I love my DxO tools. But I think in some cases, update pricing is/has been disproportionate. This trend, perceived or real, is pushing me to skip versions or delay upgrading. I, personally, can’t justify dropping another $188 on updates to PL and FP for v7 this year. Same will be true if Nik or ViewPoint gets a major update this year.
But I am not going to stop using them. I’ll just update when it makes sense.
So, I’ve found their refund policy. Refund only within 14 days of purchase if not activated. I guess I’m hanging out for fixes to bring it in line with my £99 spend then. No way am I giving away another £129 to upgrade FP5 to FP7 for the sake of one tool though. There’s workarounds using the exisiting tools to yield luminosity masking anyway.
I don’t know of any software company that provides a published schedule for new releases. I’ve worked for many software companies and none have done it.
And I don’t know of very many companies of any kind that tell you when they are going to have sales, other than big department stores that tell you when they send out a sale advertisement.
What I still find difficult here is the OP was happy buying PL6 for the price they paid. If they had not noticed announcement of a new release presumably they would have used it and enjoyed it. You don’t have to immediately upgrade. This is technology. You know that what you buy win eventually be replaced. When is the threshold for free? I don’t know. It’s very subjective and as I said, it doesn’t change the value of what you got for what you paid.
If you truly can’t handle missing out in an upgrade you should go with a subscription. Then you never miss. Personally, I’ve been using the same version of Lightroom for 10 years and it hasn’t cost me a dime. You could do the same thing with PL6. You can but do that with LR now. Choose your poison.
My own experience is also that DxO gives a generous 30 day trial. In about one day of that trial I had learned that a) they do sales around Black Friday, and b) they release new versions before that. It’s not a very hidden secret. And on the trial, I did two 30 day trials on two machines, and I’m guessing I can do another with the new version. That is there way of being generous.
The good thing is to utilise the 30 day full working trial version to see if the new features and additional functions are what can support one in their workflow or needs.
If not there nothing wrong with abstaining from the upgrade and keep on using the current version for another year or two or for what ever time you like without paying anything more.
I find this too.
This would be amazing
What @convergent and @Required say is so important. Unlike with other companies, you can run several versions of PhotoLab at the same time. So, what DxO are doing is offering, not a strict upgrade, but the opportunity to buy a more recent “new product”.
If you don’t want any of the features of the latest, greatest “product”, then stick with what you already have. What is more, you are entitled to try the new “product” for free, for 30 days and, if it doesn’t suit you, or you feel it is not worth the price, then don’t buy it. The choice is yours.
Unlike other products, you will always have a fully functional “product”, along with any previous versions, until you decide you are missing out on too many new features.
I think some of the anger and issues over the PhotoLab 7 upgrade is from users who jumped in and purchased it without testing it first and now have buyers remorse with no recourse to get their money back. It is a cautionary tale. I may or may not buy some software upgrade if I feel it is too expensive or does not provide enough value relative to the cost, but I am certainly not going to get angry about it and waste my time with multiple posts complaining about it. There are plenty of alternatives. I happen to love using all the DxO products, but if they got to expensive for me or did not continue to give me desirable features, I would simply move on to some competitors product.
Mark
Much as I agree with this, I do think there’s something to be said for feeding back on how we feel and voicing that we’re not entirely happy with the direction their approach is taking.
If they don’t listen then - as you say - there’ll come a point when it’ll be necessary to move on elsewhere… and it’s not as though other companies are sleeping on their own functionality and quality. Lightroom’s de-noise is late to the game, but the software is an industry standard, so it’s a huge deal that it’s now firmly “a competitor” alongside DXO and Topaz etc.
I’d prefer not to have to learn a whole new software in the future, I’ve grown used to DXO’s way of doing things and enjoy it as far as PL6 goes. But if the trend continues that they’re asking a lot of money for little functional gain then I am going to give up on upgrading or even look elsewhere.
This is a bit of a stretch.
For one, while you can run multiple versions of PL at the same time, it’s hardly seamless since you have to disable the reading/writing of dop files to avoid the different versions stepping on themselves. This is far worse than applications that have some form of version-handling on their sidecars.
For two, if you buy an upgrade then you no longer have a license for the older version: it will continue to function wherever you’ve installed it, but don’t expect any help from DxO if you want to move it to a new computer and come up against their human-based license management. Nice that you can still run it for a while at least, but not as nice as others that let you activate/deactivate in software, as you wish, as long as you stay within any activation limits.
See above.
As for “always”, DxO is marketing PhotoLab as having a “Perpetual license, free of subscriptions”, but it’s not perpetual in the sense that you can run it as long as you have the underlying hardware/software to do so. Instead, it’s a “lifetime license” that DxO can terminate at their convenience.
There are reasons to like PhotoLab, but licensing isn’t one of them IMO.
Thank you for pointing this out.
So it was NOT possible to use several version of photolab on the same station unless using tricky non efficient workarounds.
BUT, DxO announced that since v7 it is posiible to use any major version together (so beforeV7 (only one version), V7, V8, etc …).
Does the impossibility due to “sharing” dop files between versions you talked about is really solved ? (I think it should be from v7 since they announced multiple versions can run on the same station now in their live streaming presentation of photolab 7).
If you keep the installation file, what would prevent you from reinstalling it on the same hardware again in the future? This is the same as Adobe. If you don’t have the install file for Lightroom V5, then Adobe is not going to help you find it. If you do have the install file that you bought the license for, then you can reinstall it and as long as you aren’t running some new unsupported hardware, you are good. I keep all the installers for all the software I buy. I assume that PL will work the same. Having a perpetual license does not entitle you to unlimited “support” for life, so I don’t expect help from them if I’m trying to reinstall software I bought from them 5 years ago. I don’t know any software companies that do that. Nor can I think of a reason why you’d want to run multiple versions of PL at the same time unless you are testing a different version.
You need to be careful what you ask for. The easy answer for any software company these days is to go to subscription. Having the ability to buy a license and continue to use it without any required additional cost to keep the SAME functionality is a rarity these days. And software developers are probably going to have an easier time paying their bills with a recurring revenue model. The company I work for is fully moving to that model, and the one I worked for before did the same thing.
It always has been, and still is, possible, with the only proviso that you only ever use the version, or newer, that you last worked on a given folder.
Simply name folders to include the version number and stick to that rule. Although why you would want to keep reverting is beyond me.
I can assure you this works because it is standard practice when we work on beta versions.
Because releases sometime have bad bugs.
So being able to have a “waiting to be stable enough” and a “stable enough” version could be a better option than my “wait very long enough to see what’s said on forum before updating” option.
Anyway DxO annoucement is only for major version. Not minor ones. So it does not apply completely to this.
that seems to be a problem now over there , literally
do you expect to be able to download optics modules though ? well - that is not a guarantee 
and your “installers” do not have that , crucial - isn’t it , part … not to mention that you still need to legally activate it - that is for the company to be in business
I do, I am still using BabelColor Patchtool v5.5 from 2017 ( it is long since on v7.* ) and I got help with license activation when I had to reinstall it … after business hours
On Tuesday, December 6, 2022 at 08:31:43 PM EST, BabelColor info info@babelcolor.com wrote:
Hello … ,
Long time indeed!
This is likely not an activation server problem but an expired Windows certificate (fo which there is a solution!).
Please send me screenshots of:
The About PatchTool dialog
The error message you get (if any).
Thanks,
Danny
That is nice that they did that, but I don’t expect a business to do something that is 100% not sustainable. Any situation where a company provides free support many years after they have ceased getting any gain from the transaction, is not sustainable as a business. It is under the category of “good will”, much the same as donating to a charity. If more than a small share of their business is doing that kind of thing, they will go out of business (if it is a business and not a hobby). And if they eventually go out of business for doing things that aren’t business smart, then you certainly aren’t going to get support from them. FYI, if I needed support years after, I’d be happy to either pay for the support, or pay for an upgrade (or full new license) to get support.
Most software companies do continue to provide activation of perpetual licenses as long as they are still in business. I believe there is a legal requirement for that in the license in most cases.
Downloading optics modules is probably harder for them to turn off on some versions than it is to keep letting you download them. That said, if they moved to some changes in the optics modules there may be a point where you couldn’t download new ones any longer. And if you couldn’t download them at all after reinstalling the software, it would be an annoyance for sure, but it isn’t what I’d consider “crucial”. You can certainly use the software without loading optics modules. You can not use it without RAW support.
Certainly many things to think about and different people have different thresholds of annoyance. While I’d be mad at myself for doing what the original poster did, I don’t believe they operate a “money trap”. What is comical is that there are more threads on here from people that are unhappy with what they got for PL7 and want to go back to PL6 and this one is mad they didn’t get PL7. I personally like some of the PL7 improvements, but I haven’t bought a license yet.
what folders ?
Installation folders or work folders ?
@Joanna what about this dop file problem ?
I haven’t seen this, but if true then it would certainly simplify testing a new version (or going back to an old one) without having to manage the dop files yourself. It’s completely painless with Capture One, for example.
If they have implemented some sort of version-handling of dop files in PL7 then you’d think they would at least add the functionality to PL6 too, so we get some use out it. Otherwise we won’t know until PL8, and I’ll believe it when I see it. 