I’m one of them, I moved from cheap 35mm cameras to Canon digital full frame. But nothing in between except rising family and working. I still have 5 bodies, multiple lenses including 400 and 500mm big white lenses. In early 70s started to use Sony a6000 along with the bird lenses, nearly 80 now and moving over to a 22 Ultra phone for much of the time as much more convenient than 2 cameras and lenses.
Go to my family, both sons used cameras; one did event photography for a time. Now neither of them have cameras, both use phones. The former event photography one uses RAW and processes it the other snaps. If he moves back to a camera latter will he switch programs away from the one he uses for his phone RAW now? If I learn, as I am having, to use Affinity for my DNGs will I begin to think is it worth having two workflows and remember how to use two different program (god it does become amazingly frustrating as you age to adapt to these things (I could program Access at work now what is it)). Its these realities DxO has to face there are lots of Affinity users processing phone RAWs, Apple and Android, I bet it even more using the dreaded Lightroom. There are NON in PL as they refuse to support them, the few younger ones who move to cameras most will largely stay with what they are using the and many older (found an amazing number of us in forums) former PL users driven away.
I am not optimistic about the future of PhotoLab. In recent months, the DXO team has been practically absent from this forum. The new equipment is supported with a huge delay (I waited half a year for RAW support for MAVIC 3, there is no RAW support for action cameras). Whether we like it or not, the photography market is changing and I increasingly feel that DXO does not have a realistic view of her.
Photolab is not attractive to professional photographers (who shoot for money full time), until developers figure out why, PhotoLab’s market share won’t increase. And with this market share, nothing will improve.
My advice is - stop the development of the companion products and start working intensively on PhotoLab 7 right now! You don’t have a resource for either PureRaw, ViewPoint, Filmpack, or NIK collection. Without photolab, these apps will have negligible market share, especially among young photographers who are primarily driven by the factor of how much more money can be made per unit of time.
The current logic - at the beginning of the year we release a small update to PureRAW, then to Nik, sometimes to ViewPoint and Filmpack, and in October the new version of PhotoLab will not work for much longer. Too much work for too small a team!
Although I generally agree with you @Joanna, I can already see the comments coming next year:
- Is this all? Where is feature XYZ that product ABC already has?
- I don’t see a point in upgrading as it has nothing new
Etc.
All those comments have been made after the release of PL6 as well and PL6 did incorporate new features such as DeepPrime XD and the new Retouch.
And a relatively small product (when it comes to userbase) such as Photolab can’t afford to not come up with new features as that would make them lose the competition. They should, however, prioritize new features based on what customers request, not on what the development teams think users want. In other words: look at the business value.
And to nitpick a bit from an Agile point of view: a backlog also contains the new features. Not only bug fixes and improvements 
It would achieve one more sale it hasn’t got this year. Might as well have a subscription plan if they’re going to ‘sell’ you a new version each year.
Have to agree. If they’re going to ‘sell’ a new version each year, they may as well make it subscription based.
No thanks. Nobody is twisting our arms to upgrade (every year). Still the big issue is that DxO doesn’t allow upgrade pricing beyond a single version. I.e. if we skipped PhotoLab 5, we better upgrade to PhotoLab 6, otherwise our licenses are dead.
Oh, and don’t forget that DxO is now kindly removing our legacy licenses for older versions and killing our legacy serial numbers when we upgrade. This means if we have to install an older version for any reason, it will be either impossible or incredibly painful.
Actually, the latest word is that we can skip one version. The advantage of the non-subscription model is that my copies of PL1 through to PL5 all still work fine.
You could read more carefully. What does “if we skipped PhotoLab 5, we better upgrade to PhotoLab 6, otherwise our licenses are dead” mean?
It means that if you own a license to PhotoLab 4 if you don’t upgrade it to 6 or it can no longer be upgraded. That is skipping one version (which now come annually so it’s not much of a reprieve, is it?).
The advantage of the non-subscription model is that my copies of PL1 through to PL5 all still work fine.
As far as I know we can’t reinstall the older versions if we change or sell hardware. In any case, we only have two installations per license, hence good luck maintaining multiple versions on your single license. At this point, DxO is practicing lawfare on its own most loyal clients.
It’s sad to think we are facing a hostile company, despite the best efforts of the DxO programming team to create an excellent photographic tool.
We currently get
- 3 activations with DPL6 Elite Edition
- 2 activations with DPL6 Essential Edition
If we’d buy new computers every 3-4-years, we could use one version of DPL Elite for about 10 years…
It’s perfectly possible to have a subscription model and let the last version active once the subscription is terminated. Perpetual licence on a subscription basis = best of both worlds. IMHO that would be a win-win situation.
Alec,
It appears that DxO believes a user is no longer a current customer if they fail to upgrade PhotoLab two years in a row. These days I have no idea what the current upgrade trend is for other software titles, both for post processing software and more generally. So much of the software I use like Quicken, backup software, antivirus software and Microsoft Office has moved to a subscription model. By the way, PhotoLab Elite allows for three installs. I have never been in a situation where I have wanted to install an older version of PhotoLab on a different computer after upgrading to a newer version so I don’t know if that is possible. However I suspect there is no reason you can’t reinstall an older version on a new computer if you have not upgraded and still have at least one of your three installs remaining.
Mark
The difference I see between a subscription model for updates and what we have now - annual opportunities to upgrade at a reduced cost (incentivized upgrading) - is illustrated in the difference between DxO and Topaz. With Topaz, I buy the software any time I want and get a year of free updates. If a new major release comes out in that time window, I can use it right away - and if my subscription ends while the current major release is still being supported, I am no longer able to update it for bug fixes and improvements. With DxO, I only have updates for a year if I buy the software when it’s released, but can get bug fixes and feature updates the whole time a major release is current and supported. I like the Topaz way for Topaz products, and wouldn’t mind having this for some of DxO’s software - but am not convinced this is the way to go with PhotoLab. After a while, one settles into the annual cycle that a company offers or one enters and leaves it as one wishes. And DxO still needs to make money, so I don’t think any changes to the product cycle will ultimately save us money. If there is any benefit to a change, I think DxO will need to realize it. For example, can new features be rolled out and debugged faster? Can interface redesigns and normalization of differences between Windows and Mac happen more quickly if PhotoLab is no longer on an annual major release cycle? But I suspect that isn’t the case.
It’s more than one year of bugfixes. PL 5 users still get updates although PL6 is already on sale.
Here’s a screenshot of all six versions of PhotoLab installed and running at the same time on my 2019 MacBook Pro running macOS Monterey. Just in case someone here has a question on an older version and to be able to compare what has stopped working since previous versions.
I have the same with Windows.
Since uninstallation does not change the number of activation, I keep the old versions.
It would be nice if PhotoLab had a deactivation feature so that it could be moved to a new computer without using up another of the three installations. Not too many software programs seen to have that feature.
One notable exception I know of is Sibelius, which is very expensive, professional music notation software intended for composing. It is a very useful feature which allowed me and my son, who is a professional musician, to deactivate it on one computer and reactivate on another.
I suspect most software companies want you to use up to the limited number of installations they provide forcing you to purchase a new license.
Mark
I have this on my Office 365 account, I can delete a PC that is no longer used and find one more installation.
Fast raw viewer does it this way
to transfer license from old computer to the new one if both are still up and running:
-
On old computer: Menu - Help - Registration data - Deactivate button
This will decrease total use count (recorder by our activation server) -
On the new one:
Menu - Help - Purchase/Activate
Copy-paste your license key into the License key field
Press Activate.
Use count is counted separately for old (version 1.x) and new (2.0) versions.
So, you can upgrade your license, install new version on two computers (new ones) and keep old version installed on ‘your old win notebook’
Also, 40%-upgrade discount is not limited to single copy, you may use your upgrade coupon to purchase multiple copies in single transaction (one ‘copy’ => 2 computers license)
Hope this helps,
Alex FastRawViewer team
Yes. It’s the same for me for my Microsoft subscription. I can also do something similar with my Norton 360 security software subscription which I can use on 10 devices including phones. My mention of Sibelius music notation software is an exception because it is not subscription software.
Mark
Of the software I’ve purchased, DxO sticks out in not having this feature. I can’t even think of another piece of software I’ve purchased where I’ve had to contact Support to move a license, and especially not have them question it as DxO is prone to do.
Capture One Pro has it (online as well), Exposure (as in X7), Macrium Reflect. Serif makes it a non-issue since they don’t care how many devices you use their software on.