Thank you so much!
Awesome news regarding the iPhone 11 series. I am in as soon as the support is implemented. 
Hello,
I have a bad news concerning iPhones 11, we had to withdraw them from the release to come as quality of our processing was not good enough. Of course we will improve that to add the support as soon as possible.
Regards,
Marie
Well, that is a bummer. I doubt that I will ever see a DXO version that works with the most current iPhone generation. The iPhone 12 will be released in three months.
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Very disappointed. I use the iPhone 11 pro max and several different apps to shoot with. I shoot both dng and jpg. The dng’s show up in the film strip but not in the photo window. The jpg’s are fine. Would love to work on the dng’s in PL3 and Nik.
I have all the newest packages of DXO and ordered the new Nik 3 today. Have been using Colorefex since Nikon NX2. My main software has been On1 for the last 4 years but I have been trying DXO for about 1-1/2 years. I have gotten rid of all my dslr’s and am using the iPhone with Moment lenses for everything I shoot. Works really nice. I very much need DXO to support iPhone 11 and dng and heic files.
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Sure, as a super feature for Photolab 4 for only 99,00 Euro.
At this point I’d pay €99 to start working on photos I took with my iPhone 11 back in 2019 
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I have an XS from 2018
Hello, Marie,
is that really true? we are now waiting almost a year for iPhone 11 support! The new iPhones will come in 2 months. Can we display HEIC files? Can we edit HEIC files?
Will we wait that long again when the new iPhones are released? This is a pity, because I think PhotoLab is a good software, but due to the missing functionalities I did not use it anymore and probably will not be able to use it in the future.
All the best Wolfgang
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Any news on this?!
DxO doesn’t support the iPhones of the past 3 (!) years… the last iPhone to be supported is iPhone X. HEIC is still not supported neither. DxO PL 4 released today has absolutely no news about this. I don’t even know what else to say…
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If you use a 3rd party camera app that shoots dng raw you can’t use those files either. Very, very disappointing!!
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Right, DxO PL 4 released today has absolutely nothing.
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HEIC is not at all necessary (there is no extra information in there, no 16-bit file hidden) and software publisher licensing fees are very onerous. iOS RAW such is used by Moment Pro Camera or Halide is another matter. It should be supported no matter what.
One issue with processing RAW from iPhone 11 Pro is that Apple’s processing (which allows native HDR) is so much better in mixed lighting than anything which can done with the RAW file. I almost never shoot RAW any more on my iPhone 11 as the RAW files are mediocre and the Apple processed jpegs so much better. I believe this is the reason DxO stood down on iOS RAW: comparing their work to what Apple does internally within the phone would be unfavourable to DxO.
I disagree as there are occasional shots (non-HDR/wide dynamic range) where the iOS RAW file as processed by Photolab would give a much better result.
The iPhone 12 Pro cameras come with an entirely new Apple ProRAW format which should be accessible by developers like ProRES for video. It makes all Apple’s tricks accessible so you can turn them on or off while processing the RAW.
The iPhone 12 Pro models get another computational photography technique that Apple calls ProRaw. iPhones and Android phones have been able to shoot raw photos for years, an unprocessed alternative to JPEG that lets photographers decide how best to edit an image. Apple ProRaw blends Apple computational photography with a raw format so photographers will get the benefit of noise reduction and dynamic range with the flexibility of raw images.
I am not a big fan of HEIC (unlike HEIV) but I get why people want to see support since iPhone’s are very popular cameras and converting is an extra step and you end up with duplicates if you want to keep the HEIC files
I also think it would be hard for DxO too match the Apple processing since it is very advanced and integrates every sensor in the iPhone to get to the result. But I do believe that the noise reduction would be better since the iPhone’s is not fantastic.
But 99% of times I am totally happy with the iPhone results and I have absolutely no intention to do more work on those pictures… and with the iPhone 12 photography on iPhone is making another massive step in terms of quality on your phone.
Hi, I would have preferred to avoid to be too naive in what can concern iOS files support by DxO.
First time I encountered this problem was my iPhone X vs DxO experience, when DxO staff has rejected any support to this Phone, despite its popularity and a wide customers community. It was 3 years ago. You should be astonished, but nothing is changed since then. We hear DxO’s very unreliable promises to support iPhones in the nearest future or since the very next release, but time after time the answer is the same: no real support. Don’t waste your money for nothing if you plan to use all DxO PhotoLab functions on your iOS images from your brand-new iPhone or even of a previous generation one (DxO PL4 still doesn’t support my approximately old iPhone XS Max - what’s wrong?). No one will stand a chance.
May be am I wrong, DxO? I would be glad to be…
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I do not have an iPhone nor have a phone that supports RAW. BUT many do and it concerns me that this growing number of people is being driven away from PL and as such will reduce the user base. My phone produces in jpeg photos that in many circumstance my camera would struggle to get anything as good. In most occasions the cameras can do much better and the detail is vastly better, usually. But my wife is one of those who only uses her phone now. Next time she changes phone I expect the choice of phone will take this into account, but as such and if it produces RAW which she uses on here cameras (well did) what program will she use? With out PL coming into the reality of declining camera and massively increasing phone use for photography I fear it is doomed to face a declining user base as it cuts itself off from these changing market. Which is a threat to me and those still using cameras.
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Indeed the point is beyond HEIC support or not, it’s really about commitment (or the lack of) of DxO towards supporting iPhones (or more broadly smartphones). With the impressive progress on smartphone photo quality, I now not only take pictures with my DSLR, but also with my iPhone. Surely, the JPG processing of Apple is really good, but I would be happy to get them through DxO as well (for noise processing, for a more consistency with the end-results of my DSLR pictures, etc.).
We see iPhones of the past 3 years are not supported. We see HEIC is not supported. I haven’t heard about DxO thinking about supporting ProRAW as well.
I also read DxO has no plan on supporting Apple Silicon natively ; they will let DxO run through Rosetta. Considering the already quite laggish performance of DxO on an average Mac, I’m not really enthusiastic about what the feature holds for DxO macOS users.
DxO PL4 looks nice… but (now) long-time features that were promised by some DxO staff are still not there, and there’s no light on the horizon.
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ric_anto This is it exactly. The majority of my photography these days is done on an iPhone, for which DxO at present offers nothing but unfulfilled promises. I won’t be updating to PL4 but will instead shop around for other options. Do you have a reference on the Apple silicon comment? I plan on upgrading to an ARM-based Mac once they’re available.
Yes, I found it in this article (French only, sorry):
Interrogé sur une éventuelle adaptation à Apple Silicon, l’éditeur nous a répondu qu’il n’avait pour l’instant rien prévu de spécifique pour la nouvelle architecture du Mac. Il compte sur le fait que son logiciel tournera par le biais de Rosetta.
Let’s cover this again. ProRAW is a video format, not a stills format. Does not apply to Photolab. HEIC has potential on paper but Apple for now is only using HEIC to create smaller files not better:
- Converting your files with iMazing HEIC converter comes at no quality penalty.
- Shooting in JPEG comes at no quality penalty (does take about 50% more space. but offloading or deleting non-keeper images solves the space issue).
Finally HEIC licensing is extremely expensive for small commercial software houses. Apple is a member of the HEIC patent pool so enjoy preferable terms. There are upper limits on royalties which are documented at least $65 million/year. For Apple, Samsung, Adobe or Microsoft, sums like that are chump change well-spent to keep others out of the club. Patent licensing with caps a great barrier to keep smaller companies from poaching on what the big tech companies consider chasse gardée. To make sure the FOSS community buys in and supports these codecs, those developers get limited free licenses.
By asking Photolab to include HEIC, you are asking them to slit their own throats by funding the big companies with their profitability. Out of that €75 upgrade, €17 already goes in taxes. Another minimum of 0.60¢ would go in HEIC royalties. That’s one format. As more get added, format royalties could easily reach €5/copy for smaller publishers.
As end users we all benefit long-term from unencumbered formats. We all suffer from encumbered proprietary formats. Photolab’s stance on the issue is intellectually and ethically coherent. The workarounds are trivial in this case.
In terms of supporting Apple silicon, I’m sure Photolab is just waiting for the dust to settle on the new processor architecture and its coding tools. Rushing in, making a huge expense just to see Apple turn the tools and programming API upside down twice over the first three years would be imprudent. I expect the “Rosetta” version will run just fine.
I’m more concerned that the current version is not particularly well-optimised for Mac OS X. The GPU is only used in DeepPrime. Actually it looks like the GPU is used in Photolab 4 for adjusting images and performance is much smoother. It looks like Photolab has deployed the C1 system I recommended of creating proxy files and showing changes on them. Lag on preview is significantly lower on Fit to Screen previews than 1:1 previews (but those are better too).
So GPU acceleration and faster performance on Mac have arrived. Fantastic. Just a pity that Photolab made the unfortunate decision to exclude High Sierra OS (the last which can be run on MBP 2011, themselves the last 17 inch Mac laptops and the last with non-glare screens). HEIC support is really not an issue (and like you I own an iPhone 11 Pro Max). Export to jpeg and tweak in Photolab works quite well for me (sample panoramas).
DxO should be supporting Apple RAW formats though. Currently I use Iridient Developer on Apple RAW photo files. My tests show that Apple’s internal algorithms produce better results with no time spent 90% over careful RAW processing. I prefer to spend my darkroom time on real RAW files from my Nikon than trying to outfox Apple with mediocre smart phone RAW. The reason that Apple processing is so much better than third party cameraapp makers RAW is that Apple takes several photos and combines them in post. The third party cameras can only take a single photo at a time. It’s a race they are pre-destined to lose. Still - Photolab should allow us to try to process our iPhone (and Android) RAW files.
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