Here’s my 1 cent. As soon as this was announced I saw this could be done exactly the same in PL4, indeed I’m the second post on dpreview. PL4 owners do not need to purchase PureRaw.
I have used DXO for 10 years, paying for every update at Elite level. However I regularly use ACR and Photoshop. I much prefer the Adobe tools for global and local adjustments to those in PL, also PS’s pixel level edits and layers are often part of my workflow. That’s my choice of course. Demosaicing, optical corrections, denoise and perspective correction (I still have Viewpoint 2.5) are done in PL4 and output as tiff or DNG. I use DNG less often because the files are huge, much bigger than the original RAWs.
But I can see the advantage of having just the part of PL4 that does what PureRaw does. We have already paid for those functions, with the exception of the before/after slider which is trivial. So, DXO, please give PL4 Elite owners the PureRaw front end for no charge, or a minimal charge. We as loyal DXO users have already paid for those functions, we are unlikely to buy PureRaw so it wouldn’t be lost business, and it would help consolidate your user base.
Either there are advantages which are significantly enough to make you buy PureRaw or you don’t need it.
Sure, if you are processing hundreds or thousands of images regularly in ACR then PureRaw may be something for you. But then you are likely a professional and would have no issue to pay for it.
On the other hand, if you process thousands of images regularly you probably don’t care about the differences between Adobe and DXO raw engines anyways since none of your customers would ever care about this level of detail.
Platypus - That’s what I’m doing, and is why I say “we already have those functions”. But there are advantages to the simple front end of PureRaw such as drag and drop, which can be done direct from a card or folder, without having to wait for PL to generate a catalogue for the folder which takes time.
Well, Calle, I’m not a professional, but to suggest that a professional’s customers don’t care about image quality is “interesting”. Some may not, but many do. It depends on what they are using images for - web vs large print for example.
The price of PureRaw is non-trivial for me. I don’t need or want to buy it. But I can see the point of the simplified interface in many situations. As we have already paid for these functions, it would be reasonable to make it available to PL4 Elite owners at zero or marginal cost. You may not agree. But it’s a reasonable proposal.
The RAW engine is sub par as discussed already, and can be addressed with PureRAW/PhotoLab preprocessing, but I found the interface to be obtuse as well. I wish I’d given it more of a go before getting too excited about a new tool.
I see this logic well from the DXO team. Unfortunately, the reality may be different.
Although the basic program code has already been written, assembling, testing, and maintaining new software takes time. It certainly took more than 1 month. If we assume that in the summer we will see the traditional facelift of the NIK collection, then there is no chance to see significant progress in PhotoLab 5.
As for the hypothetical PureRAW market, it is limited to enthusiasts. This software is unlikely to impress amateurs and professionals. Simply because it does not meet their requirements. The amateur market is moving fast towards smartphones, and professionals would not want to complicate their workflow.
Remember that some of us here are impressed by the possibilities of PhotoLab, which will be offered by PureRAW. Will DXO at some stage not cannibalize their sales of Photolab, especially if its painfully slow development continues?
I don’t understand the remarks made about the validity of DxO’s policy. As what DxO should put all its skills and efforts to improve a software which does not seem to give satisfaction and not to produce a new software.
Personally I will not use the new software because I find the results of DxOPL quite satisfactory and the improvements made during the different versions are a plus (a gift) that I appreciate. But I don’t see why I should judge the commercial policy of DxO.
We have several teams working on the distinct products so you don’t need to worry about PL5 being affected. In fact more and more DxO products rely on the same engine, so efforts done for one are likely to benefit to other products at no additional cost. Of course the user interface of each product remains an effort per product.
I am very limited in use of applications by choice.
Why use lots of applications if the gain is little when you learn the main apps to use as good as possible?
That said, pure raw is like standalone viewpoint and filmpack in my opinion.
A “handout” or teaser to people who don’t need/want DxOPL eltite in full aspect.
Of of dxo perspective i wouldn’t set pure raw’s deepprime on par with PL.
Very close but not exactly the same in outcome and experience.
Why? Lot of people who buy dxopl just for deepprime and opticmodule and export as soon as possible to there editor of choice are easier to persuade to buy pureraw then full package.
There loss is then that they don’t get the other tools and therefore don’t be tickled to change opinion about the full package.
So to have some extra motivation to buy the full package make the full package just a bit better, in exported denoising , in advanged settings, in export types (dng) and formats (crops/resizing).
I am not familiar with the ACR module standalone and build in in LR but i guess they do the same.
I suspect the buyers are only interested in batchlike fairly straightforward exporting from raw to tiff or dng.
If dxo wants to make a Photolab elite mobile they need to scap the library function and search functions.
Ingest, select, edit, export, forget. Only dopfiles. Maybe a copyright iptc tamplet so you can instant stamp your id on all images.
Build for low impact on tablets and laptops. No designated folders as in you need to copy first to hd ssd, just directly from sd and export to external drive.
You could easy make a setup choice so you can install as normal or mobile , because you have 3 installs.
I don’t understand your point. Do you expect different products to look exactly the same yet provide different features? And if you were thinking of a common base for the UI then customization per product, in theory… yes. In practice a lot is different between products so no so much to share.
Is anyone else getting a magenta color cast in the highlights when reducing highlights in their chosen RAW developer using PureRAW? I’ve tried Affintiy Photo and Darktable with my Olympus Raw files and my whites in the highlights turn a violet magenta color when turning down the slider.
I ran into a strange issue: Sometimes (not always) I see horizontal or vertical negative lines when rendering a DNG file produced by PureRAW with Capture One. When I turn off lens correction in PureRAW (only leaving DeepPRIME on), the problem seems to vanish. Strangely, the line isn’t visible in the preview in Capture One, but only in the rendered image. Turning off hardware acceleration removes it.
Screenshot (images rendered in CO with hardware acceleration turned on; left with, right without lens correction):
Dear dev´s. As a Lightroom + Topaz user: The dng files from tested trial are not that bad. A fast one-click optimisation prior the Lightroom / Photoshop workflow has some charme. BUT: The developed result don´t fit to my eyes imho nor to many others. Too individual are the needs. In my opinion the results are oversharpened and the denoising ist too strong.
In my opinion, it is absolutely necessary to have an option to regulate sharpness and denoising. Currently the results look like a cheap jpg out of cam.
I totally agree. It would be great to have the option to tune sharpening and denoising in the preferences (with the possibility to override these global settings individually). Also I would like to see the option to turn off distortion correction for some lenses without affecting the rest of the lens corrections. E.g. I own a fisheye lens which I normally do not want to be de-fished, but turning off distortion correction for this lens also turns off sharpening, CA correction and vignetting correction.
