DxO is Bad as Adobe

DxO PhotoLab
21

Either they use the Deep Prime XD2 in PureRaw or Topaz Photo AI to improve their high ISO images if they care about general image quality.

It is true Adobe have improved Lightroom last years but so have both Topaz and DXO improved the image quality. I think most users of Caoture One like myself is aware enough that Capture Ones noise reduction ought to get a lift soon.

That is generally speaking. If I was a professional I would not care about delivering absolute top notch IQ really the most important for me then should be the productivity my converter could offer. Sorry to say Photolab is more suitable for enthusiast that have all time in the world processing their pictures.

I would deliver images that were “good enough” like the photographer that delivered pretty noisy “real estate broker pictures” when I sold my summer house a couple of years ago. That photographer even used a Fuji APS-C camera despite that is to unessessarily losing a stop compared to a full frame.

… but what I would care about as a professional should be to pick a converter that don’t prevent me from using my converter for 6 months because no one at DXO felt for fixing a profile for ny then new camera Sony A7 IV that I believe is used by quite a few pros. No professional would accept that.

I wouldn’t either pick Photolab as a professional in the cultural heritage world either since they rely heavily on a solid support for DNG and if that would be the case there is no other choise today than Lightroom. For achiving the best productivity in general there is nothing today I think can compete with Capture One in general and especially wedding, product and studio photographers ought to look into C1 because there are several tools there which really are made especially for those professionals.

Even the Picture Library and metadata support in Photolab is not at all in par with either Capture One and Lightroom.

Why do you think Photolab rarely is associated with professional use despite the image quality it is capable of?

22

You are probably aware by now that you won’t be able to upgrade v5 to the new version and will have to pay new price.

I have some other info though to sweeten that bitter pill. If you upgrade, DxO withdraws your previous licenses. This is a huge issue for me, as I have some old laptops which I like to use on the road which only run older versions of PhotoLab (if the photos are important enough I can reprocess them back at home base but I don’t usually fill the need). I had an awful experience with DxO support where Riley attempted to deny me a FilmPack authorisation despite having purchased three separate versions.

Hence by buying occasionally and on Black Friday you’ll be able to keep your older licenses.

Some of the points above about Adobe & competitors:

DxO seems to be deliberating annoying and exploiting existing customers (signs of a cycle down, not enough new sales). But DxO hasn’t tried to force us on a subscription plan or to put our images on their cloud or to steal the intellectual rights to our images. So, no DxO is not as bad as Adobe.

C1. CaptureOne has been all over the place with licensing (cheap renewals, to forced subscription). C1 is owned by a VC company now which will do whatever it takes to squeeze more out of their investment. But C1 is not stealing customers’ images, seems to pump out a fair amount of innovation in terms of library management, mobile image processing and masking, enough to make them second behind giant Adobe in the RAW development field. So C1 is a bit worse than DxO in terms of fair to the customer, but far less bad than Adobe.

Topaz is not really competitive software for the artist. Topaz might work for the scientist or geek. It’s clunky, slow and has no flow. Topaz does treat its customers very fairly with reasonable prices and no forced upgrades.

The floor has been set very low for DxO and they seem to take full advantage of how poor the alternatives are. I remember a different more cheerful DxO when I signed up, which wasn’t nickel and dimeing us, or trying to obsolete their software ASAP. To the point, I used to advocate for PhotoLab everywhere for a couple of years. PhotoLab remains an amazing creative tool.

Hopefully DxO will find its soul again soon.

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23

@uncoy Agree with a lot of your points here, but I’ve had a really good experience with C1 being fair to customers. Just yesterday, I had an issue with my Ricoh Griii files not working with my version of Capture one (purchased > 1 year ago). They acknowledged the issue had been fixed in the newer release of the software (not covered by my license), and gave me an upgraded perpetual license to the newer version (which came with AI masking and many other features I didn’t have but wanted) - without me even asking. This took about 5 minutes of my time, 2 emails, and the whole thing was resolved in <1 day from me submitting a support ticket. Hard to imagine DxO customer support offering anything like this experience.

Other than Lightroom, C1 offers the most “complete” all in one solution when you factor in the DAM. I previously used Photolab + Photo Mechanic, but with Photo Mechanic going to a very expensive subscription, C1 became even more appealing. C1 still rolls out new features at an acceptable pace as you pointed out as well.

Factoring in the above, plus the lack of mobile support and meaningful progress from PL7 → PL8… after a year of bouncing back and forth I’ll probably be moving my business to Capture One, and using PL only for specific situations where superior noise reduction is needed.

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24

… but Alec, who’s images are DXO traning their Deep Prime XD with?

There is a video where Tony And Chelsea Northrup seems to be very upset with Adobe using their cloud users pictures for training their AI-tools.

Which pictures are DXO using?

Personally I think it will be hard for me as a user of Deep Prime XD to complain really and I think the same goes for Adobe’s users using their AI-driven tools.

25

for (de)generative AI -or- for NR ? why’d anybody be upset if their images are used for NR training ? sweet pair T&C share their poorly sensor saturated raw images with Adobe ?

26

Because some people are seeing their images on Adobe’s stock image site. It’s called stealing.

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27

Yes, I am aware of the DXO update policy. And it’s a good thing that last year my decision to stay on version 5 was with the realization of the consequences. I also want to keep my PL5 license because I have a 4 core laptop. However, my question is, will I must create a new account in the market, because in my existing account it does not give me the “buy” option. It allows me to update, at the cost of a new license… which I would not do because I want to keep my license for PL 5. I am aware of the fact that updating loses the lifetime right of the previous license.

If there’s one thing that makes me feel cheated, it’s the sneaky filmpack trick. Clearly, neither fine contrast nor luminance mask has anything to do with the film look. In the end, I’m more and more in favor of having just one all-in-one software. That way it will be fair to the most loyal customers.

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28

Good question, but not ours, as our photos don’t leave our computers to go to DxO servers.

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29

Then you don’t really “own” the software, do you? This is just one more reason why I feel DxO is no better than Adobe. Both have their hands in your pockets constantly! There are so many hands in my pockets I hardly walk.

30

I had a similar idea.

31

Maybe it would be interesting to ask this to DxO support :
How could one buy a second licence since there is no option on the account ?

Would be interesting to hear how they deal with this question.

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32

Given the current situation with the rights of non-binary people, DxO clearly violates their right to have different licenses for different egos…

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33

Who’s asking for different licenses?

34

I just wrote to them. The contact form is not the best, hopefully it leads to the right employee.
I will write when I get an answer.

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35

I’m just pointing at a contradiction where we often like or even love AI-driven smart and very productive tools and often seem to neglect the conditons that comes with them.

Many of us appreciates the low prices in some tourist countries too as long as we don’t need to see the conditions people there have to work under.

Sure some might make a difference between AI-driven tools in say Capture One or Lightroom and generative AI in Microsoft Copilot or Chat GPT and I don’t teally understand that. For me it is the same thing no matter of how these immaterial rights are violated.

For the first I just don’t understand how any photographer should be able to see what element in any AI-generated picture of all that had been borrowed illegally by say Microsoft and used in such a way that you could use it as a proof in a dispute. Isn’t the normal case that we can’t prove who and what they have stolen?

… and for the second: What is the odds for a simple poor proletarised photographer will bring Microsoft or Adobe to trial?

All this around immaterial rights I think isn’t really working because ordinary people will not even dare to stand up for them and that goes for smaller companies too.

… and what are we in the west really doing when we are facing big countries like China and Russia not respect these rules despite everybody else is supposed to live by these rules?

36

short answer is no.
plus reminder that dxo support only latest 3 version of Apple OS, so if you are to update your OS every year or get a new computer, you’ll end up having to buy a newer version because the old one doesn’t work. for example VP4 work with M2 chips while the version before doesn’t (i know i got VP4 FP7 for that reason). i can’t speak for windows users.

37

don’t understand what ? difference between (A) ML based demosaick, NR, sharpening, masking, cloning, healing etc on your own content vs (B) generating content (“creative” part of it) on demand following your voice/text command input of what you want to “create” where you often do not need to even take a shot ? the border lies when you ask a tool to replicate a color rendering / mood / post-processing style similar to /name a known photographer/ … that is where you go beyond… before that it is OK and no Tony or Chelsea have any qualms with that ( and happily use w/o asking where that training data coming from )

38

No the “crime” is committed when these companies use the data that they do not own, regardless of what they are doing with it after they have “stolen” it.

If we dislike or hate AI has nothing at all really to do with this. In this case it just may blur our vision and analyzes.

… and if in this case big companies are doing it is probably just normal, because they know they can, because nobody is really up to challenging them, are we?

I don’t really see any difference between doing it with text or pictures and Facebook and Google is taking advantage of your texts in their environments if you are part of them. That is an important reason why I never have used Facebook.

I regard Facebook as a far bigger threat to my integrity when they build their sociograms based on their traffic data that got very handy in the hands of all repressive authorities who knew how to get access to it and use it. Even a company like Facebook has to adapt to the legal conditions in the countries they present in. That is why they have to “leak” this info - they do it even to the police in my country and not just to repressive states.

39

OS support is very much an Apple thing which Apple users accept as part of the Apple eco system.
Windows backward compatibility is one of its strengths and I can still run software from the early 2000’s on Win 11.

40

@jayglad Hi,
I fully agree! That’s why I stick to Photolab 6 and purchased a on1 licence last winter for 50% the 2024.5 version 49 euro and pre paid for “The Summer Deal” for 2025 42 euro without VAT.
It contains all the extra’s you expect from the so called “Photolab Elite” version without having to pay for Film Pack and View Point to make it fully functional.
David

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