Stenis
(Sten-Åke Sändh (Sony, Win 11, PL 6, CO 16, PM Plus 6, XnView))
21
I once upgraded Filmpack just to get access to Fine Contrast since I saw it was my most indispensable tool when digitizing positive color film. It was the only tool that could clean the skies from the contamination Microcontrast and/or Clear View Plus invoked in most situations. Unlike Capture One Photolab´s sharpening tools are absolutely useless with images like that of some reason. This time it is the Luminosity Mask.
Also as a new user the pressure to buy Filmpack is even worse because then you won´t get either Fine Contrast or Luminous Mask and maybe some more features locked in there that we might not even know about.
I completely agree with a single, all inclusive, version of PhotoLab. I have been pushing for exactly that for years. I think PhotoLab should be only available and priced as a single product with all the Viewpoint and FilmPack features included, but without the standalone versions, at a reasonable extra cost for the additional functionality. The standalone versions of Viewpoint and FilmPack could be sold separately at a reduced cost for those who want them. It would simplify things and remove most of the confusion and frustration that exists when you have multiple components sold separately. I think everyone, including DxO, would benefit from a simpler pricing model.
I haven’t seen it referred to as a “hostage policy”, which made me smile but actually it is an appropriate description.
If you look on the DXO website you see the development timeline and they are all clearly totally separate products.
DXO’s marketing policy/strategy is unfortunately out of step with what is needed today. DXO-PL suffers in comparison to competitors when professionally reviewed as it lacks features because some vital features are only available when combined with other DXO products. This is not helpful for Photolab. If you spend any time on other forums you will see complaints on highlight recovery. Basically with competitor products you pull down on the highlight recovery slider and the clipping warnings turn off. This si not as easy with PL. If PL had the tonal contrast sliders from FP then people would be able to use the highlight tonal contrast slider and achieve the same effect. Now this highlight recovery difference is largely perceptual but perception matters and DXO shoot themselves in the foot by omitting the Tonal contrast sliders.
I have not seen any marketing from DXO that suggests that DXO consider them a “suite” of products that are supposed to represent the “real” product. If they did this then they would be considered uncompetitive on price versus the competition. PL+VP=FP = £427 which makes Capture One look like a bargain
I used to buy Adobe Photoshop back in the day, that was $600 for a pixel editor, hurts to even think about it Adobe give away Photoshop with Lightroom now because times have changed and pixel editors can’t charge that much, eg Affinity Photo - £68. Reality is that the market has changed and even Adobe has to change to meet where the market is.
Not offering there best raw editor (PL+FP=VP) in 2023 may result in a slow bleed off of customers as the competition are perceived as simply offering more for less.
Reality is that markets change over time and DXO are stuck with a marketing strategy that served them well in the past The key part is “in the past”. I hope they will wake up and smell the coffee soon.
If Filmpack and Viewpoint can’t stand on their own as products they shouldn’t be propped up by, using Steni’s phrase, a “Hostage policy”.
Product development costs for FP and VP could be drastically reduced by using Photolab’s UI simply pared back to give the required functionality. Both products work perfectly well within Photolab’s UI and this would also make it easy to add features to FP and VP by opening up Photolab features within the relevant products UI. Spreading development costs over 3 products reduces cost, provides a familiar UI and provides promotion of Photolab to users who are using FP and VP within competitors raw editors.
It’s 2023 and not 2016, DXO’s decision at the end of the day but, marketing 101 says, “once customers have switched to alternative products regaining them is very, very difficult”.
Quick question - if I were to buy the new “elite” version of PhotoLab 7, would all my “add-ons” work with it just as they do now with PhotoLab 6 - or would I need to re-order FilmPack and the other add-ons I already have installed?
Also, once I open PL7, will things appear pretty much the same as they do now with PL6, or will it mean a new learning curve?
Someplace I have PL3, 4, 5, and 6 - I’m obviously not a very fast learner, and just when I’m actually feeling comfortable with PL6, I’m not sure how (or if) I would benefit with PL7.
The only significant new feature in FilmPack 7 is the local adjustment Luminosity mask. I don’t believe Mike uses local adjustments very much. If I’m correct about that, it is unlikely he would miss it.
If anything, the biggest issue for him would be the learning curve for Local Adjustments which in PL 7 now reside in a separate palette and no longer uses the on-screen equalizer sliders. But as I’m not sure how often he uses local adjustments, even that may not be a major issue for him, and, in any case, the learning curve for this change is really not that difficult.
Well @mikemyers since you can download trial version of pl7, you could check it and be sure that it works ok before you pay.
Anyway, I believe all add ons would work properly.
The only major changes are in the local adjustment. There’s a new pallet it gives you more accurate slider control and more options such as colorwheel. BUT it will cost you with more mouse clicks and movement
When I dogitized my old negatives, I bought Topaz bundle. This one gave me the best noise/grain reduction on my scanned negatives. This “noise” is introduced by the flatbeb scanner Epson v700. Topaz gave me much better results compared to DXO (which excells with Raw but not with Tiff) of course I wasn’t aware of fine contrast effect since I don’t use Filmpack
Because I like this piece of software, I wish I’m wrong about DXO PL becoming less and less relevant, or in other words becoming more and more irrelevant. And yes, my key index is the number of YouTube reports and tutorials
Nevertheless, I’m glad to realize that there are many whom willing to pay for upgrades even though there’s insufficient improved features (to my humble opinion).
It gives us hope that DXO will not run into filing for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy Protection like back in 2018.
To this criterion I would also add the percentage of photolab usage by professional photographers (anyone who regularly visits professional photographer forums can easily realize what Adobe’s market share is and what DXO’s is). I too would love for DXO to offer more now so we don’t have to get a thank you letter like in 2019.
But I’ll be honest: I don’t believe that Photolab 8 will offer anything exciting. After 2 years with zero benefits for me, I am not optimistic.
I now have a very simple criterion when evaluating a new solution: do I get the job done faster with the “new” or slower… or no change. If the “new” solution doesn’t save me time, I don’t need it! Even one more click is a minus!
I asked a local professional photographer about Photolab. He doesn’t use it as his camera (I believe Phase one) isn’t supported and Photolab also struggles with very large files. More generally, he says Photolab doesn’t have session templates and not much in the way of cataloguing. And it doesn’t match the masking in Lightroom. He did have good things to say but these are the problems he sees.
Apple Photos is terrible for professionals but is used by a HUGE number of people. Professional versus ‘regular’ people is not a measure of relevance, except to those specific markets.
I would wager that Adobe has the professional market sown up today not because they provide everything that is perfect for professionals, but because they were the only game in town that was good enough two decades ago.
In IT circles, the term “best of breed” is thrown around about software like Oracle database. I coined the term “biggest of breed” which I think is more accurate. Inertia — “that’s how we’ve always done it.” — has a huge role to play in professionals’ use of software.
I think there is a big percentage of people that had no problem switching, as you can see for example with mirrorless, where so many professionals switched to Sony when neither Canon nor Nikon were having competitive offers anymore.
I think the problem is rather that Photolab is not a competitive offer for many professionals, for whom speed is important. Fundamental functions are lacking. I could not even show a picture to a client from within Photolab, as the image is not shown sharp and the with optical corrections at screen size. The display of photos in the explorer is too slow. I cannot properly work on a larger amount of images after a shooting, I have to split them up etc.
@zkarj I agree with you, but this is not the point.
I agree that nearly every feature in PL excels over its competitors.
But this is exactly their problem. If any feature in development doesn’t excels over the competitors, it’s not in the toolbox.
Don’t believe me? Watch the Q&A part of DXO release announcement with two DXO engineers, they were asked why there’s no Panorama or HDR features. The answer was, “we developed it but it doesn’t excels over 3rs party softwares so you can use the 3rd party software.”
I rest my case.
This is exactly what I mean.
The problem is not how good are the feature included in the toolbox.
The problem is the lack of some features in this toolbox.
Each one of us can name at least 2-3 basic features included in every raw editor which he would be happy to have them in PL.
This is what makes PL more and more irrelevant.
This is where I think DXO’s reasoning is not sound. New features don’t have to excel over the competitors, they just have to be competitive. Look at this the other way. Competitors noise reduction is not as good as DXO’s but it is now competitive eg Lightroom, ON1 Photo Raw etc. This reduces the “need” to consider switching raw editor or buying an extra plugin. Ask yourself how many Lightroom users will now buy Pure Raw?
Commercial reality is that DXO need to compete on features and I worry that the developers ego makes them simply avoid competing if they can’t be the best?
Why can’t Photolab pass of a series of images internally to NIK HDR to produce HDR, they have the code?
With panos there is plenty of code available to produce good results.
If you produce a lot of HDR or panos then you are likely to want to use dedicated software but for the odd HDR/pano you should be able to do this within Photolab. Capture One’s HDR and pano capabilities aren’t as good as Lightroom’s but they are competitive and excel over Photolab’s HDR/pano capabilities.
