Popular DxO Forum Requests that have been neglected for YEARS

[TomDX]

And when I say YEARS I’m not being dramatic, I mean 2018.

I didn’t upgrade to PL7 until recently because of the dev team’s lack of care to their user base and paying customers. I decided to give DxO a chance because they did fix three important things in the UI:

• The new layout is good, it fixes the hovering and clunky Local Adjustments controls.
• You can finally control colour locally.
• You can now, after many years, flip images horizontally and vertically. This may have been fixed a little before PL7, can’t recall, but is still a recent fix.

However…

• The Local Adjustment mask visibility toggle [M] is now broken if no adjustments are made you can’t toggle on/off. It is so annoying.
• We still don’t have an image comparison tool, requested millions of times in this forum. FREEWARE does this. 2019, 2018, 2019, and myself in 2022
• We still don’t have tint control for RGB images [and now the option is greyed out in the new layout].
• We still don’t have the ability to use all the features in both RAW and JPEG/TIFFs. DeepPrime, the tint slider, etc. Who cares about users who only shoot JPEG, right?
• We still don’t have customisable hotkeys, super BASIC usability thing. 2019, at least
• We still don’t have proper DNG support, only a few select cameras. Who cares about mobile phone users, right? It’s not like anyone shoots on mobile…
• We still don’t have the ability to manually apply lens corrections, 2018. Why is this needed? Because DxO PL7 still gets wrong what lens I am using, and despite asking [via the appropriate channel] to include certain lenses to their Optics Profile database, they OF COURSE have neglected this. So it’s a fix for another unfixed issue. Oh and manual lenses with no EXIF also need profile corrections applied manually, but who cares about manual shooters, right?
• We still don’t have grid overlays to aid in composition.
• We still can’t rotate an image 90° while cropping.
• We still don’t have 1-click auto-select. Free apps do this on mobile. PC FREEWARE does this as well. This $300 [+“add-ons”, because God forbid basic geometry tools are included] piece of software can’t do proper auto-anything [auto-mask brush is completely useless].
• We still don’t have a working auto-mask brush. You have to manually paint the edges anyway. I’ve tried it extensively.
• We still can’t “lock” the UI, it resets every time you restart DxO.
• We still can’t decide if we want to add Microcontrast or not, by default, when adjusting Contrast. You gotta opt-out manually.
• We still can’t correct green fringing from CA. Purple, yes. Magenta? If PL is feeling like it. Green? Naaah…

I see an almost complete neglect to even the most popular requests in this forum, for years.
I’ve gotten direct responses from them, saying each of those features or fixes have been identified, but no roadmap is given, and certainly most of the fixes or features have not been implemented.

Who knows when or if they will be implemented, DxO could learn from Affinity on how to address issues identified by the community, a.k.a. us, the paying customers.

[Biosyn]

PhotoLab 5 does have the grid overlay. I don’t know what you mean by rotating while cropping. I can do that in PL5.

The rest, though, yeah - I don’t get it! Some of those features can’t be that hard to implement.

I would love frame averaging. Thankfully I can do that internally with my Olympus cameras, but I’d still like to see that feature in software.

[joerg2019 (Joerg)]

@TomDX

We still don’t have a working auto-mask brush. You have to manually paint the edges anyway. I’ve tried it extensively.

I would go even further …

• we don’t have a preview what automask has really detected …
• we dont have an automask for sky regions
• we don’t have automask for the main subject (foreground/background)

[underexposed]

@TomDX

We still don’t have 1-click auto-select. Free apps do this on mobile. PC FREEWARE does this as well.

PC Freeware is the correct software for you.

Only noticed that because you wrote it in caps. Did not read the rest because it’s just a long rant by a person frustrated with something else.

[pnajbar]

A very good summary of the lack of innovation (although the word ‘innovation’ to address such basic facilities is, however, a gross exaggeration).
As far as I’m concerned, I’ve lost hope for improvement in this regard.
Looking at the latest release of Dxo Pure Raw in the coming years we can expect
further numbers added to the de-noise module because, as it is well known, the main problem of modern sensors is noise.

[John-M (Melbourne, Australia - Win11)]

@joerg2019

we dont have an automask for sky regions

Assuming you have a FilmPack license (which is then activated within PL), the Luminosity Mask does a truly easy & excellent job of masking the sky - including any parts of the sky peaking thru foregrounds objects, such as trees, etc.

[Joanna (Joanna Carter)]

@joerg2019

• we dont have an automask for sky regions

To add to @John-M, we also have the truly excellent Control Line tool…

1. Original image…

2. Apply mask, including setting selectivity levels…

3. Adjust levels for sky and close local adjustments…

[joerg2019 (Joerg)]

@Joanna

o add to @John-M, we also have the truly excellent Control Line tool…

I know the control lines very well and use them as a workaround as we do not have automatic sky masking up to now.

But it’s sometimes really annoying especially when you also have bright elemets in your main pic. (I know how to deal with it, but it’s sometimes really a lot of work to do .,…)

[joerg2019 (Joerg)]

@John-M

Assuming you have a FilmPack license (which is then activated within PL)

No, I don’t, and honestly I don’t know why I should buy any film simulations (which I never use) to get a masking functionality which should belong to the base tool. It’s just a bad method to push FP sales and I will not support this.

[Franky (Frank Legame - Win10-11 - PL8 - FP7 - VP5 - NC7 - Sony α)]

You have also forgotten to be able to rename the files as we want during export.

[kap55]

Mentioned above by Wlodek, but the current Tone Curve implementation is crap. This is especially frustrating since the Tone Curves in other DxO products (Nik and Filmpack) are much better. Whoever is responsible for the PL user interface knows absolutely nothing about photography.

[Mopnex (Canon R5 Sony A7C)]

We still don’t have an image comparison tool, requested millions of times in this forum. FREEWARE does this.

What freeware can do it?

[rrblint (Mark)]

FastStone IV will do that with up to 4 different photos.

[mwsilvers (Mark - New Jersey, USA)]

@rrblint

FastStone IV will do that with up to 4 different photos

FastStone is now up to version 7.8.

Mark

[TomDX]

While cropping you can rotate up to 45°, and if you want to change from portrait to horizontal or the other way around, you have to get out of the crop tool, right click > submenu > change orientation, then enter crop tool again, then adjust your rotation…

The grid overlay is arbitrarily chosen by DxO. Like thirds, golden ratio, golden spiral, or other aspect ratios to see how they would frame, that’s what I mean.

And yeah, I left out the “hard” things to implement because… well, it is simply unrealistic. Focus stacking, averaging frames, panorama stitching… =]

[TomDX]

I guess you love paying for incomplete software. Have you seen their marketing?

“The most advanced, end-to-end, RAW photo editing software”

I guess neither their Dev team nor Marketing has any idea what “Claims Validation” is…

Wow - this was post was hidden because “it’s not relevant”. It is extremely relevant, as the screenshot of DxO PL7’s website’s frontpage proves DxO is making a false claim. This thread states how this software is NOT what it is being advertised as, lacking basic features found even in freeware, which DxO has acknowledged, and ignores users’ requests and feedback for years, also proved in this thread.

[TomDX]

XNView, FastStone… I’m sure there are more.

[underexposed]

@TomDX

, you have to get out of the crop tool, right click > submenu > change orientation, then enter crop tool again, then adjust your rotation…

Nobody has to do that. Whilst still in the crop tool, simply press Ctrl+L or Ctrl+R on your keyboard.

@TomDX

I guess you love paying for incomplete software.

No, but I do like knowing what the software I have is there for and how to use it.

[TomDX]

@Wlodek

@TomDX

While cropping you can rotate up to 45°

While cropping you can’t rotate. What you wrote applies to levelling (Horizon tool).

No, I meant the crop tool, you can only rotate to 45° like this:

However, another user has already informed me that there is a workaround: while in the crop tool, you can still hit Ctrl+L/R to change orientation, and then continue cropping/rotating.

.

@Wlodek

@TomDX

if you want to change from portrait to horizontal or the other way around, you have to get out of the crop tool

@TomDX

We still can’t rotate an image 90° while cropping

Not sure how to understand it. If I wanted to change orientation, I would do it before using the cropping tool, just like 99+% people here. If you want to invert the cropping aspect ratio, say from 4x3 to 3x4, you can drag the corner accordingly to change the crop orientation (probably like in most of similar software).

It’s the same as the screenshot above [and not about rotating the crop aspect ratio], and you’re talking about an image that maybe has the wrong orientation, you correct it, and then crop it. But sometimes there are images that no, they may work better rotated or not, not all photos are landscapes or portraits.

But again, this is something that either was fixed, or I didn’t know how to do and now I do, so disregard this part.

.

@Wlodek

@TomDX

We still can’t decide if we want to add Microcontrast or not, by default, when adjusting Contrast.

It’s possible if you prepare a suitable preset. Ok, unprecise answer but for an unprecise request.

My request is not unprecise. Create a preset, then go to settings, make DxO apply my preset to every image it loads? What if I want another preset? What if I want no presets? The function of presets is not to fix issues. Why would I need to jump through hoops, working around what should just be the default state: off?

Say you’re working on an image, want to adjust contrast… hit contrast… and suddenly something changed. Oh yeah, DxO changes another setting whether you ask for it or not, unless you specifically tell it not to. WHY? If I wanted to adjust Microcontrast, I’d do it. If I wanted it to automatically adjust it for me, I’d set it to Auto. It should be off by default, like all other adjustments.

.

@Wlodek

@TomDX

We still don’t have the ability to use all the features in both RAW and JPEG/TIFFs. DeepPrime, the tint slider, etc.

DeepPRIME algorithm requires unmanipulated data from CFA and it depends on CFA type. The algorithm assumes some noise model, which manipulated data does not abide to (jpeg, smartphones, some camera shooting options). For example, smartphone sensors have crosstalk problem, with their pixel size comparable with light wavelengths. Some glory details can be found in the Internet, particularly in several papers written by DxO, using quite involved maths. It’s getting into quantum-effects area, see also some remarks by Eric Fossum in dpreview “scientific” forum. Some demosaicking/denoising algorithms have performance of 1MPx/hour, so what we see available on the market is just a tip of an iceberg being researched.

Please don’t take this the wrong way, but I don’t care at all what happens under the hood, I’m not the developer, I’m the customer and end user. Other programs allow you to do it, it should be in the best interest of DxO to provide maximum functionality to their userbase, and at least be on par with other platforms to stay competitive.

.

@Wlodek

@TomDX

We still don’t have grid overlays to aid in composition.

Well, there is one when cropping. BTW, the thirds or golden ratio rules were derived as an approximation by observation (and “invention”) and they are not 100% correct, not even 80% I would say. Your sense of balance is more important, so better switch the grid off and judge for yourself - you’ll get less unbalanced pictures. Ok, some people require strict rules…

BTW, strange statements for a person in this forum for over a year. Your list doesn’t look like something an editing photographer would prepare, does it? Just don’t worry about nothing, you’ll stay more healthy.

That grid does nothing for me, it aligns with nothing, it’s an arbitrary grid.
I also know all the theory and history, that’s not the point, nor is it for you or DxO to school users on “how to best crop”, each user is different and if users want custom overlays, that’s the end of it. LOADS of users use overlays for aligning headshots, for reviewing different aspect ratios, for thirds, for halves, sixths… have you ever used Lightroom? IrfanView? XNView? Corel? Millions of users use cycling grids overlays.

I don’t really follow your last statement, why is it strange and what does being here for over a year have anything to do with it? And even more strangely, the fact that I listed tools inside DxO PL… a software designed for photographers… makes you think I’m what, a dentist?

[platypus (Canon & Mac)]

Many feature requests exist and we can find them here:

Feature requests

One of the interesting things to see is how many votes a request has vs. the number if replies, and the manual module selection request is widely uncontested based on the votes/replies ratio.

Anyways, needs vary by user, but be that as it may, DxO had better start adding those features. It would also illustrate DxO’s interest in serving its customers.