That’s what I have been doing willy-nilly for more than a decade. I use Bridge. The issue is that it doesn’t display the corrections I did in DPL. At the time I was working with Photoshop the nice thing is that I would find in Bridge my edits.
DPL’s DAM features improved a lot over the years but it’s still way behind the competition. I think it’s a marketing mistake to omit to offer a full fledge DAM feature in DPL. Most of the people who consider shifting from LR make this remark. I wouldn’t be surprised if DxO was missing sales because of that.
Bridge is an Adobe product so it’s not going to work with other manufacturers software, it’s part of the lockin. . You need a real DAM like IMATCH. I don’t think DXO are ever going to attempt this level of DAM.
I agree that Adobe has a powerful lockin with their in-house DAM. However, if you create xmp files in LR, they contain your keywords, that are the most important part of the DAM which will be imported into any new good DAM along with their images.
Existing edits were not an issue for me as if I revisit an old image my tastes/editing tools/experience has changed and I will edit the file differently this time.
Adobe is good software if you like the UI, I didn’t, it depends if you actually want to change software.
Have a good look at Affinity Studio. I used it for all layering editing and photo merges (blending, panorama, focus stacking, HDR). DXO PL and Affinity are very complementary. I am very happy with that setup.
Imatch’s commercial model is to have major releases annually at significant cost. Very similar to DXO. Major releases often include fixes for fundamental issues - this was for me the greatest motivation to buy every upgrade. I stopped when it got too expensive. I have been paying $12/month for Lightroom + Photoshop subscription for many years (used to be slightly cheaper).
The fact that DXO preferentially integrates with Lightroom and Photoshop might be a hint that putting the Adobe tools completely aside because it’s a subscription (not considering the price) is a choice that is not best for everyone.
E.g., Nik Collection works better in Photoshop than in DXO PhotoLab (masking, non-destructive editing, working on all aspects of RAW and creative parameters continuously, speed (filter vs. standalone app launch), access to other tools including other Photoshop features, plugins, etc.
Plus as you all know annual cost to keep up to date with DXO stack (including e.g. FilmPack if you want luminosity masks) is $400-500 per year (discount codes don’t work on upgrades). 4x the cost of Adobe.
It’s actually DxO locking out. The corrections done in PL are not rendered anywhere except an internal thumbnail cache. No other software is going to read that, unless from DxO.
Can you explain how you arrived at this total for annual updates?
I paid €120 for the last PL8 > PL9 update.
The FilmPack FP7 > FP8 update: €80.
The VP4 > VP5 update: €70.
That makes a total of €270. But since FP and VP are only updated every two years, alternating between them, it’s actually about €200 per year to stay up to date.
(Or perhaps the dollar has depreciated significantly against the euro.)
My numbers are based on what I (used to) buy: Price for upgrades as follows (in USD, plus state sales tax - not included as it is location dependent)). If DXO follows your recommendation to update ViewPoint and FilmPack only every two years, annual cost would be on average $85 lower.
It has been suggested that PureRAW + Nik is a complete solution. PhotoLab + ViewPoint + FilmPack is a complete solution.
I’m curious why you own PureRAW if you also own PhotoLab. Notwithstanding a few months of the year where PR may be slightly ahead on features, everything it can do is in PhotoLab.
and I pray for a long life with Autopano that is very good.
