Une mise à jour et un marketing discutables

Bonjour,

J’étais titulaire d’une licence Nik Software (donc payée) quand Google a rendu le produit gratuit. Quand DxO l’a repris, j’ai acheté la licence car j’ai compris (naïvement ?) qu’il s’agissait d’une sorte de pré-commande de la future version 2 supposée être améliorée et mieux intégrée dans DPL. Il s’agissait donc de supporter ce développement et je ne suis pas le seul à avoir compris dans ce sens cette demande de cotisation pour un apport fonctionnel qui était à l’époque très proche de zéro.

Quelques mois plus tard on me demande 60 euros supplémentaires pour une évolution dont le moins que l’on puisse dire est qu’elle n’est pas du tout spectaculaire (understatement). Pour attirer le chaland, les annonces donnent l’information suivante :

Apply U Point local adjustements on RAW
With Nik Collection 2 you can now make local adjustments directly on high-quality RAW files before converting your images to JPEG.

Ce qui, comme chacun le sait, est une impossibilité technique évidente, les plugins Nik ne pouvant pas travailler sur du RAW. Il y a là soit de la mauvaise foi, soit une erreur technique grossière. De plus, les 60 euros en question seraient justifiés par l’inclusion dans cette mise à jour de la version DPL Essential, dont la plupart des utilisateurs courants n’ont pas besoin.

Avec le temps, DxO a acquis la réputation d’une société sérieuse, réactive, attentive aux besoins de ses clients et évitant les pratiques douteuses de certains de ses concurrents. La manière dont cette version 2 des plugins Nik a été mise sur le marché met en péril cette bonne réputation durement acquise. Je ne pense pas que DxO, dans sa situation actuelle sur le marché, puisse se permettre une perte de confiance à cause de telles erreurs.

Je dois avouer, toute honte bue, que lorsque j’ai vu l’annonce, je n’ai pas réfléchi et j’ai procédé au paiement de la mise à jour. Parce que j’avais confiance (et que j’étais pressé). Mon erreur. Je dispose maintenant d’une licence DPL Essential que je vais probablement offrir à quelqu’un. Mais je n’apprécie pas vraiment la manœuvre.

Je suis fidèle à DxO depuis le début de DxO Optics Pro et, en tant que prescripteur, j’ai toujours fait la promotion de ces produits. Aujourd’hui, je me sens vaguement floué. C’est très dommage, surtout au moment où des solutions alternatives aux produits Adobe émergent (le couple DPL+Affinity par exemple) et où leur monopole se fissure. Ce n’est vraiment pas le moment de commettre ce genre de bévue (on notera que je considère encore ceci comme une erreur et non comme un acte volontaire).

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Service, because I just did it for me :wink:

Hello,

I had a Nik Software license (so paid for) when Google made the product free. When DxO took it over, I bought the license because I understood (naively?) that it was a kind of pre-order of the future version 2 supposed to be improved and better integrated into DPL. It was therefore a question of supporting this development and I am not the only one to have understood in this sense this request for a contribution for a functional contribution which was at the time very close to zero.

A few months later I was asked for an additional 60 euros for an evolution that at the very least we can say is that it is not at all spectacular (understatement). To attract shoppers, the ads provide the following information:

Apply U Point local adjustments on RAW
With Nik Collection 2 you can now make local adjustments directly on high-quality RAW files before converting your images to JPEG.

Which, as everyone knows, is an obvious technical impossibility, as Nik plugins cannot work on RAW. This is either bad faith or a gross technical error. In addition, the 60 euros in question would be justified by the inclusion in this update of the DPL Essential version, which most current users do not need.

Over time, DxO has developed a reputation as a serious, responsive company that is attentive to the needs of its customers and avoids the questionable practices of some of its competitors. The way this version 2 of the Nik plugins was released on the market jeopardizes this hard-won good reputation. I do not think that DxO, in its current market situation, can afford a loss of confidence because of such errors.

I must admit, with all the shame, that when I saw the ad, I didn’t think about it and paid for the update. Because I trusted (and was in a hurry). My mistake. I now have a DPL Essential license that I will probably offer to someone. But I don’t really appreciate the manoeuvre.

I have been loyal to DxO since the beginning of DxO Optics Pro and, as a prescriber, I have always promoted these products. Today, I feel vaguely cheated. This is a great pity, especially at a time when alternatives to Adobe products are emerging (the DPL+Affinity pair for example) and their monopoly is cracking. This is really not the time to make this kind of mistake (note that I still consider this to be a mistake and not a voluntary act).

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator

1 Like

U-point local adjustments are possible within DPL on Raw files - just go to “local corrections”

That is true but U Point was originally used to make NIK adjustments and when you think of U Point you think of NIK adjustments (Vivenza etc).

Let’s move on, it is what it is and as consumers, we have the ultimate power lest DxO forget.

BTW
DxO don’t seem to be getting overwhelming reviews in the mags lately. The new competitors appear to be getting far better ratings.

Thanks. I could have written this post in english but it was targeted at the french team and I wanted it to be as accurate as possible.

By the way, in the past the forum had a french section (although DxO reps visited it rather rarely). Now, everyone is supposed to master the English language. Maybe DxO could remember that originally, their user base was mostly made of french users.

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Of course, I know that (I’m also an Optics Pro EA member :grin: ). But this has nothing to do with the problem I’m reporting. We are talking about the Nik Collection plugins, not about U-Points in general. If all features available in the Nik plugins could be accessed in DPL through local adjustments, using the Nik plugins would be pointless, isn’t it ?. Please re-read their statement :

With Nik Collection 2 you can now make local adjustments directly on high-quality RAW files before converting your images to JPEG.

which is plain wrong and misleading, I repeat. This should read :

Now that we have acquired the Nik Software technology, you can now make local adjustments using U-Points directly on high-quality RAW files…

which was obviously possible before the Nik Collection v2 was announced. So this (corrected) statement has nothing to do in the Nik Collection v2 “What’s new” announcement.

5 Likes

This was a marketing faux pas on DXO’s part. I wonder how many users of the Google version, with no intention of using PhotoLab, will purchase the Nik Collection 2 believing it can be Incorporated into a complete raw workflow with an application like Lightroom. They will painfully discover it’s no closer to a true raw workflow than it was before. They will be very disappointed and likely very angry. I can easily see users feeling deceived and asking for their money back. And, on top of that, many will then realize they can’t go back to their original Google version because they can’t locate their original install file, I see a lot of ill will coming DXO’s way.

Mark

2 Likes

I agree to move on, keeping two eyes wide open. Hopefully everybody learn from its mistakes.
I also thank @Pat91 for his serious and exact post.

True.
Is someone aware if there is an active french community somewhere else ?

If this is correct maybe DxO should take immediate action to correct the faux pas. Everybody like honesty and it will be easier to move on after.

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This is an international user group with not only French and English speakers, but German, and I assume native speakers of other languages as well. Perhaps DXO could incorporate a link to something like the DeepL translator so we’ll all be better able to interact with each other despite any language differences.

Il s’agit d’un groupe international d’utilisateurs avec non seulement des francophones et des anglophones, mais aussi des germanophones, et je suppose qu’il s’agit aussi de locuteurs natifs d’autres langues. Peut-être que DXO pourrait incorporer un lien vers quelque chose comme le traducteur DeepL afin que nous soyons tous mieux en mesure d’interagir les uns avec les autres malgré les différences linguistiques.

Traduit avec www.DeepL.com/Translator

Dies ist eine internationale Benutzergruppe, die nicht nur Französisch und Englisch, sondern auch Deutsch spricht, und ich nehme auch Muttersprachler anderer Sprachen an. Vielleicht könnte DXO eine Verknüpfung zu so etwas wie dem DeepL-Übersetzer integrieren, so dass wir alle trotz aller Sprachunterschiede besser miteinander interagieren können.

Mark

2 Likes