I have been a light user of DXO Pholab since version 3. I have upgraded every year since.
I do not photograph all that much and always appreciated the software by DXO and my upgrades were partly to support a company that put out products that I like.
But this time I am disappointed.
Black Friday came up and the price did not go down percent as much as last versions.
I know Covid was an excuse for every company to jack up their prices. But I expected to be more reasonable.
One solution would be to limit the number computers that you use with DXO and reduce price of upgrade for people like me that use DXO on one computer and not three.
I hope DXO would listen to this issue.
Also , I agree with people tha complain about putting some features that are needed in Photolab in other software. Lots people , including me ,to not care for their photographs to take on the films in the last century.
Choosing a product because of the (low) price is never a good idea. You say you want to support the company but because the upgrade price isnāt as discounted as it was last year, you will not upgrade this time.
A person should never buy something he doesnāt need, buying something because āitās cheapā itās not āsupportingā the business at all.
I see people saying āv 7 has nothing I need, I will passā, but the same folks will instantly pull the trigger and buy it if the price could go down to $10ā¦
ā¦
A bit like buying a Rolls Royce car and then complying that the service costs are too high.
Think about it. You spend $/Ā£/ā¬ 300,000 on the car and then they have the nerve to expect you to pay even more money just to keep it running year after year.
Of course, you could always take it to some cheap backstreet shed for its servicing and they could fit third-party factored parts, but is it then still the same Rolls Royce you seen all that money on? Not forgetting that, if Rolls Royce can only make money from the original sale, is it worth their time and effort manufacturing spare parts for when the car breaks down or parts wear out?
Nonsense. What the issue is for those of us without stars in our eyes is that DxO is pumping the existing customer base for more and more money for less and less improvement.
Like me (and many others), cyrus1400 was happy to send DxO a Christmas card with ā¬50 or ā¬70 in it every year (depending on whether FilmPack or ViewPoint also had an upgrade or only PhotoLab).
Now DxO has set it up where we have to send them ā¬150 every year to keep all the features of PhotoLab Elite. Not cool.
Iām still annoyed about the year where we were forced to buy a second license of PhotoLab to be able to upgrade Nik. Result: I donāt upgrade Nik any more. Enough is enough.
None of this means that cyrus1400 and I donāt want to support DxO or use PhotoLab. What it means is that we want DxO to be less gourmand and raise prices quite a bit slower. Doubling every two years is not okay and many of us are pretty close to having had enough. We just wonāt upgrade every year and weāll slowly start looking at alternatives.
Particularly alternatives which allow us to develop DNG from our iPhones and flagship Android phones.
I think it doesnāt matter what some very interested and loyal customers write here. Maybe we are all wrong here and itās a full success story. Time will tell. But always be quiet (and donāt upgrade) is the wrong way.