OK, thanks for explaining PPA acronym. We are not all from America 
It just asks for āmy 5 centsā comment 
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I upgraded to PhotoLab9, Nik Collection 8 and FilmPack8. I already had ViewPoint5. A bundle would have been nice, but the $45 Black Friday discount wasnāt insignificant. Itās worth it to me at this price point.
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I have mixed feelings about this. On one hand, I really like the software, and after testing and comparing it with other options on the market, I have to admit Iām very satisfied with the quality of the files it produces. On the other hand, I find their pricing policy and the deliberate limitation of features, split into separate paid modules, to be questionable and not entirely fair. Iām still undecided, but with some regret, Iāll probably skip updating this year, even though Iāve done so regularly since version 5 
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At this point I think itās disingenuous to say that PhotoLab is complete without purchasing FilmPack and ViewPoint too.
However Iād also say that the latest version of FilmPack (8) adds nothing essential to those not interested in film simulations, so can be safely skipped.
PhotoLab 9 changes a great many things beyond AI masks, some of them like the auto-brush work so much better than PL8 did. However I could happily go back to PL8 and not find myself so disadvantaged versus PL9, so thatās something else Iād probably skip if I hadnāt already got it by now.
In other words, if youāre fine as you are I see no reason to upgrade for the sake of it here.
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Wonāt upgrade this year.
I have almost no interest in the AI features, even if they worked correctly.
I donāt like the continued disregard of user requests that are still unsolved from previous years (like the incorrect viewer rendition under 55% zoom level).
The price offer is not interesting enough even with Black Friday, not enough to justify an upgrade from PL8 considering the above limitations.
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I take it you havenāt tried out PL9. It now has full screen rendering with denoising at all zoom levels
Unfortunately, upgrade pricing is only valid for two previous versions.
However, you might like to look at the PL+FP+VP bundle, where you get FP for only around ā¬10
I have tried it, and there still are inaccuracies at zoom levels below 55%, as I have proven in the dedicated thread. They simply have lowered the level from 75 to 55, but the inaccuracies and artifacts in tone and saturation persist in areas with fine detail.
Why they couldnāt simply remove that 75 (PL8) or 55% (PL9) threshold instead of simply lowering it, is impossible to understand.
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I suspect if they did that it would make PL almost grind to a halt on anything less than the sort of hardware that the vast majority of their customers canāt afford.
Nonsense. The rendering speed is the same below or above that threshold, I have tried: itās just an unexplicable choice of the developers. And anyway, it would be SO EASY to leave it as userās choice in the options.
And all the other competitors manage to do it with no performance hit, anyway. NO EXCUSE for this laziness.
Iām not sure how asking the programme to do more would result in no performance hit, my instinct says otherwise. Howeverā¦
This does continue to baffle me. Competing products are simply more responsive on the same hardware.
Try it. Clock the rendering speed above or below 55% on PL9, or above and below 75% on PL8. Itās the same, and both are acceptable.
And my PC is TEN years old (apart from the RTX 3070 installed 4 years ago), so not exactly a top performing machine. I absolutely have no issues with the speed of PL8, that must be said.
Itās PL9 that I find unacceptable, and I keep all the fancy preview rendering options off specifically to try and speed it up a little bit.
(And like you, my PC is ten years oldā¦ running a 1080Ti, Xeon 1231-v3 and 32GB DDR3 RAM).
I know my PC isnāt the latest and greatest, but that seems moot when competitor products run better on it today.
how long will the offers last? iām still thinking about buying photolab since it lacks some functions i use in lightroom like hdr merge, panorama stitch and most important of all, no gopro supportā¦
Looks like PhotoLab cannot replace Lightroom. PureRAW wonāt do either, because it handles the same (limited) set of RAW files as PhotoLab.
What features are you looking for in DxOās products?
Tired of subscription fees?
tired of subscriprion fees. also during the trial i found that i can edit faster and better with photolab. i also love deep prime for denoise and detail. i can stitch with other software, and i do hdr only occasionally. the most important āfeautureā missing is gopro raw support. only way i managed to make them work is to convert into dng and edit the exif as something else like an iphone. but thatās not ideal, and it is pretty cubersome to do.
i hoped to be able to replace lightroom, but i guess iāll need some other software to use with photolab if i go this route.
are no deals for upgrades? i just bought PL8 not long ago and cannot justify splashing the full upgrade price. some incentive may have swayed me but this just forces me to wait a year and then decide whether i stay or not.
Some improvements looked interesting so I waited for black Friday but it seems, for nothing. I will not thow 100 bucks at dxo on a yearly basis.
It is not as though they go out of their way to provide a decent service and communicate with (and listen to) clients via the forum.
I believe the upgrades are discounted, right? For example in the US from $119 to $99.
This is what comes up on my account. I wonder, in view of the PL 9 problems, whether I should do it or not.
The BF came early and was pretty much as predicted but they changed 50% deal from Film Pack to View Pointā¦and raised their prices. While I do appreciate DXO offering any discount, itās not much of an incentive to invest in a new product or upgrade. I was budgeting for this sale but I think Iām going to use their money for something else this year. Sorry DXOā¦weāll try again next year.
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