yes, unfortunately. it would be nice if the products were combined. as i no longer take part in every update, i’m probably no longer a beta tester.
If I was sarcastic, I would say that DXO can not kill its goose that lays the golden egg.
Everything said here goes towards common sense but I doubt we could be heard. It’s not only the thoughts of dxo’s customers but also of “external” actors of the photography that review DXO product and point some incoherences for example when we should add a FP to get a luminosity mask already offered by the competitors.
New features are released sparingly and dispatched among the DXO products to force us to subscribe in all the products sometimes just for one feature needed like the luminosity mask that should be part of PhotoLab and that is not a specific feature of that add-on…
Should we buy all the add-ons to compose a product 100% operational ? It’s a marketing strategy but one thing to keep in mind is that Dxo is a professional product designed mainly for professional photographers and our annual budget allocated for a Photo solution is a huge part of our buying decision. I have updated my PL, and NIK but not FP this year after leaving Dxo for Lightroom but I’m already tired to juggle with add-ons , their updates, the features that are “already” in PL and that are “just” waiting to be activated (one hundred of euros more…) . I would appreciate to play with the luminosity mask but I will not update my FP only for that new feature that once again is not a specific FP feature and should be available for all the DXO products included the Nik software. I believe it’s only included into one of the Nik softwares (SilverFx). It’s really frustrating to see how a company can ruin it potential in a very competitive market and knowing it suffered from bankruptcy in 2018.
All those hidden features and costs are not sustainable in a professional activity and I ask myself if finally it’s not worse than the subscription business model of an Adobe that finally offers more for cheaper. It’s not only features that needs the successor of PL7 but a complete review of all the products and a long term strategic vision before the next bankruptcy…
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This is something that I have posted so many times now that I’ve lost track. Filmpack and Viewpoint are not traditional add-ins to PhotoLab. The functionality for both are already built into PhotoLab. All that a license for those two products does is unhide those features. Of course, in addition, you also get a standalone version of each but I never install them or use them.
If you want the full PhotoLab experience you need PhotoLab Elite, Viewpoint, and FilmPack. Besides providing a standalone version for Viewpoint and FilmPack, this approach also allows users to purchase most of the PhotoLab experience for a lot less money by not purchasing those additional licenses.
Most of us long-term users on this site understand the value of owning all three. Is it an expensive proposition? Yes of course. But for me, and many others here, it is well worth the cost.
Mark
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Bad example. No bakery sells any cake for which a customer needs two extra licenses to eat the cream and the cherries included in the cake. And btw., a standalone version of film pack or Viewpoint has what kind of value in a RAW workflow? Is there any other company selling RAW converter licenses around which is ripping off their customers for this kind of “extras”? I don’t know any.
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If nobody has mentioned this yet, I hope they improve the chromatic aberration removal tool, because that feature is trailing behind most other PP software.
PureRAW 4 doesn’t even seem like it applies CA removal on some lens profiles, even when it is selected. I clicked to turn it on or off, and I saw zero changes in the file. Yes, I’ll submit this issue to DxO support.
Edit to add that I would LOVE to see an option to view RAW files in PL7/8, click on one or select multiples and then be able to export them to PureRAW 4 (or successor) with two clicks. Right now I have to click a file in PL7, select “Reveal Image in Finder”, then click on the highlighted file in Finder and select “Open in Pure RAW4”. It can only select one file at a time, so it becomes a longer process than it needs to be. I’m on a MacBook Pro.
Would you like to explain (briefly) the reason for exporting from PL to PR when you can already do everything in PL?
PR is a subset of PL. The only thing missing is the new Denoise model, but I see no reason why DxO shouldn’t include it in their premium product.
That’s what I assume, too … He want’s to use the latest denoising algorithm.
Let’s hope that we will see XD2 in autumn in a new PL version, too
Regarding the “premium product”: I don’t feel that I’m a customer of a premium product. Too many features which are already available are missing here …
Sounds obvious V8 will get XD2.
Yes, to everybody here it does sound obvious but we all know that DxO do their own thing so until v8 is released no one actually knows.
I do the culling in PL7E first, mark them based on their sharpness/quality and then would like to select the best ones to send into PureRAW 4 to process for noise.
I understand your point if PL8E is going to get the same type of noise reduction option that PureRAW 4 already has, but if they update PureRAW to version 5 and it ends up having some kind of advantage over PL8E, I would want that option to be available now, or in the future.
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Deep Prime XD2, redesigned UI to including real time full frame preview like in PureRaw4 are most likley changes since they have been implemented in the PureRaw already.
Hopefully we will get them in PL and not in an update of FilmPack like the masking imnprovements with luminosity masks last year …
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I imagine this time they won’t have much of a choice. They need something for PL8 and these are both existing changes they probably developed already and expected changes by the users. so I would imagine they have already committed to it. Besides, film pack does not DeepPrime and already has full frame preview. Also I think we can expect stuff they added in Nik Collection , improvements to selection point masking.
IF they don’t, this would certainly mean that photolab would be abandoned (by DxO).
(Unless photolab’s code is so problematic that it poses huge technical problems for them to insert this new “module”. I don’t think so).
But photolab is their flagship product and it’s an extremely eagerly-awaited update (so it certainly won’t come before version 8, but as an important asset to sell that version).
maybe viewpoint ? 
I hope all problems we have seen with PL7 are the sign of a transformation of the software’s basic structure, and that once everything is settled, photolab will be able to evolve much more rapidly.