I have VP-3, which I use in conjunction with PL-5. What, if any, advantages are there to VP-4? And what about if I upgrade to PL-6? Thanks.
If you wish to upgrade to both PL6 Elite and VP4, then you will gain the new Reshaper tool and mirror imaging your images both vertically and horizontally. Please be advised that VP4 is not compatible with PL5.
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As Mark said, you can’t use VP4 with PL5 - so if you want what VP4 offers as new or updated features you’ll need to upgrade PL5 to PL6 and VP3 to VP4.
Personally, I find the changes from VP3 to VP4 fairly limited. I can see an occasional use for flipping an image but I find the Reshaper tool, as it currently stands, of little use. This is because there’s no smoothing of the reshaping across the gap between selected points on the mesh and the unselected points, which results, in my view, in unrealistic transitions between the two areas (modified and unmodified) in the image. This area may see further improvement in future updates of VP4, but only time will tell.
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Upgraded from PL5 to PL6 today.
But not from VP3 to VP4, because I find the new features (flip and reshape) of VP4 adds too little for the price asked.
I’d rather use that amount to upgrade Affinity Photo to version 2. I can also flip and reshape in Affinity Photo much easier.
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The new features in VP4 are described here:
You only need PhotoLab 6 if you want to use ViewPoint 4 as a set of tools integrated in PhotoLab. You can still use VP4 without PhotoLab, but you’ll have to edit your RAW files first with PL5/VP3 and then save to TIFF or JPEG.
Whether or not it’s worthwhile is up to you. While I agree with Paul that ReShape isn’t the versatile tool it could be, I do find it useful for adjusting a large part of an image, a tiny part, or an edge that has moved far into the frame due to perspective correction/keystoning. Sometimes I can’t make it work for the image, but usually it’s alright. DxO has received a lot of feedback on how it could be better, so we’ll see what they do in the future.
Affinity is an interesting alternative, especially with Black Friday pricing.
I initially had the same question, but decided to upgrade to VP4 for two reasons. The main reason is the ReShape tool, which although it’s more fiddly/tedious to use than the warping tools in Photoshop, works on the RAW file (within PL6) rather than on a demosaiced and processed TIFF file as is the case when I pass a file from PL to Photoshop. The other reason is that VP3 only works on Intel Macs, whereas VP4 works on both Intel and Apple silicon, so I’d have to upgrade to VP4 at some point when I get a new Mac, so I figured I might as well upgrade now.
Upgraded from Nik 3 to Nik 5, and upgrade from Affinity v1 to Affinity v2. So currently using PL5 Elite, Nik 5, and Affinity v2. I do have Luminar v4 which I keep and an older version of dxo filmpack which I rarely use. My plan is to upgrade to DXO PL 7 Elite when is comes out next year. Maybe they will include View Point in PL 7 Elite 
The embedded Perspective functionality in PhotoLab, which previously required a license to Viewpoint, is now available to everyone in PhotoLab 6 Elite. I can’t speak to the future of the other main features in Viewpoint including Volume deformation, the new Flip feature, and the new Reshape tool. I agree that it would be nice If all of the embedded Viewpoint features in PhotoLab would be available in PhotoLab Elite without the need for a separate Viewpoint license.
For those of us who don’t use the standalone versions of Viewpoint or FilmPack, I would like to see an alternative version of PhotoLab with all the embedded features available without the need for additional licenses. Perhaps It could be called PhotoLab Ultimate and sell for more PhotoLab Elite, but less than also purchasing separate FilmPack and Viewpoint licenses. For those people requiring the standalone versions, DxO could still market PhotoLab Elite and continue to offer separate licenses for Viewpoint and FilmPack.
Mark
What?
Although I did upgrade from VP3 to VP4, my VP3 still works fine on my new iMac M1 running Ventura.
I’ve just downloaded and started up the Affinity Photo 2.0 30-day trial on Windows. Loaded a TIFF and tried the warp grid tool. It stopped working rather quickly and then AP crashed when I tried to close it to restart. I imagine it works much better on Mac. Another try went better, so I’ll keep playing with it. I hope it will be a good complement to DxO’s tools.
Strange as I have not had any issue with this on my Windows 11 system and I have used it quite a bit recently.
I have been using this tool quite frequently over the last few years to fix the horizon in my seascape stitched panoramas plus other stitching errors like correcting rainbows that were not quite semicircular.
ViewPoint 3 runs on M1 and M2 Macs using Rosetta. While that works for now, Apple will likely not support Rosetta at some point in future versions of macOS, like they did after the PowerPC to Intel transition. At some point in the next few years you can expect that VP3 won’t run on an Apple silicon Mac.
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You’re right about Rosetta being required for VP3; it runs seamlessly in the background, so I didn’t even think of it. Who knows how long Rosetta will be supported by Apple? We’ll have to wait and see. Any way, I have already upgraded to VP4 (for PL6), but will continue using PL5 (and VP3) for some time to come.
This is ridiculous: is this really marketed as a “feature”? No kidding… a giant leap for mankind 
After upgrading to VP4 - my conclusion is - little value for too much money ;-(
On top of it, I’ve serious issues to see a clear vision/strategy or even roadmap behind what DxO does/deliver with PL6 and VP4. PL with it’s core functions is a great product, but there are still many functions missing and it doesn’t look like that the voice of customers is really heard.
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I quite agree. Giving how easy it is to recompile apps for Apple Silicon, it looks like DxO is just counting on the fact that Apple will discontinue Rosetta to force people to upgrade, throwing in features that only very few people find useful in the process. I’m hav ing more and more issues with the money-grabbing attitude of DxO. Compared to what it costs to keep all the DxO stuff up-to-date, the Adobe subscription is a bargain!
I mainly (or used to) use the auto perspective feature for real estate photos. VP4 pretty much broke that for my use. Now I have to manually position verticals. With VP3, the auto function was amazing. Not su much anymore.