month anniversary of my purchase, when I understand that future updates will not automatically be available, will body/lens profiles that I have not yet downloaded still be available, or or is a subscription to PL5 (when it is eventually released) required in order to continue to have access to those body/lens profiles?
Put another way, if I did not further upgrade PL4, in say 3 years’ time would body/lens profiles continue to be available to me through PL4?
There is a further sub-question: if the answer to the above question is yes, does it mean that only access to currently available lens profiles will be available going forward (i.e. profiles for bodies/lenses in existence now (or at the end of the 12 month period from purchase) or does it also include new body/lens combinations released in the future after the 12 month period from the date of purchased has expired (e.g., a camera or lens that is released in say 2023)? I suspect the answer is ‘no’ for bodies/lenses which will be released in the future, but would be grateful for clarification.
Your assumptions are correct on all counts, Antoine.
Yes. Any camera/lens profile currently supported by PL4 will always be available to you, without any further purchase.
Yes. If you were to buy a new camera and/or lens that’s not currently supported by PLv4 - then you would need to purchase the the next version of PL that supports that equipment … and so on.
This is not correct. DxO software isn’t sold this way. You can install updates to your existing software for as long as DxO provides them, but you can’t upgrade to the next major release for free if you bought the previous release within the past 12 months. For example, if you bought PhotoLab 3 in June 2020, and then wanted to upgrade to PhotoLab 4 which arrived in late October 2020, you’d be able to buy PhotoLab 4 or any of its successors whenever you want for a discounted price (the upgrade price). You can’t get PL4 for free unless you bought PhotoLab 3 within about 30 days of buying PhotoLab 4. See here:
Major updates to PhotoLab and the Nik Collection have been happening about every 12 months. This hasn’t always been the case, but it is reasonable to expect this pattern to continue. While it is likely that PhotoLab 4 will no longer be updated once its successor is released, it’s always possible that DxO will update PL4 again if there’s a serious reason to do so.
You will not lose access to any body/lens profiles that were made available for PL4. However, any new body/lens profiles released after PL4’s lifecycle ends will not be available in PL4. You would need to upgrade to get them.
They are not held back The cameras and lenses may not have been available for testing, or the testing was incomplete in the appropriate time frame before releasing a new version of PhotoLab. It takes time for DXO to acquire new equipment and to complete their testing. As an example, my latest acquisition is a Nikon Z fc which was announced in June and released in July. It will most likely not be included in any updates to PhotoLab 4 even if they have already acquired the body for testing. Since DXO is in the process of readying the next version of PhotoLab for an October release any new equipment like my Nikon will probably likely never be available for PhotoLab 4.