Just purchased PhotoLab 6 Elite for € 219,- and tested it for 8 day’s. Use Capture one 23 at the moment, but don’t like their new upgrade policy and used Lightroom before that 10 years ago. Also tested Lightroom lates version.
My conclusion is PhotoLab 6 is a very capable RAW developper/editor but compare to Lightroom years behind with Artificial Intelligence implementation.
DeepPrime XD is OK, but Topaz Denoise that I have does a much better job.
Adobe Lightroom with Photoshop (on all devices) and 20gig cloud storage go’s for € 12,00 including VAT that I get back as a company so that comes to € 9,92,- = € 119,- a year
When I want to upgrade my PhotoLab 6 to 7 is will cost me 50% of € 219,- = € 109,50 so for € 9,50 more I have LightRoom, Photoshop on all platforms/devices and 20 gig storage.
If I want I can go from Photoshop to Lightroom and visa versa to use plugins in the application instead of creating a tiff in a other application like (Photoshop and Affinity Photo) in PhotoLab 6.
All with all I like DXO PhotoLab 6, but I wonder why it’s so expensive compare to what you get from Adobe. In my case I always update to the latest updates and upgrades.
market decides - company is able to charge whatever enough customers are willing to pay … plus do you homework to time your purchase vs expected reduction in price around certain days of the year
PhotoLab is an expensive product, and more so if you add in FilmPack to get features such as creative vignette, micro-contrast, blur, and split toning (besides film simulations).
As in most things, we have to balance the cost and features to pick what will do what we need done.
It’s hard, from the outside, to know why DxO has picked the pricing model it has.
… or vice versa.
Before the Adobe subscription, PhotoLab C1 and Lr were the same price.
Adobe can afford what the other two can’t.
Or, as said: “market decides - company is able to charge whatever enough customers are willing to pay”.
Not sure of your basis for that opinion. I own both, and in my opinion Topaz DeNoise AI is very noticably inferior to DeepPRIME XD, especially on cropped images. As a result, I only use Denoise AI for non raw files since DeepPRIME and DeepPRIME XD processing is only available for raw files.
A few years ago,Photolab had a big edge when it came to noise reduction. Now not so much. Unless you’re examining images at magnification, I think you would be hard pressed to see a real difference.
And even then (" at magnification") it all comes to your personal experience/preferences and specific images and specific app NR parameters and NOT any quantitative metric no matter what magnification one dials in … one example in one spot will show artefacts in DxO another example in another spot will shot artefacts in Topaz, etc… so really it comes to personal conveniences and budgets
even a metric can fool - say Dynamic Range graphs… they, for example, don’t account for a pattern noise ( Pattern Noise: DSNU and PRNU - Learn ) that some sensors can exhibit ( think old generations Canon sensors, not they were great DR-wise, but even then those DR numbers were not taking into account Canon’s ugly shadows when pushed ) …
Independent whether the price is expensive or not, you are not forced to upgrade every year with Photolab, which I consider a big advantage. Personally, I did not see any advantage in PL6 over PL5, so I did not upgrade and the price can be compared to at least 2 years of subscription with Lightroom.
Thanks for the article ;). That’s why I wrote “personally”. There are many features that I would like and make me buy a new version, for example better masking, smart albums, the possibility to sort your pictures in a custom order (at least in the projects), the possibility to compare two pictures side by side, better color modifications (e.g. better tone curve interface, or other interfaces like C1’s color balance etc), HSV color wheel in local adjustments, … By the way, all these functions exist in the competitors products.
I find DeepPRIME is plenty for the vast majority of my images and in my tests, Topaz can do a similar job. Sometimes a bit better, sometimes a bit worse. But Topaz DeNoise AI only does de-noising. With DeepPRIME and DeepPRIME XD (which does have its uses for me) you get a whole darkroom application thrown in.
Topaz have now moved on to Photo AI which combines their previous 3 image quality apps. Still has some quirks but its very good. They have weekly updates and pay attention to the feedback so its developing nicely.
I also am having to use Affinity a lot more its a bit of a struggle after only using DxO products for many years. The refusal to allow phone DNGs is my reason but reinforced by getting a a6700 after the shutter on my a6000 packed up. Most other programs can now read its RAW (or have said when they will do so) but as usual no word from DxO as to when they will support it so by then I may be using Affinity for everything!
thanks for the statement. I’ve forgot this point, but this was one of the first reasons I used AP for my Smartphone DNG’s.
But I’m also honest…for the few high ISO photos I take, I get out my PL5 and edit with it. And if all the, still not fixed, little things we keep mentioning would finally be improved, I might consider buying an update again.
I disagree on that point, the samples I see from Topaz Denoise is not at the same level as any DeepPrime version. But of course, Topaz works on jpg…
I agree that Adobe makes some fine products where it may be faster to get a good result. But as I like to have full control and do most of the processing / selection manually I stick with PL and Affinity Photo.
