I’ve got photolab 6 - nik collection 4 - viewpoint 3 - filmpack 5.
Out of curiosity, I looked at how much it would cost to update this software cutted in parts.
result is : 466 € for upgrading ! (or 307 without nik, but it seems nik still has the best (only ?) sharpening tool for printing).
Of course I won’t.
What do you think about it ?
I better keep that private…and yes, DxO looks expensive - if we update all apps on a yearly basis. Nevertheless, all who want to have the best of everything (management summary of DxO sales material) will happily shell out again and again…
Or, as Sheryl C put it:
I don’t have digital
I don’t have diddly squat
It’s not having what you want
It’s wanting what you’ve got
only for my information and a try to get the pricing policy:
photolab 6 → 8 (update price, because you can leapfrog one version)
viewpoint 3 → 4 (update price because it’s the next version)
filmpack 5 → 7 (full price, because you can’t leapfrog one version)
strange
In the US, DxO sells their products more aggressively. As an example, I got the following info.
I had these prices checked against the EUR and CHF … and the Swiss pay a premium of about 100 € compared to prices/exchange rates and I guess that that’s okay because “Swiss are rich”. This must also mean that “Americans are poor”
Anyways, all of this reminds me of the following:
They went to great lengths to try to impose filmpack, notably by incorporating the luminosity mask requested by photolab users for photolab.
Now this price update specificity.
Is Filmpack an other DxO one ?
I have just spent more on a lens than I have ever spent on DxO products. Add in the lens I bought before that one and they cost more than I will ever likely spend on DxO products.
“Most expensive?” Maybe. “Expensive?” Well that depends on your value equation.
I told “most expensive”.
Yes, if you want to update everything at once, it’s expensive. Some could say that you don’t have to update everything at once, which is understandable as well.
But I truly hate this artificial link between the products. FilmPack being the worst. A contrast slider ? A luminosity mask ? Come on… The basic straightening tools of ViewPoint have been integrated to DPL only a few years ago. It took them some time to realize that all the other raw converters included it natively without any plug in, and years before them. The additional volume deformation is unique to Dxo though.
It’s been several years now that they act like that, so it’s probably financially profitable despite the grumpy guys like me and a few others. I’m not that vocal about it. That’s just business. But the consequence of all of this will lead to one thing : at the second Adobe or whoever else beat Deep Prime XD2, 3, 4 or 5 or whatever version it will be (and maybe offer a volume deformation), I dump DXO in a heartbeat. And yet, I’m french and glad that a company from home has a market share in this field. But… Their policy, ours as well…
Not quite. When DxO released Optics Pro 10 in 2014, they included ViewPoint 1.0 (which was now integrated into Optics Pro) for free with purchase. You could upgrade that to a newer version of ViewPoint if you wished. (VP 2.5 was current around the time of OP10.) Free VP integration was only later discontinued in PhotoLab, forcing the purchase of a VP3 license to activate any of the VP functions. Now we’re back to including some of ViewPoint for “free” in PhotoLab.
People also forget that “Lens Softness” isn’t a new name for DxO’s preferred sharpening tool: it was originally called this before it was renamed Lens Sharpening in earlier releases of PhotoLab. Now we’re back to Lens Softness correction.