I bought Photolab in April at a cost of £175 after discount, now I have got to pay another £110 for PL10 that’s £285 its cheaper to have Adobe.
Yes.
Overall, year on year, Adobe provides a “bigger” bundle at a cheaper price.
Upgrading between PL (and VP and FP) versions is not cheap. Even for existing users. It’s up to you/us to decide if the product is worth it.
There are some other things to consider, though:
- You don’t have to upgrade. If you can live without the new features then just stick with (presumably) PL 9 for another year. It’s not going anywhere.
- IIRC we can “miss” one upgrade and still pay just the upgrade price (so you could go from v9 to v11 next year and still pay the upgrade price). If a couple of years pass and you want to go from v9 to v12, I believe you’d have to pay the cost of a new license again.
- There might be a cheaper time to upgrade. DxO typically offers Black Friday deals on their software which can make the cost of upgrading slightly cheaper than it is now. It’s not that long to wait, either (usually November). The advert page for last year’s Black Friday deal is still live here, so you can see what we might expect this year.
- It might feel unfair, but DxO has released a new version of PhotoLab every year around this time, so it’s not a great surprise that they’ve done so again.
My point is I only bought it 5 months ago, and now they want another £110 not great value is it, and all the add ons like film pack etc makes it very expensive, at least with adobe photography plan you have loads of extras for £200 a year.
It’s a different business model.
With Adobe: If you stop paying you lose access to the software all together, but enjoy any and every update that you get while you continue to pay.
With DxO: You only have to pay once and the software you bought in April will continue to work (theoretically forever) - you’ll even get stability updates through the year - but if you want new features you’ll have to pay to upgrade.
It’s bad luck that you bought the software in April, but you’d be in the same position if you’d bought it in August too - just 1 month’s use before another upgrade charge.
Or you could’ve bought it last September and enjoyed an entire year of use before the next upgrade charge.
And remember you don’t have to pay again. You could carry on using what you’ve got and not spend a penny more. It’s the upgrades you must pay for. However, with Adobe, the minute you stop paying is the minute you lose access entirely. Not so with DxO.
Yes you are right and now I have had a look at pl 10 it looks really good but I will have to wait until Black Friday when ever that is.
Thanks for your input
27th November is Black Friday
If you update every year then you are correct PL is pricey. Which is why I’ve adopted a two year upgrade cycle. I have bought PL3, 5, 7 and 9 on the Black Friday of their respective release years. Each time I have been considered a ‘current user’ and so entitled to the ‘current user’ discount.
For me, as an amateur, that makes PL much better value for money.
Only you can decide the upgrade path that works best for you.
Echoing sentiments already expressed.
But yes, for the user who wants to keep things up-to-date, DxO products are far more expensive than Adobe’s, or even Capture One’s.
The main draw is for users who either:
a) want specifically what DxO products provide (such as unparalleled lens/camera/noise corrections)
b) want to buy software that they don’t have to keep paying for in order to use
You say:
and now they want another £110
Well, sure they would like that, but there’s no requirement for you to pay for PhotoLab 10. You can keep your wallet closed.
And they certainly aren’t going to stop sales for a few months up until the next release so that people don’t feel gypped.
None of this to say your feelings aren’t valid, but either DxO has to stick with the current business model, or they have to go onto the subscription model. There is no other option, really.
Unfortunately I am one of those who purchased in August and have to pay the full upgrade price. A discount off the roughly $130 USD upgrade price would have been nice since I have only owned it for 2 months.
It might be worth an email to support to see if they can offer any further reduction. It’s not likely, but it never hurts to try (politely).
…so long as you maintain an active internet connection that allows PL to phone home every 37 days!
Im not really familiar with Capture One (C1) pricing on updates, and i think comparisons is more like ‘apples and oranges’, but as i try to check thru for C1 Pro (perpetual, and not subscription), its more-or-less the same. Its depend on the ‘loyalty’ and various things, but for me seems the ‘same’. than DxO.
Huh… good point! I do have an active connection so I’ve not run across this but I did recall seeing a thread about some in Australia having issues.
It might seem unethical to speak of such things but I’d have few issues with a crack or fix that lets a user bypass that silly restriction.
I have tried in the past with a very quick no. I should have waited, really didn’t realize they were like clockwork on major releases yearly.
I bought it in July
I don’t “have to” pay anything. I keep using PL9 and I’m happy with it.
Not quite true. If LRC is installed locally, you still have access to a minimal editor; however, it is fairly limited. But, yeah, basically dead.
normaly it starts the monday before, and if you start the free 30 day trial period before this monday, it’s not far away;-)
yea it really sucks if you’re after the latest. However I’ve found there really isn’t a need to upgrade annually. I buy an upgrade license every two years. Right now on version 9. Will buy again when ver 11 comes out…. if I haven’t moved to another photo editor.
Literally every single year there is at least one who doesn‘t look up the release dates and start a thread in the forum to stir up a fruitless discussion. Is it really too much effort to type in google “dxo photolab release dates”?
I’m 99% sure it’s not the effort involved–rather, it is the lack of knowledge of how non-subscription models function; the average user coming from, say, Lightroom, probably wouldn’t even know that they should perform such a search. I wouldn’t have (though that wasn’t a concern of mine to begin with, so that was another reason I didn’t look).