I intend to upgrade to PL7 elite on a Black Friday special, if there is one. I also am contemplating going back to Light room Classic and integrating PL as a plug in to Light room Classic, as many other photographers do. Since I currently run PL5 elite, going to PL7 elite is a worthwhile change. If there is no Black Friday special, then I will choose a different path. After all, I still have PL5 elite and Nik Collection, both very good pieces of software.
If you happen to be in the U.S., you’ll find a bundle of PhotoLab plus FilmPack for the price of PhotoLab. If Black Friday’s offers a discount for this bundle, I’d go for it. One essential benefit of DFP are the fine contrast sliders it adds to DPL.
Outside of the U.S., bundles and prices can differ substantially.
Same for me.
Seems, that the DxO-development strategy is marketing driven and not quality driven.
The bare question is, for how long a time this strategy will work.
Seems, that also the controllers don’t work very well.
Which developmnent today isn’t?
Pusing new feature and then fix them in post is pretty much where we all have ended up.
Even Adobe forced the users to a payed version upgrade to fix bugs they caused - and that was 20+ years ago.
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I think this is they way to go at some point:
Apple pauses work on iOS 18 and more to focus on bug fixes and quality, report says
Wonderful !!! A great example to follow
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might need more than a week as stated in the article, but hey if they have 10K or so programmers and they all manage to squash one bug or cleanup one thing in that week, its still progress and I applaud it!
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Just curious: What tells you that they don’t have routines or algorithms that compensate to a reasonable extent for sample variations? And what makes you so sure that manufacturers’ corrections are always perfect, never over- or undercompensate for optical faults, and are superior to DxO’s own calibrations? There are lens reviews galore, in particular of consumer-grade lenses, that would seem to suggest otherwise. (Some of those lenses, often from the big brands, rely so heavily on in-camera corrections that their makers conveniently grey out the option to go without them. When you open RAW files rendered by these optical gems, you notice how otherwise pretty mediocre lenses are pimped to some degree of adequacy by this trick, often incurring ridiculous levels of pixel loss or stretching, with results that, shall we say, fail to impress.)
I do agree that having the option to utilize the manufacturer’s corrections, in particular while DxO is working on its own calibrations, would be a cool feature and would also remove some of the incessant pressure from the calibration team, so that would be welcome.
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I guess, with “they” you mean DxO’s lab team? And what is and who defines “reasonable”?
Sample variations (at least in theory) can only be logged by a manufacturer - nobody else has an overview about the “real” tolerances of all of their products.
So, how could “they” develop an algorithm to cover those tolerances as I doubt any manufacturer would publish them? It simply a lack of source data of measure protocols. And while Sigma claims to make a 100% check of each lens leaving their factory, I don’t know that of other manufacturers… And, to add a bit spice, I had to try 3 copies of their 85/1.4 DG Art (not the new DN version, the older one for DLSRs) to find one sample of minimal back-focus for Nikon. The other two could only deliver AF accuracy by adding the microadjustment of body AND lens (adjusted by the USB-Dock). Meaning, already completely out of tolerance out of the box.
I had a couple of experiences which lead me to some doubts about manufacturing tolerances. And I don’t see DxO in a position to care for all of these various flaws.
I also don’t consider lens manufacturer’s profiles als necessarily superior to DxO’s. But what good is a perfect lens profile for, when it’s either unavailable or confuses the lens it’s made for with another?
We also need to think about: Some lens manufacturer update their profiles from time to time. New lens firmware or new lens correction data files (Nikon does this quite regularly). Especially when they made modifications to the lens design or the production. What makes you believe DxO is aware of that and retests the lens a.s.a.p.?
I also have no clue how much tolerances and production variables impact the quality of lenses as such. I just realize some lens manufacturers try to make physically the best lens, others rely more or less heavily on the “help of software”. It could quickly become a philosophical debate. Fact is, software “corrections” are a popular thing today. And I expect the manufacturer is very interested in make it’s lens shine. Also, the manufacturer (again: in theory) should know his lens better than anybody else - but that has the smell of “wishful thinking”.
Finally, I buy a lens from a manufacturer and I consider this company as reliable to deliver a very good combination of physical/optical/mechanical and software qualities (of the firmware/lens corrections bundle). Why do I need to pay a software company for efforts the lens manufacturer should have done? And why should I do so constantly, for lenses I never need nor can adapt to bodies in my possession?
In C1 I have the choice to use either their or the manufacturer’s profile. I don’t have scientific data which is better or worse,. sometimes it’s C1, other times the manufacturer. But I’m happy to not have to worry about missing DxO profiles. For every shot with straight lines close to the borders it’s better to have an “acceptable” profile instead of none.
The longer I think about… 
Lenses are undergoing wear and tear. So, that raises more questions:
How old are the lenses DxO can rent? What is their history in the rental circus? Badly treated? Properly maintenanced?
How old is your lens? You keep it clean, but how often do you have it inspected?
How do you use it? Always in a nice, cosy and friendly environment?
Measure two copies of one lens type. Give one of each to a photog who has to deliver 3.000 images in 6 weeks, various ones, various weather and carrying conditions.
After 6 weeks you measure the copies again. Results should be the same, right? 
Really?But the lens profile remains the same? Hmmm…
Hmmm. Lens profiles are rather wasted on me. None of my manual focus lenses have one in the ready-made DxO universe. In the days of film, did we ever have a lens profile? No, we didn’t. Did we make characterful photographs? Yes, we did! So let’s forget about technical perfectionism, and forge ahead with heart!
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Lots of valid questions and concerns, some of them based on empirical or at least informal observation, some of them pretty philosophical too. But something DxO must be doing right, quite a few things actually, because I have never encountered a RAW converter with such intuitive and yet in-control editing experience, and perhaps most importantly, such consistently satisfying results.
When profiles are applied, be it C1’s own or the manufacturer’s, do your edits look significantly better in C1 than they do in PL? Do they at least look as good?
Again, as I stated above, I would love to be able to choose between DxO and manufacturers’ profiles.
To my eyes, yes. Especially images of lenses with a manufacturer- but no proper DxO profile did benefit a lot.
Then you must have used a different DxO than I 
Of course we had lens profiles! You just didn’t know about. Look, your camera lens has a profile wether it is publicly available as software or not - but every lens has one - you really don’t think of it as an invention of digital photography?
At best, the enlarger lens had a profile which just was the counterpart of the camera lens. Or, in the early days of film, camera lenses were used to enlarge images. And if you photograph a straight line, which looks like a curve on the negative and you use the very same lens you will get what? No, not a double curve - just the straight line as it was!
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Well, somehow DxO seems to work unaccountable wonders on my Pentax DNGs.
I take it your experiences are based on Nikon and Lumix/Sigma? Just noticed you are on SmugMug (like me), a hosting site that emphasizes display quality.
Yes, most of the experiences are with the brands you recognized, but my very fist steps with DSLRs were Pentax K-m and K-x and a 17-50 Tamron. I don’t know which AF problem were occuring because of my lack of skill or because the lens/body combination did lack. Pentax and Sigma lenses were producing less out-of-focus results, so maybe the Tamron was ay lemron.
What I learnt with DSLRs: It’s good to be able to do adjustments of AF in body and in lens (the latter was a reason to prefer Sigma over Nikon, and the usually better optical quality), but also after as-best-as-possible (and time-consuming) adjustment sessions one still needs to know there goodies and the poisons for AF modules.
Also, the combination of Sigma fp-L and DxO PL doesn’t work well for me, I like C1’s results better. So, I’m not surprised the other way is also in the cards – a specific RAW converter delivers better or best results with a certain camera/sensor brand of a certain generation. Back in film-days there were also developer and paper brands which worked best for my needs, except fiddling around with different recipes, temperature, moving patterns and eventually pre-exposing of the film makes micro adjustment sessions look like a children’s birthday.
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What about the Beta-testers???
@JoJu
Can we blame just Sigma for the AF-focusing problems of DSLR-cameras? Many Canon users have found that the very same Sigma Canon-mount lenses that had severe focusing problems with DSLR-cameras worked perfectly fine even on Sony mirrorless bodies with adapters. That goes even for original Canon EF-lenses. Remember a DSLR has three paths of light beams to keep in sync. A mirrorless has only one.
Then I haven´t even talked about lens profiles in converters. Mostly it has been wrong long before these images are opened in a converter.
DSLR-cameras were focusing problems “by design”. That´s why I never liked the DSLR-design and its notorious focusing problems. it was first with NEX 7 the first advanced E-mount body I owned that photography got fun again for me.
Who did blame Sigma or wants to blame them? I don’t understand the point of this part of your post.
After this sentence I assume you want to say “we can’t blame a single manufacturer for the systematic downsides of indirectly estimating focusing systems”?
And as for the “number of light paths” I count only two, but even if it were 20: One is enough. The slapping mirror was an improvement against exchanging film cassette to matte screen for each single image, also the pentaprism solved the problem of side changed “image on matte screen”. As were steamboats to the downsides of sailing clippers. But improvements only last as long as there’s no better way. 