You can complain all you want but at the end of the day see where it gets you. You will still have three choices, and sooner or later you will probably decide on one of them. Move to other software, stay with a crippled version of PhotoLab without Viewpoint and FilmPack, or buy into the whole PhotoLab suite. It is only a question of time. This is my last comment on this fruitless thread.
Mark
your efforts to quell the discontent by promoting a certain narrative about the absence of other options are surely appreciated in some quarters
I am not trying to quell discontent. I couldnât care less about all this complaining. But I do think itâs a waste of time and will not reap anything beneficial. .
I have been on this site daily for over six years. This thread is nothing new. I have seen many groups of similar angry malcontents come and go over the years. Whatever you think the objectives of this thread are they will not pan out and sooner or later you will realize that and grow tired of posting negative rants that go nowhere. Eventually you will simply stop. In the meantime I will remain on the sidelines and reserve the right to occasionally put in my two cents .
Mark
yet you are here 
The obvious way out of the annoying gold digger arrangements is to learn to use Darktable.
I paid for Adobe for years and found out that this free raw editor actually outperforms most features in ACR and Lightroom regarding pure raw management. And you can still have a free version of the latest Bridge installed together with an eternal license for Affinity Photo 2 for pixel extensions. Darktable promises that AI never will interfere with your personal editing. Darktable is not hard to learn - it just looks and works different, but for good reasons.
DxO is providing PureRAW 3 to manage noise and sharpness, probably the best app for that job at the moment, and the output DNGs are easily edited in Darktable. I consider the combination described to be perfect. And the constant drain from your money tank stops.
I am the accidental owner of Photolab 7, and I have not so far been able to make a raw file look better than it can be done with Darktable. And I would not hesitate to admit such a success in PL7 - as the end result of my editing remains the primary parameter, no matter which editor.
surely not ⊠PL7 is much better at controlling output before running conversion to DNG to use further ⊠also I take it that you do not use optical corrections ? which for Fuji cameras and certain Sony cameras requires you for certain lenses ( mostly on wide end of focal distances ) to select focusing distance manually per shot to achieve best results - can you do this in PR ?
right - I take it you switch DP or DPXD off in PureRaw ⊠because thatâs âAIâ, absent in DT and not kosher (AI that is) ?
what is âpure raw managementâ or it was meant to be âpureâ raw management ( like we do not have hidden brightness correction stuff and so on )
Your presumptions are wrong, captain noname, and your aggression hidden behind a foolâs anonymity is annoying.
I am merely informing general public mostly unware about the pitfalls of using PR instead of full PL ⊠
Thank you for this detailed explanation, Mark.
It would make sense IF Photolab (a raw editor), FilmPack (a film simulation tool) and ViewPoint (advanced geometry corrections tool) were different and independent products, and I wouldnât dare to challenge it then, as this would be completely legitimate for DxO to price them the way they want.
What I canât accept, and still hope DxO will correct, is that to fully benefit from full functionalities from the raw editor (as luminosity masks obviously should be, and is advertised for) you have to purchase the extra products which have no logical link.
To support this view, I even recall reading on a post that Luminosity masks were in fact included in PL code, but only activated if you puchased FilmPack !
This is what I call unfair, and shady marketing practices
I sincerely hope DxO will thrive, and I am confident it has a great potential to do so, with the unsurpassed quality of denoising it offers, maybe positioning itself in a âreal, optics drivenâ correction compared to AI fluff, but this would mean respecting loyal customers instead of trying all short term 2000 âget rich in 3 clicksâ marketing tactics.
in short, I love DxO, but hate their marketing plansâŠ
Iâm a user who upgraded every year since Optics Pro but not this year. Even though lâm a LrC user most of the time I like to see the PL rendering sometimes and I like to support DxO as they were the first to offer dissent color and camera profiles (with C1) and innovative denoising. I updated to FP6 and NC just out of loyalty and to strengthen competition, I donât use it. But this year I felt sucked out for very little value and my loyalty would be overstretched. I would like to see DxO to be as loyal to their customers as we are to them.
Furthermore DxO needs to come with time saving (AI) innovations, which gives them again a unique selling position. Example, for me being mostly in people photography I would like to see more automated dodge & burn (skin) retouching, for less frequency separation sauce. And intelligent sharpening.
I support and upgrade DXO since 2009 but not this year: Iâm on Viewpoint4, Filmpack5 Elite and PL6 last version and I could not be happier for waht I need. Moreover I do not want to pay relatively much money for having a new UI which does not make my life easier without real progress. So if there would be something convincing in the future, an upgrade and paying for it is more than welcome.
Ce Forum existe pour que les gens partagent leurs opinions. Parler câest essayer de faire avancer les choses. Et la critique est une chose nĂ©cessaire Ă toute Ă©volution, elle peut ĂȘtre positive pour DxoâŠ
Je suis dâaccord avec lâĂ©metteur du post, les pratiques marketing de Dxo sont douteuses sur cette mise Ă jour.
JâapprĂ©cie Ă©normĂ©ment ce logiciel qui me rend des services au quotidien mais je nâai pas effectuĂ© la mise Ă jour PL7 pour cette raison. Dâautres utilisateurs que je connais lâon fait et on eu le sentiment dâavoir une vente forcĂ©e avec lâobligation dâacheter la mise Ă jour FP pour bĂ©nĂ©ficier des fonctionnalitĂ©s promises sur la base PL7.
A trop vouloir gagner, en ce qui me concerne, vous avez perdu. Je nâai pas fait la mise Ă jour.
JâespĂšre que Dxo reviendra a un marketing plus honnĂȘte⊠ces pratiques mâattristent.
After an deepl-translation of your french post, I can agree with you. Maybe they can do it like they did with the integration of some geometrical tranformations from viewpoint.
I think the whole point of a forum is that you can complain and maybe even get results.
If you feel complaints and /or negative comments are wrong then YOU are in the wrong place.
Agreed, at least partially.
If the reason for complaint is too painful to bear, then complaining will not help much, specially if others have to act, which, in turn, will increase their pain. And if nothing happens from their side, oneâs own action might help, but it wont be free either.
Iâm no fan of moving functionaluty out of a product and into another to increase revenue. But DxO will stick to it as long as it works, as long as people buy their products.
There is a way out of this trap though: Check out the bundles and buy when prices are discounted ⊠or donât buy.
Topaz have gone that way very successfully with Photo AI so DxO would be playing catch up to some extent.
I own the latest version of everything and am kind of caught in the mill as I never want to pay full price for the products again so keep updating to take advantage of the lower rate.
The reason I do it is that I keep coming back to Photolab, every time. Iâve used Topaz, LR and C1 and theyâre great in some areas, not so in others, but all things considered, and despite itâs foibles, I find Photolab most suited to what I want to do with my pictures
You are right, it might be catch-up, but not against Topaz PhotoAI as this is still (V2.4.0) far too heavy handed for my taste. I now use EvotoAI for portrait retouch, but it is useless for any other genre. A more general dodge & burn module could be used for landscape images too.
Yep. it is sad but true that features that should be in PL7 such as luminosity masks and fine contrast are instead only in the expensive, unrelated and niche product filmpack. In my view a poor commercial decision since it reduces the effectiveness of DxO relative to competitors and also brings into question the integrity of DxO but these are the facts so you make your own decisions based on them. Personally I now use v6 for raw processing and then continue in Lightroom. I havenât subscribed to v7 so DxO have lost my contribution for that and I expect that to continue until the main program has material upgrades that I canât afford to miss, or until LR improves raw processing to DxO standards in which case I can drop DxO with little conscience.