I never suggested that Topaz Denoise was better or worse than Dfine. Dfine was not part of the discussion. Not everyone owns the Nik Collection, however, based on my use of Topaz Denoise and very limited use of Dfine, I would tend to think that the Topaz tool is much better
Mark
I had a license for the Topaz products, but decided to uninstall them. In my opinion there is too much “obsession” with sharpness and noise, and I was guilty of this. I find that I now just “set and forget” DeepPrime and use it on all of my images. Sometimes there is a bit of noise left on high ISO images but I always find it acceptable. I have stopped trying to “rescue” any of my images that may be a bit out of focus. I simply make sure that my images are in focus now 
Makes my life a lot easier.
The purpose of sharpening a digital image is not to rescue stuff that’s out of focus, that’s a lost cause (cue fans of the various apps that claim to be able to do that to pile in and contradict me) but to counter the inevitable softness that arises in RAW processing. Many minds far superior to mine have written vast amounts on the subject but one of the most succinct pieces I’ve come across is this post:
Very informative link. So to clarify my workflow: I use DeepPrime at its default settings for the first sharpening pass (fixes digital camera softness, etc). Usually that is all I do but there are times when I do use the old Nik Collection sharpening tool to get a bit more “pop”, but that is not very often. It’s actually not bad for an old tool. As for output sharpening, I have never used it and haven’t really seen a need for it for my images for some reason. I guess sometimes a jpeg can be soft on Facebook but I really don’t care about that. My 8x12 prints look fine. I used to use Topaz Sharpen and Denoise to try to “rescue” images that were slightly out of focus, but as you mentioned, that is a lost cause.
I have compared DxO DeepPrime to Topaz Denoise AI on several of my images. The verdict is clear: DeepPrime has turned out to be vastly superior on every occasion. Topaz DeNoise generates artifacts, obliterates fine detail (you have to zoom to 300% or 400% to see these), colour fringing, and so on.
I find myself subjecting virtually every RAW file (even those taken at almost base ISO) to DeepPrime as they become far more robust for further processing without any real-world penalty.
I also like the DxO Lens Sharpness (ave to often back away from the default settings which are aggressive) but there is room for improvement here.
Can’t wait to see how DeepPrime evolves in Photolab 6.
No, Mark. Fine Contrast being hidden in an “optional” €129 has been a big issue on many occasions. It’s bait and switch and probably the number one complaint of users about DxO’s product separation.
No one and I mean no one would ever guess that to get the Fine Contrast slider one would have to buy Film Pack. As long as Fine Contrast is only in Film Pack, under European consumer law DxO should not be allowed to sell PhotoLab Elite without Film Pack.
The product (PhotoLab Elite) simply does not match its description. Film Pack is a forced additional purchase to get the promised functionality.
And leaving an open wound like this is exactly what the Gallic arrogance tastes like. Some of the DxO staff are too short-sighted to realise they are not increasing revenue with these tactics but are instead driving away users. Decreased satisfaction results in much lower levels of word of mouth promotion.
I do wonder how much the people who are concerned about the price of the whole suite have invested in their cameras, lenses, tripods, speed lights, and other accessories. I believe that for most of them the cost of the DxO suite may be a very small fraction of their overall investment.
With paragraphs like this, if you are not drawing a salary from DxO you should be.
Thank you @BHAYT Bryan for answering that silly argument in detail and thank you sharing for those gorgeous photos shot with modest equipment.
Alec,
My memory is far from perfect after having viewed over 6000 topics and read over 76,000 posts here since I joined in 2018. While this subject undoubtedly came up on multiple occasions over the years, my recollection is that it has only been in the last several months that the lack of the fine contrast slider become such a significant issue for some posters.
I’m not trying to suggest that anyone is overreacting or that their expectations are unreasonable, merely that it wasn’t such a major problem for most people in years past. Perhaps the increased interest is due to a change in the expectations of the current user base. Or, it might be because in the past there was a greater need to focus on other missing features which took precedence. If you find an large number of references complaining about the lack of the Fine contrast sliders over the years, I would be interested in being made aware of it. Of course, my history here starts with PL1. I have never been an OpticsPro user.
Mark
@uncoy thank you for your comments! The photos came from a day of granddaughter “sitting” over in Hastings while their Mum and Dad put the final touches to a piece for Channel Four News! My step counter showed over 12,000 steps that day, not bad for a 4 year old and a seven year old, and a (nearly) 75 and a 74 year old!
The granddaughters got their first funicular ride, I could lie and say that the attached photo was of that “train” but that is actually the East cliff funicular and we used the West cliff funicular, which mostly runs in a tunnel!?
Lunch and then a visit to the fairground but not on this ride!
I then left my wife child minding while I went off for all of 10 minutes to take some photos of fishing boats etc. at the Stade (at the base of the East cliff) (it made a change from plants, most of ours are fighting for their lives in the drought!) and returned to find the old trolley bus taking on passengers!
Sorry wandering off topic (again), I hope that DxO are not quite as “cynical” as you suggest, although …
I have given up testing for the time being and given that I haven’t coded since 2009, and the vast majority of my coding was in COBOL, I have now started coding again but in Python!
Initially I am developing a program to identify the situation that DxO appear to have decided to ignore with “Conflict Resolution”, i.e. where the user has updated keywords etc. in DxPL but these changes have not been written back to the image (embedded or sidecar). The current coding recognises the opposite situation and flags it with an ‘S’ icon i.e. DOP < Image metadata.
With the PL5.3.0 change in the “discovery” rule when AS(OFF) or whatever that option is now called (MS(OFF) would be a better acronym for me to use)
the PL5 DOP is now the “ruling force”, i.e. with the above option OFF then the metadata will be taken from the DOP NOT from the image but the product does not warn about (potential) synchronisation issues going that way (DOP > Image metadata) and I am not sure that there are any plans to complete the Conflict Resolution, i.e. I consider it unfinished!!?
Arguably, if no changes have been made to the image metadata externally, after the updates to the DOP (and database) were made, then the situation is no different between
and
but what if
In some ways the new scheme restores the status quo better than the pre-PL5.3.0 release but without a complete set of flags for DOP < Image and DOP > Image it becomes difficult to work out when to ‘Write to Image’ or ‘Read from Image’ or neither, the user is supposed to remember, according to one DxO response that I received, best of luck with that!!
I repeated a test I have done previously,
It could be argued that the current “ambivalence” is the safest course of action and the user is left to sort out the mess and any mistakes are theirs and nothing to do with DxPL but … I would like to be able to detect any such situation and “flag” it up!?
Effectively it is a < and > situation and one set of metadata or the other, either the database/DOP or image metadata will be lost. This would not be the case for keywords if there was an ‘Append keywords’ function with the ‘Read from Image’ or ‘Write to Image’ as there is with the ‘Paste metadata’.
However, it would only be the keywords that could benefit from this, ‘Rating’, and ‘Rotation’ and the IPTC data could not benefit from this and it would be either/or!
You would need to include a feature of the current export option to help with the other metadata fields as import and export options between DxPL and the image
All the elements are in DxPL, just not joined up for this purpose but alternative software doesn’t come close (I think) so no real challenge for DxO to change the product to compete @Musashi !?
