Same on my iMac 2019 with macOS Monterey, but DPL1 does not work 100%. I can set zoom level to “fit” and to 100% exclusively. The rest seems to work.
Movable license: Lightroom has it too. I can
a) let LrC deactivate automatically and/or
b) manage activations in my Adobe account.
Hopes are not enough here, for me, Mark. My experience (below) has been different. It’s horrible that we as licensed customers have to worry about those questions.
I’ve run into the install limit issue, every year during the last few years of fighting the endless OS update requirements and computer changes and OS reinstalls, even with six theoretical installs available to me. Even with six theoretical installs (that nonsense with the Nik v2 upgrade), DxO Support has usually been suspicious and unpleasant about each install request.
Plus side: we don’t have to de-activate installations (multiply by 10x programs and de-activation doesn’t sound like any more fun than writing emails). It would be better if we could disable installations in our accounts.
Alec,
Sorry to here that. I know the struggles you’ve had with DxO dropping support for older verions of MacOs every year. Happily, this has just not been an issue for me. I am still using the same Windows desktop and laptop I had when I originally installed the PhotoLab 1 Elite suite in late 2017, and hthe most current version of the suite runs just as well.
Mark
It’s a pity, but I’m not at all surprised that DxO makes it difficult to reinstall older versions of PL on a new computer. As with other vendors I’ve dealt with (most notably Microsoft), an upgrade purchase is cheaper because it isn’t separable from the purchase of the previous version. The upgrade purchase replaces the right to use the older product (its license key) with a right to use the newer product. While DxO allows the old version to remain on the computer and continue to be used, activating the old license again on new hardware is restricted or even prohibited in order to prevent handing on the old key to someone else or otherwise using it in violation of the licensing terms. Special cases can be allowed by the vendor through a support request, at their discretion. It’s all quite normal in my limited experience, even if many vendors don’t do that.
Also, I’ve seen a new install limit imposed even for very expensive software. CalMAN, for example (now maintained by Portrait Displays). When I was using that, the licensing model was very complicated, requiring a managed uninstall prior to any reinstall - or the licenses wouldn’t work again. Fortunately, their customer support was happy to reset the license counters for me whenever something went wrong (e.g., the uninstaller hung or crashed or the system hard drive died) and I needed their help - but I got sick of depending on that. Same for Microsoft with Windows licenses - and now they say a Windows license key is only good for the lifetime of one computer - it isn’t supposed to be transferred to new hardware at all (except for a hard drive replacement).
It seems that if DxO ever goes out of business, their software will die without some kind of intervention, which I very much hope they and other vendors imposing a reinstall limit will put in place in such an unfortunate situation. This is an elephant-in-the-room, I suppose. Hopefully it won’t ever become a problem for us. (I think DxO staff assured us of that once, near the time they underwent bankruptcy restructuring - but some customers stated they didn’t want to take that chance.)
Finally, I’m not a fan of Apple’s frequent new MacOS releases and DxO only supporting the latest three as soon as a new one appears. I noticed another vendor (Serif, I think) supporting the latest four and think that’s more reasonable. I’m grateful that Microsoft doesn’t release a new Windows every year, though technically they do roll out new features at least every year.
DxO is overly restrictive in my experience. For example, Capture One allows 3 activations, but it’s up to me if I want to activate my currently licensed version or a previously licensed one. Very reasonable, and very convenient if I run into an issue after upgrade and want to continue working with the previous version until it’s resolved. Not only that, the versions coexist nicely (no disabling dops, etc) and I can do all of the activation in-app or online without being subjected to interrogation by Support. The downside of Capture One is that even their upgrades are becoming expensive. (Still peanuts compared to hardware, but I don’t buy much of that any more.)
Serif is an even better. Their flexibility (it’s very nice to be able to use Affinity Photo on a computer that I don’t usually edit when it’s convenient for me) makes me use Affinity Photo more and more now that (in v2) the Develop persona is non-destructive and raws can be linked rather than embedded.
Upgrading with DxO is a bigger decision since it’s a one-way street. Yes, the old version will continue to function on my current computer, but moving it to a new computer is out of the question. I think harder (and test more) when upgrading PhotoLab than I do with other applications I purchase for this reason alone, but at some point it’s not worth the effort when there are less painful alternatives.
I don’t think DxO is doing themselves any favours by restricting access to previous versions the way they do. If they purposely want to force me to buy a new license (instead of an upgrade) if I want continued access to a previous version that I usually only use when the developer has bungled something then they’re just building the upgrade barrier a bit higher. I’ll be generous and put the reason down to primitive handling of activations, but some form of online/in-software license management is the main thing I’d like to see in PhotoLab for me to continue paying up.
My current Windows machine is a new machine four months ago and yesterday, after reading this thread I decided to try to reinstall all versions of OP and PL. I was able to reinstall and run with no problems. OP 9, OP 11, PL one through to PL 4. I already had PL 5 running. All seem to be working correctly.
The new machine is running Windows 11.
I must admit, I didn’t expect any of them to run apart from PL 5.
I assume you had unused activations then? The problem is when you don’t since DxO won’t free up an activation for an unlicensed version.
Although that you could activate an old version at all is interesting. I’ve never had a free activation available to try.
I’m not sure, but version 3 or 4 I had used up two activations on a previous new computer. Apart from that, all are running well. It does seem odd using the older versions and the results that they give. Most interesting.
@Prem I was surprised by the various comments being made because I am using DxO 11, DxPL3, 4, 5 and 6 on one machine but all were installed during the life of each release. However, I recently installed DxPL 2 to check out what happened with a particular issue on that release and used the Trial version until the trial period ended and then continued to use it beyond that period as was the way until the coming of DxPL5!
I just used my activation key and it activated successfully, so if you still have “credit” on your key it should work successfully. All DOPs in my experience are forward compatible and none should be considered backwards compatible! Similarly with databases but I haven’t actually tried a DxO 11 database being imported into PL6 - yet!
However, I was a SageLight user and the author went “walk-about”, the rental on the activation server lapsed and that was that, except someone published a workaround!
The problem is actually two-fold
Is DxPL checking the licence against a server every time the product is used!
If the activation server terminates with DxO then users investment is effectively “lost” and that needs to be considered!
The licence management should always be a two way process allowing licences to be used and “returned” to the activation server but there also needs to be some form of “protection” beyond the existence of the developer!
The problem is that for a major version you need to pay , and people don’t want to pay for an upgrade if it only fixes bugs that shouldn’t be there in the first place.
And people who don’t experience issues don’t upgrade to something that just fixes (for them) unrelated issues without introducing something new.
But the backlog is loaded with requests for new features and feature upgrades. If there are also bug fixes in the backlog, it seems to be because they’re waiting for a redesign of major components of PhotoLab.
Om windows at least you can transfer the correct keys and folders and it wint ask for activation.
I’ve done multiple reinstalls and i had no need to activate again. Normally i would always had to ask dxo support to free up an activation when I went to another laptop , or reinstalled windows.
Backing up everything from the registry , and from the programdata folder , program files folder, %appdata% folder and %localappdata% folder seems enough for me.
Actually it’s 3 respectively 2 concurrent activations/installations with a single one in use at a time.
So you can have PL Elite installed on a couple of workstations and a laptop and work on either one of them but only one at a time.
If you choose to get a new machine, simply uninstall PL from the old one and contact DxO support and tell them to release that third license on that specific device.
After which you can install and activate the third licence again.
I can’t speak for others, but if all the major parity issues were resolved, the unfinished features were finished and a couple of the backlogged features were finally added, I would pay in a heart beat…
Mark
And some of them ought not to be particularly difficult to implement (tho, of course, that’s very easy for me to say !) … Such as this one, just to pick one “simple” example; (which, as of now, has 46 votes !)
Addressing the suggestion back-log would also be a great way to make users feel “listened to”.
John M
First reaction, I am less or more OK with Joanna.
But before reading the following posts, I thought that DxO needs to generate revenue to survive !
I find that the price of updates is set at the limit of acceptance, so if there are only bug fixes, it will be revised downward.
The work made by DxO PL is probably made as internal function in modern smartphones, perhaps by a software provided by DxO.
The future of our activity is in decline, like human activities, if we want to save the planet…
To answer the initial question, I would like to have the panorama stitching, at least, and that would be a real new function.
And also more cleaver automatic repairing tool, another real improvement ; for example to erase a person in a various landscape ; some softwares say they are able to.
Did have a sollicitation for beta tesxting ? I received a post from Captain PO, but it was ambiguous.
Why? Isn’t that sort of thing better suited to a pixel based editor, like Photoshop / Affinity Photo (which already have the feature)? What I mean is I can’t see that the coding required to do this in PL’s native (‘RAW’) working environment would be anything but complicated and perhaps more importantly add a big overhead to the on-screen rendering and final export of the image.
Absolutely! Even CaptureOne creates a DNG file then with no longer access to the RAW parts, and there are literally dozens of other apps around to perform already better than a newly developed “Panorama” tab of PL could do. I very much agree, there are more important holes to fill.
You have cons, I am Ok with you but there are also pros :