Nonsense. BW from Silver Efex Pro are at another level than what comes out of PhotoLab without standing on your head and saying the rosary backwards. Silver Efex Pro works with the zone system created by Ansel Adams. PhotoLab is designed to work with colour images and colour tones and not the zone system.
You’ve admitted as much (more time, and “cutting corners”). PhotoLab is not a tool I would ever choose to process BW images. There are other programs which are much more intuitive for BW processing like Silver Efex Pro. I haven’t tested or sought the others as I’ve owned Silver Efex Pro since the Google days.
Only until you get to know how PL works with B&W renderings. Please make available a RAW image that you have converted using SFX and I will show you just how easy and how quick it is to do in PL.
Joanna, we’ve already had one round of this. Even my longtime forum foes conceded that your PhotoLab BW were inferior to my conversion of the same image from a tiny colour rendering with Silver Efex Pro.
Let it go.
If you would to improve your BW images, you would do well to use Silver Efex Pro and Ansel Adams’s zone system (built into Silver Efex Pro) for your future BW work.
Unfortunately, your “kludge” gave an over-sharpened, over-contast version that was far from the usual quality of my fine art prints.
I don’t need the zone system for processing because I didn’t use it to calculate the exposure. Anyway, with a digital sensor coping with 14+ stops range, there is no need to compress dynamic range in the same way as with limited range film.
Let’s put it this way, I exhibit my B&W prints and get lovely reviews from other expert photographers, so let’s agree to disagree about which app produces the best result because it all depends on the person using it.
that’s about right, process your picture the way you like for the result you want, we all have difference in taste and there’s always going to be someone saying… I would have done it another way!
Which I noted was a quick conversion done on a small version of the file. And I also noted, the conversion is a question of artistic taste. To my eyes, your BW images are desaturated colour images, not BW images. Whatever floats your boat, Joanna. Anyone who would like to compare the different styles can do so on the existing thread where there are plenty of examples of both styles.
I hope we can save the forum another round of petty snippiness over months. Let’s just drop the issue. You have one view of BW and I have another. And that’s okay.
This thread was about what I thought was unreasonable DxO trying to prise more money out of me, it has wandered somewhat.
No one confirmed or otherwise my belief that I do not need Pure Raw 3 as it is built into PhotoLab 6 Elite, as for having to pay for the upgrade to a product I paid for only 4 months ago, I have made my choice.
I am only an occasional photographer, but have paid out many £100’s over recent years for DxO product, so I will stop now and not upgrade again, ever. No more of my hard saved Pension will flow in the direction of DxO.
when you login in your dxo account, you can add and remove software as you wish to your cart. maybe you click the wrong Nik checkout and selected the one with pureraw, you can go in your cart and remove it. as for software pricing… every software are in the same club, new release in Spring and big sale before Xmas. nothing new here, do some online search and you’ll find you felt in that “not knowing” circle. sorry.
Sorry Wolfgang, it means “does PL6 Elite have Pure Raw 3 (features) built-in or not”. And thank you, you have answered my question, it does, so I do not need it as an add-on.
I have posted here before on the subject - I was charged for an upgrade a few weeks after I had purchased the then latest version - and DXO wouldn’t budge. Since then I have refused to upgrade Photolab or Niksoft, DXO have lost out on £x00’s and will continue to do so, for the sake of a few quid. I do not understand their thinking. I was however very tempted by Pure Raw, very impressed with it. I hesitated and then Adobe Lightroom produced their version, compares very (very) well with Pure Raw. Having done the math as the cousins say, my £9.99 per month for Photoshop (great new AI masking features) and Lightroom (and Bridge) with their included and often significant upgrades is more economical than keeping pace with DXO’s minor upgrades/major expense programme.
That’s a good way of putting it, I’ve been using PL for nearly a year now and love it but am a little disappointed in how long things end up mouldering in the backlog
I use a workflow where I use Acdsee to manage my images, and call Photolab and Nik Collection from Acdsee. Gives me lots of options. However, since Nik 5.2 some Nik apps (including Silver Efex) can no longer be seen by Acdsee. Nik 6 is the same, so have made the decision to not upgrade and no longer use Nik collection. I tried some B&W in Photolab today and got good results. In terms of “replacing” Silver efex, I was wondering whether Filmpack would help?
it’s a “must have” or you’ll be missing some adjustment. when you buy PL elite you’re missing a foot plus an arm, you need viewpoint and filmpack to access all adjustment within PhotoLab, or you need a sidekick software that does it for you =]
Agreed I have never liked the idea of having to convert to TIFF. In ACDSee I used Nik Collection in layers, like Photoshop, but that is not possible anymore if I “upgrade”. I am officially weaning myself off of Nik Collection, as I already own Filmpack but haven’t used it to its potential.
Stenis
(Sten-Åke Sändh (Sony, Win 11, PL 6, CO 16, PM Plus 6, XnView))
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Silver Efex Pro is a specialized tool for processing B&W. Optimized tools are there because they give better results faster - more effective. You say you can achieve almost the same results in PL with FP 6 and you might get a result you are happy with but that might also be a result of that we tend adapt our expectation too the tools we happen to have access to.
You can dig a big hole with a tea spoon too but it´s fare more effective with an excavator - and Silver Efex Pro is more effective I think than PL+FP 6. Often it takes just a click or two to select the preset of your choice. Even for PL users I´m pretty sure that Silver Efex Pro is the most used application of the NIK suite and it´s a good reason for that.
Each time when it comes to this topic, the same discussion starts again, which honestly is completely unnecessary. Everybody does as he / she likes, based on habits, knowledge … or just on personal preferences.
My goal is printing usually for myself, which means concerning the file size I produce ‘limited’ output. I’ve never relied on a raw-converter’s output only, but edited / tweaked the file for the intended purpose and kept the versions (or with ‘alternate’ layers) – and when optimized per print size (layout) and paper the digital counterpart for the print out.
With all that, the necessary conversion from RAW to TIFF doesn’t count for me as much as it might do for others, while a seamless integration of the Nik filters in PL would help at any time.