To date, I understood that DxO gave ‘current user’ discounts to people who own either the current or the previous version for all their products.
That policy still appears to apply to Photolab. As a PL5 user, my upgrade price to PL7 is considerably less than the launch offer price for a new user.
However, even though I am a user of FP 5, i.e. the previous not the current version of FP, my upgrade price to FP7 is the same as the launch offer price for a new user.
When I asked DxO about this they said:
Greetings,
Our upgrade pricing policy has changed and is now built to reward our customers that regularly upgrade their DxO software.
Given that, I can envisage that this policy change will apply to the rest of their products at some point in the future but be aware, that’s just me speculating.
The cynic in me says that translates as, “Since PL7 isn’t really complete without FP7, we won’t sell FP7 at a discount in order to make customers spend more.”
Like you, I am on PL5, plus Film Pack 6 and View Point 3.
Jumping on PL7 means I won’t be paying the full price when the eventual PL8 arrives next year (or PL9 after that, etc). Otherwise, I would be more than two versions back. Subscribing now keeps me in the upgrade loop, and there is incentive to do so.
But I’m wondering, and I haven’t yet found the answer, if upgrading now to PL7 means I also need to upgrade FP and VP. I was researching that when I found the link above answering your question.
You do not need to upgrade Viewpoint or FilmPack. You will just not be able to see any of the new features added to those programs from within PhotoLab.
As @mwsilvers has already said, you don’t need to upgrade FP or VP. However, from what I saw in Robin Whalley’s video about PL7 (I’ve yet to install the trial) you only get the full benefit of PL7’s new features if you also have FP7.
Well, it depends of the user. FilmPack and ViewPoint as standalone plug ins and apps can be useful in third party applications like Affinity Photo or Photoshop or Lightroom or C1 users who don’t need or use full PhotoLab or want to keep those tools available across different applications they use, including PhotoLab. If one buys PhotoLab Elite, one gets everything in one app, and for some that is all they need and don’t need the plug ins themselves. So in a way DXO is keeping it flexible to each user group, and while from user point of view it would be nice to have it all, not everyone needs all of it.
Also some people need DXO for RAW conversion and they do their adjustments in Photoshop for example, and can use maybe PureRAW for that. Others might want to use something that is not Adobe, so they might use Affinity Photo for retouching and PhotoLab for developing RAW files. And they don’t need FilmPack, because maybe they have another third party film simulation plug in, or they just don’t do those types of conversions. BorisFX Optics for example offers more for the plug in experience, than FilmPack. Other options are Dehancer, Imagenomic, BorisFX Optics as I’ve mentioned and few others.
Photoshop users get similar experience in perspective corrections as ViewPoint by using tools in CameraRAW, although ViewPoint is more advance and offers, more not everyone needs it. So really it depends on the users and their use cases, I think.
Its hard to please everyone. Even if you price it all as one package, someone will say, I only need few things, and I want a discount. And if you diversify, someone will say I want it all for lower price. So there is that.
technically speaking, PL isn’t complete without FP and VP.
without VP you can’t adjust symmetry which many other software already offer (Lr, Ps, C1 as example) and without FP you’re missing some adjustment like color adjustment that should be part of PL Elite anyway. excluding “film preset”.
I switched to PL6 Elite in July, and then purchased FilmPack6 and ViewPoint 4 (in August), followed by Nik Collection 6.3 a couple of weeks ago. I find the upgrade policy at DXO confusing. Well, perhaps not confusing, but a little disappointing. Given the proximity of my purchases to the new release, I would have expected to fall within some sort of “grace period” where I would be able to update/upgrade PL6 and FP6 to the latest versions for a lot less than they are offering me to do so.
I don’t want to give the impression that I feel “entitled” to freebies - I’m not. But the upgrade price is a little out of reach for me right now, especially after only a matter of weeks of using the “previous versions”.
I guess I’ve learned my lesson and I should have waited to purchase PL7 and FP7 instead of buying PL6 etc. at their “end of life” cycle. But I was under the impression that the new versions weren’t due until October/November, and I wanted to get on with some projects over the summer.
The other thing I find is that “loyalty” isn’t really rewarded at DXO. Despite buying PL6, FP6, VP4 and the Nik Collection, there are rarely any bundles or offers that make it interesting for users who are “all in” with DXO’s range of products.
I have to agree. When I started with OpticsPro 9 and 10, FP and VP were clearly not being updated every year and only added features that enhanced what OP and then PhotoLab already do. When VP became more of a separate product, I couldn’t make do without buying it, but was able to add it cheaply. FP5 added a few substantial features but didn’t add much to the long-term cost of ownership. Now DxO is releasing new versions of both every year, raising prices, and putting essential features like image flipping and luminosity masking into them instead of in PL. So now I think the cost of ownership year-to-year has to take into account the cost of upgrading FP and VP every year. That’s even more clear now that DxO is somewhat quietly limiting upgrade pricing to those who update every year instead of every two years.
It is part of PL 7. All the code for everything in FilmPack and Viewpoint is already in PhotoLab. The licenses just unhide it for use. The whole PhotoLab experience includes FilmPack and Viewpoint. It is divided up only to make PhotoLab more affordable to those with a tighter budget who are willing to do without the features in Viewpoint and FilmPack.
Technically speaking PL is complete. Complete in the Standard version and complete in the Elite version. You can unlock extra features by purchasing FP and or VP.
The same can be said of Affinity Publisher — it works seamlessly with files from Affinity Photo and Affinity Designer, but unless you purchase those additional apps, you cannot use those features. Is Publisher incomplete on its own? No.
There are people here who use independent file managers because they do not find PhotoLab’s native capability meets their needs. So surely even PL Standard is incomplete? Others (including me) use other tools for processes like panorama stitching, de-blurring, HDR processing and more. PhotoLab is therefore a bare minimum, no?
It’s all about perspective. If DxO simply left those features out of PhotoLab and made FP and VP completely standalone in their functions, you might argue differently.
