Long run. Make it run silky smooth, get more users, make more money, use it to innovate. Go slow to go fast.
That desire comes up regularly. Here’s my recent response to a post expressing a similar sentiment:
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Understandable and logical take. You’re just being honest about what you’re seeing. That seems to me an explanation that matches what has actually been happening. I have a license for PL and FP from years ago that will no longer install on recent OSs, and the experience is the same. It wasn’t a smooth experience then, and it isn’t now. I have noticed no improvement, other than the option to have denoise able to be previewed as you edit (a very welcome and, more than I think many admitted, quite important usability improvement).
If this observation and explanation is correct, and I think it is likely spot-on, then someone needs a wakeup call. DxO is shooting itself in the foot if they think performance and experience needn’t be a VERY high priority. Potential new user “conversion” or sale rates will definitely improve.
What’s very interesting is this: DxO could really benefit from the general feeling of people that corporations and companies are only after profits and don’t care about their customers. Market a “We’re taking a step back and focusing on a smooth and improved user experience. Our users love our tools and create amazing work with them, but we feel they can enjoy making that work even more by refining the tools and speeding them up even more…” campaign. It admits nothing. All positive. And this would actually gain attention on social media. Then, drop a much smoother experience in the next release and watch people sing DxO praises.
But I know the thinking would be… “Why would people pay for an upgrade? They would just complain that we are fixing the thing they already bought and paid for.” And they’d certainly have a point.
They’d have to rely on new users coming over and make something like this a point release, then let the community sing their praises and focus on the next iteration. Something like that.
Anyway, DxO, please realize that usability is a “feature” too.
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I find masking to be exceptionally well implemented. I sometimes really don’t see what other forum users here see and never comment, but this, I felt I should say, because it is the polar opposite to the OP.
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I appreciate your perspective. Certainly using it and knowing what it is capable of helps in not being disappointed because you know what to expect. Coming from LR, however, I was shocked at how hard it has been to get good results and how laggy and unrefined the experience has been. I have gotten excellent results, but getting there has been a real chore.
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It is with pleasure that I follow the progress of this discussion, which got off to a very bad start.
The problem for DxO, and for all of Adobe’s competitors, is that Lightroom is the expected standard.
A new user’s first impression is to find the environment they’re familiar with… in the hope that they’ll go beyond it!
Pascal
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(Guess who! 
)
I am - within reason - one such user.
That’s not to say I think there should be no innovation in the next year or two, in fact there are some features I join others in crying out for (radial masks ala Lightroom, three-way split toning to include mid-tones again ala Lightroom or C1 etc.)
But from a performance, optimisation, and also usability point of view, PhotoLab is in a clunky place.
I don’t just mean “My system isn’t top-spec so it’s not as fast as I’d like”.
I do mean some curious choices around when and how the software generates previews, how long it takes to do that, how it locks up functionality until it’s done…
…and also, how many of the tools work and are presented. Although there are online tutorials, some of it isn’t nearly as intuitive as competing software.
The functionality under the hood is there… PhotoLab can put out incredibly sharp, noiseless shots that knock competing software out of the water.
But where it’s a breeze to run through entire albums in competing software, it can be a slog here. For that reason I do think they need to slow down a little bit and look at some housekeeping as well as worrying only about adding more and more features.
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This probably doesn’t help you but it may be your computer is not good enough to handle DxO PhotoLab v9.
Last year I switched from Windows to Mac so that I could upgrade from DxO PhotoLab v8 to v9. Version 9 requires more computing power.
I got myself an M5 MacBook Pro with 24GB RAM and found that v9 runs really well. Masking works well and not at all laggy or buggy.
I’ve never used LR so I can’t really help in terms of where comparable features are located.
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Thanks. My M1 Max with 32GB has never struggled with anything, including video editing. LR is smooth as butter and doesn’t hiccup at all with masking, no matter if denoising is enabled or not, and previews are instant. In fact, it’s almost wrong to say they are “instant” because there is simply zero delay. You move a slider, you see the result real-time. So… this is poorly coded/implemented software at some level. If DxO thinks they can rely on people paying for new machines just to use their software I think they are going to be pretty disappointed. I mean, yeah, within reason, but this is no slouch of a machine at all.
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Oddly, that has not been my experience, I’ve run PL 5-9 on both Intel and M3 MacBooks, and the gradient mask has worked well with all of them. In fact, I don’t really find the AI masks all that compelling, as Contact Points and Lines, Gradients, and Brushes are quite powerful. I think the biggest issue is that PL is not an LR clone, and many new users don’t understand the learning curve involved
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Agree that the Ai masks are often not the best way to go. But, I didn’t mean that the gradient mask doesn’t work well (though on my machine it certainly is weird that I cannot drag the feathering lines to refine them, but only the icons), but rather the HSL, for example, and likewise some of the masking that relies on color and luminance (not all of them maybe… still unsure…), the falloff/feathering from one luminance or color creates a blotchy mess. I have NEVER seen that in LR. I can whip the luminance or saturation in color mixer all the way up or down and get zero blotchiness. It is so weird in PL.
This has been the case for since forever (I used to own and use PL 5). I assumed it would have been fixed, but no. I now suspect that whatever PL is doing under the hood with demosaicing, which is good, is forcing a tradeoff with how it treats color and luminance details. Not sure, but it’s hard to imagine how/why the HSL can cause such blotchiness, (and also how it refuses to “grab” or saturate some colors) and DxO hasn’t made it better in around a decade.
But darn it… now that I revisit that HSL tool it is working better than I remember. I think I had some traumatic experiences with it before that had stuck with me maybe. Hmm…
After reading through your comments again, I get the impression that you might have lost track of things and are confusing various tools or the way they work (?).
Local adjustments now work quite differently and have evolved enormously since PL5.*)
Note:
Before paying the full price for the upgrade*), keep in mind that the next version of PL is likely to be released sometime in the autumn.
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No. I’m pretty sure I understand for the most part what is what. I think I get the fundamentals of how the tools work or are supposed to work. But, for instance, as I went now to play with the HSL, I did see some wonkiness in the results, and compared LR on the same image with the same underlying adjustments. LR looked way better… but, I then realized that LR is doing something under the hood that PL isn’t. LR, when I go to certain extremes, starts more and more to grab the colors next to the one I’m adjusting and affects them more the further a slider is pushed. DxO has that set and doesn’t auto adjust that range or falloff. Yet, of course, PL gives me the ability to increase or decrease the range of colors I want to affect, and the falloff. I had remembered from many years ago that I didn’t like what the HSL slider did and with some initial trials this time felt it was doing the same thing. But I now see it has either improved, or maybe I never really understood from before that I really needed to adjust the range/feather myself.
The more I play the more I realize that there is very little if anything as far as actually editing the image that I can’t do as well in PL. But, straight up, the basic tone adjustments are not tuned nearly as nicely as in LR.
Since I’m in “trial mode” right now, I’m just hunting my hard drive for monster images so that I can push the limits of the editor and compare with LR. By the way, I do NOT worship LR. To the degree that I might say I love it, it would only be for getting pleasing results quickly and smoothly, and the cataloging is useful. When I want ultimate quality I go, strangely, to a rather primitive beast called Raw Photo Processor. I really like how it works and treats tones, but it takes some getting used to. It has no real denoising, however, so can’t be used on all images.
Softwares works in different ways, logic, philosophy. Apples and Oranges.
Anyhow, i guess the thread title: ‘Masking so bad it ought not exist’ is not valid anymore, as you has some experience in the meantime? I talk about the Masking.
If masking works, may can be a nice idea to put the thread to ‘Solved’ / update the title, etc.
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I understand that my thread title has ruffled some feathers and was going to change it, but I can’t seem to do so now. Please advise as to how and I will change it.
The issue is not solved, so I shouldn’t mark it as such, since the inability to drag the feathering lines in gradient masks to change the feather persists. I could not reproduce just now the strange behavior where toggling a mask with strong effects applied would change the mask quality and/or apparent strength of effect. If I come across that again I will document it better.
I have the rights to change it. What do you want it changed to?
Mark
Thank you. Umm…
How about: Masking not working well and laggy
I honestly don’t mind if you change it to whatever you think is appropriate.
Done. I used what you gave me. I would never chose the title of someone else’s thread.
Mark
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Arigatou. Thanks for the grace.