I think PhotoLab 6 is exceptional. I greatly prefer it to Adobe. It used to be that I always needed a RAW editor + Photoshop, but with PhotoLab I can output finished, ready JPEGs directly… although for now, I need to resize externally, with a Photoshop batch. And I can give you a long list of reasons why I love PhotoLab.
Yes, I had a frustrating experience, but I’m still very keep on the product’s quality and performance and ease of use. I have no intention of switching and I will happily pay for the upgrade if it fixes the bug I’ve reported.
@MarshallG You reacted as I have seen some others do in posts on the forum when the user feels that DxO Support is either not listening and/or doesn’t understand and you have already apologised.
I have never seriously played with Adobe products and so DxPL is my product of choice but to see things left unattended (apparently totally ignored in some cases) does not help.
With respect to the problem which started this whole topic, has anyone tested this on PL7 and reported back?
@APS-C The topic heading is somewhat “blunt” but the experience may well have “helped” induce that response.
You are not alone in having received good support from DxO but it sometimes seems a bit of lottery and may not simply be who you make contact with in DxO but also the nature of the problem you have encountered
Some are easier to understand than others and/or the problem may have been reported by other users already so the support rep has a “head” start.
@OXiDant although @sgospodarenko was a useful presence in the forum I do wonder how much support DxO Support actually get from the software developers or whether they are sandwiched between the users (us) and the Software developers!
@John7 I am reducing the amount of posting I do to as near to zero as possible. The testing is time consuming and the reporting even more so!
I wrote the lines above before your post was published and it appears we are in agreement with respect to the doubts we have about what support are told and when/if they are told at all!
I consider the lack of published fault data lamentable but have resigned myself to the status quo, the only thing that improves the headache is to stop banging you head against a brick wall.
I am currently exploring amending DOPs to reverse the order of copies within the DOP (to help simplify the issue of “unwanted VCs”. A by-product of which will be a DOP backup facility (extended to optionally include the image, DOP and xmp sidecar files), i.e. so that I can revert easily after testing again and again and … but also so that I always have a backup in the event that I need to run the program for real!
Way more entertaining that the forum and a “time waster” when it is too wet outside to do gardening or cleaning or DIY!
I downloaded the PL7 trial version and duplicated the bug with it. So sadly, at least on Mac, no solution.
The reason this matters to me is that doing everything on one editor is a massive time-saver! PhotoLab lets me export my images several times… at full res, half res, quarter res, etc., with or without watermark.
As it stands now, I cannot Export resized images from PhotoLab if I also want the watermark. So either watermark in PL and resize externally (e.g., Photoshop), or resize in PL and watermark in Photoshop.
I’ll try creating a PNG watermark but I am very doubtful it will solve the problem… still, it’s worth the time to try.
And, it bears repeating: It was wrong of me to express my frustration the way I did. I feel bad about that and I’m sorry.
The fact that she was able to test and confirm or got an other result was often the first step for resolving the problem. and she called/ summond the DxO expert in for second opinion if needed. or for more explaination in detail of how it suppose to work.
Now we just swimming in the dark with a flashlight hopefully shine the beam on the right path/way.
The retreat of all communication to nealry none could be a respons to some overflood of requests and questions and remarks and complains so they closed all short cuts and only respond to the frontdesk door. (support of DxO from the website)
good or bad it’s a fact that many things has bin changed around this forum and in this forum.
It isn’t a matter of the topic being blunt. It is inaccurate and unfair based upon what the OP posted. Similarly, you’re suggesting with no evidence (and contrary to all evidence I saw throughout the process) that there is some contributing factor that minimizes the competence and effort that went into the support DXO provided me. That’s also inaccurate and unfair.
The assistance they provided to me wasn’t of the nature of a one-shot lucky answer. It was the result of a team of knowledgeable and committed people working together to resolve a problem. That doesn’t happen when a company’s tech support is incompetent by culture or capability. I’ve had a couple other tickets, they were probably gimmes from their side and maybe one or two people got luck or there was an existing answer. But, providing existing answers is part of first-level support, if that was why they were resolved, that’s a job well done.
I understand people get frustrated by experiences with customer support. I do as well, even if I haven’t had a frustrating experience here. But the overarching characterization of DXO Support by the OP (and others) isn’t fair or accurate. And a lot of the complaints seem to be about the process of investigating issues.
First level support has to ask the obvious questions. If they don’t, it disrupts the entire support process either because there is a ghost issue that would have been resolved by the obvious steps and its incredibly time consuming trying to resolve a problem that isn’t there or because information is missing as the ticket moves further on. I have to fight the urge to try to rush and try to skip steps in the process by presenting what I think is the problem and what I think is relevant all the time dealing with support. Results are better when I succeed in fighting it.
I get the frustration. It’s annoying hearing for the 99th time, “Is the cable plugged in?” It’s embarrassing the 100th time when the cable isn’t plugged in. And it’s annoying again from the 101st time when it is plugged in until the next time it isn’t. But it is how things get done.
In my experience, good support asks me to run a diagnostic tool of their own making or a DXDiag or something similar to deal with the sort of thing OP reported. I can’t understand objecting to performing simple tasks when asked to provide the necessary information for the engineers to investigate a problem.
Diagnostic reports help often enough to be worth the time to ask for all the time up front… Getting reports up front facilitates smoother workflow. And reports that one person submits can be compared to reports from other people who are having the same or other problems. Similarities or differences in those reports can help explain why something is happening and how to resolve it for a single user and/or issue and/or for multiple users and/or issues. Information gathered in aggregate accumulates and builds solutions.
We all share the same support people. Personally, I want them to do the properly efficient thing and ask that people (including me) take the obvious steps like rebooting and submitting information up front when asked (even if I find it frustrating at times). It’s the most efficient use of the time of the support people and engineers we all share, which means more time spent doing work resolving problems and improving things for all of us.
Edit - removed a random ‘6’ that was in there for no reason.
While I don’t use watermarks in PL, I add descriptions, copyright notices and the like on custom “frames” in PS to then print the image.
Did some experiments …
To generate an “Image Watermark",I went to PS, opened a new file with transparent background and chose the Shelley Andante font. Its alternating thick and thin lines and curved shapes are well suited to reveal scaling artifacts.
I adjusted the font (size, spaces) and smoothed it (antialiasing) to then save the image as *.png file. Back in PL, I generated a preset to register everything and used it when exporting the whole pic (checked with export to 2048px as well to 6000px / longest side).
@APS-C It cannot be inaccurate if it is a description of what actually happened, the conclusion may well be “inaccurate” or overstated and then applied to an entire department but it is a personal conclusion drawn by the author, based upon an actual experience, and presented in frustration.
If there are a lot of complaints about the investigating process (!?) then surely that indicates possible issues with that process (at least that the communication of “what to expect” to the customer is missing, if nothing else!?).
But I am not convinced that there are “lots of complaints”, they do crop up from time to time and in a topic requesting help because DxO Support has failed to live up to its name, or at least the user feels that is the case.
Most users expect obvious questions to be asked but they also expect a reaction that seems to indicate an understanding of their problem, a progression in the conversation, and a possible change in direction of that conversation when the answers are given.
In this case the product is not in a state whereby the user cannot use it so actually uninstalling and re-installing are unlikely (but not totally impossible) to have a positive outcome!
But worse is the fact that such an action might actually destroy an opportunity to gather additional details about the fault, i.e. the “script” is missing a decision box that should have taken the first responder to the step of gathering whatever diagnostics the product automatically gathers from the user and/or establishing with the user if there is a possibility of running the test again with additional diagnostics in place!
But this step needs to be explained to the user because it requires their co-operation.
In spite of using every diagnostic tool I can lay my hands on when investigating DxPL I have never been “trained” nor seen details of the logging mechanisms and given their importance in situations like this I feel that there is a missed opportunity there.
I have used the mechanism on occasion under instructions from DxO support staff and having designed, built, tested and supported systems all of my 36 year IT career I am well aware of the importance of logging.
Programs I developed had the option of activating logging via the operator console for short periods of time (customers don’t like their systems being reduced to a crawl) and if all else failed I would request that it was activated for a given (short) period of time.
But in this case @MarshallG had identified a “problem”, found someone to confirm its existence, reported the exact way that it could be reproduced and expected that DxO could reproduce the problem on their own system(s) and I believe many customers feel that should be possible when they report a problem.
On my customer’s systems part or all of the code was unique and while my final customer had a Test bed that could be used to safely reproduce problems, most customers didn’t and if the operators phoned in the middle of the night then the test bed wasn’t going to be much use at that point anyway.
In this case DxO will have limited systems available to them, running the latest version (and future versions) most probably and even using VMs unlikely to be able to set up the test environment to reproduce the problem, hence, the need to make use of the users own system to gather diagnostics, in the first instance at least.
But this needs to be explained to the user and referring to it as a “crash reporting tool” in this case simply caused @MarshallG to doubt that DxO support were listening because his system hadn’t crashed!
Because it was not explained, is it the users responsibility to second guess why they are being asked to do something or the first responders responsibility to explain the “why as well as the what” they want you to do.
You know what my answer is going to be to that!
It is the only way but that needs to be explained not assumed.
There is a failure here and it is not @MarshallG that is at fault, his only “failing” was to be too blunt in the way that he introduced the topic and in identifying the support individual by name.
While it is not a common forum topic a number of problems I have investigated over the years have started because DxO support failed to help the customer and left them with a problem and potentially more confusion than they started with and with no explanation and no course of action.
The problem might be that the training of DxO staff is not adequate or the scripts are wrong or the training is wrong or the attitude to customers is wrong or the management is wrong and on a case by case (person by person) basis?
Some or any of these could lead to a variability in the experience of different users when contacting DxO support.
I took this to be a humorous response but are DxO actually using AI to handle support requests!? If the answer is yes then the model needs improvements!
However, as for this particular item from @Fabrice-B,
It is full of innuendo and the bit about “share assumptions and generalizations” so accurately describes the statement itself!
“Forums are a place where customers who care about a product and are dissatisfied with what the developer is doing with that product or not doing with that product or charging for that product or …” would be slightly more accurate but the implications of the original statement is that only “trouble makers” are using the forum!?
If this attitude pervades DxO Support then !!??
“The job would be great if it wasn’t for the customers!” was an expression used in my customer support training as an example of the wrong attitude to those who directly or indirectly paid our salary!
It doesn’t matter; I over-reacted and it was wrong for me to be so rude and I am truly sorry.
I have edited my remarks and changed this thread title, so anyone reading this now will probably be very confused.
Well i am often for:
“If the truth hurts it is not because of the messenger but because of the receiver because to change.”
To be blunt out of frustration because the normal communication didn’t work can be accepted IF indeed the former communications are “ignored and muffled.”
But rewriting the truth to make a point is something else then having an other point of view. (Remark, i didn’t say you or others did in this post.)
My point of view on this thread is DxO can learn from this.
Somehow the communication is or was muffled and distorted.
They need to rewind en review to see where the wrong path was taken and take that as experience improvement for future moments.
No learning means i pushed the “don’t care button” and will do this again.
So continue to write your point of view aslong as you keep there point of view also in your posts.
Asking you to reinstall the s/w and then collect and send them some logging information is a standard step. For experienced users who are confident they have found a bug and just want to report it it is, of course, frustrating. But it is a standard step. It probably helps them eliminate some simple cases. So - I would recommend just going with this. I had this experience, and once past these hoops found them pretty helpful.
This is a last resort and a lazy way of trying to fix issues and also usually means losing all your settings, unless the uninstaller leaves those behind! A lot of installers give you an option to fix a current install by installing over the existing install. This is a much better option if you have corrupt executables or other files.
It is best to find out what went wrong and fix that issue and also fix the app if it caused the issue in the first place, otherwise the developers run the risk of encountering the issue again! Ask any IT professional and they will give you the same answer.
@OXiDant Just as @MarshallG had a right to write what he originally did he also has a right to change that if he so chooses.
I believe the original post was a response to frustration and DxO should be mindful of what caused that frustration as you stated.
There are some incredibly talented people working for DxO and the workload at this time, having to support a number of products, including the release of PureRaw 4, while running the PhotoLab Beta test, must be considerable.
But does that excuse support that perhaps falls short of the best?
The main concern for me is the lack of commitment from DxO to explain the whys and wherefores of the process to the user and to identify the support path being taken and then obtain “buy in” from the user for the right reasons.
To be honest that is my longstanding issue with DxO over so many issues.
I am not sure that I have ever felt that I can get all or even any facts from them!
It is as if all information about the product (certainly the workings of the product) is on a need to know basis and “mere” users simply don’t need to know or is that just my paranoia showing!
The post in its original format certainly prompted user responses but also a DxO response, which I found highly illuminating.
The product I use captures all the text and images but not any embedded links and the alternative of using the “Save as PDF…” in the browser keeps the links but also has many “holes” (areas that are blank) in the actual capture!
My hunt for the perfect capture mechanism for the forum, that captures scrolling text and images and retains all the details plus all the embedded links, continues.
@justinwyllie I stated in my earlier posts here that working software should be investigated first before ever being overwritten!
If the standard DxO approach is to ask the user to re-install then they need to revise that standard approach, it is relevant only if the software is not starting, either immediately after an install or after use and after repeated attempts to start/restart the software, but only after any logs that might be useful have been secured!
@KeithRJ I am a retired IT professional and gave that answer in an earlier post and I fully understand why any customer, particularly one in the same situation as @MarshallG , i.e. with working but apparently flawed software, would question why they were being asked to do that!
@MarshallG was understandably “miffed” at being asked repeatedly to take actions which appeared to be meaningless or downright wrong.
I would like to see the statistics that shows what proportion of faults such an action has “fixed”.
If it is high then DxO should fix the installation process forthwith and they could start by properly naming each version of the software release file, sadly they are not alone in this “amateurish” behaviour, presumably some software manufactures consider users “dumb” enough to only be able to handle “thesoftware.exe” or “thesoftwareV7.exe”, which will wind up as “thesoftwareV7(8).exe” etc, rather than “thesoftware_V7.8.exe” or in my case
Reinstalling without a full user settings backup should never be a first step.
I alway’s use the system the user isn’t te problem unles i can proof it is.
Ask information, first with open questions verify with closed questions the yes / no your idea of problem and thus possible solution.
This is one of the 2 things DxO does well and masters (sampling samera lens combo and denoising AI training).
So they know what to respond when it’s about it.
Lot of other bugs or archaisms have never been consider or even seen as bugs it seems.
Just now I had problem with 7.7 update, so I asked the support to give 7.6. (Shouldn’t have to, links should just be available as backup somewhere but no).
And then I received 7.7 again. As the installation process won’t tell me, I had to remove 7.7, install what I was provided to find out. Talking about waste of time.
What kind of problem did you have with 7.7? Did you try rebooting your computer after this problem occurred? Did you try reinstalling 7.7 before you decided to revert to 7.6?
With regard to acquiring the installation file for PL 7.6, it is always a good idea to save the installation files for all versions of all your currently installed software. You might want to consider doing that going forward.
I have reinstalled 7.7 like 5 times, no reboot of PC done.
The problem was fixed by them without me even rebooting the software, while they “updated my license information (a pop up window shows up in the program)”
Are you kidding, man ???
Some have fled the forum extremely recently with this kind of response.
You’ve just forgotten : “are your graphic drivers up to date ?”
