Well, nobody is saying that it’s not a neat and powerful feature. But it’s more in the realm of photoediting, rather than of a RAW editor.
They are welcome to add to PL any extra feature they want… but first it should do perfectly what is expected from a RAW editor (colors, exposure, curves, denoise, correction of aberrations).
There are a number of PhotoLab features which require significant improvement, but I think you probably know that it is unlikely that many, or even any, of them will be addressed in the near future. Given your obvious lack of satisfaction with it and the unlikelihood of any significant improvement to those features in the short term, why you continue to use it?
Mark
I used to use a professionnal software (not a photo editing software) with some unique and wonderfull features. But with some real shortcomings. I liked this software.
Each new release announced new features which, on paper, gave the impression that the important features needed to meet the demands of professionals were present, compared to the features, on paper, of competitors. Shortcomings have never been resolved.
This software no longer exists. Its competitors remain.
Looks like DxO does not aim professionnals as a priority target.
They rather target enthousiast photographers who have a lot of time to devote to their hobbies, and do not need efficients tools (efficient does not mean lower quality !) and are ok to deal with lot of compromises and work arounds…
Maybe (probably) DxO is stucked in a so old architecture that modernising it is above their possibilities.
if there was no option at all to see the image at full quality i would agree but we can see the image correctly at 75% zoom
why not at 45% or other user definable level?
Because I paid for it, and a as a consequence I expect a completely working product?
And not a low price : a price that would suggest that this is a top level, modern and completly working software.
As DxO communication suggests too.
Some features are top level (denoising - part of camera-lens corrections) - but whole software is “archaic” in lot of parts.
(Not to mention the major bugs that had a hard time being resolved when the latest version was released, giving users the impression of buying a beta version).
I am a professional photographer and a professional printer. I sell prints of my images and print other photographers’ files.
I have been using PhotoLab since PL1, after quitting the Adobe cash extraction machine.
I also used to work as a consultant software engineer and understand what it takes to render high resolution images that have to be demosaïced on the fly.
Take a moment and consider how long it takes to export a de-noised image. Then think that, in order to show such a “perfect” image on screen, it may take just as long.
Now imagine that every tiny adjustment you make invokes the same rendering procedure that exporting does. And it’s no good saying that they should cache the intermediate results because it is still an in-memory process and, without a lot of computing power, it’s still going to take time.
Which is more than likely why, in order not to put off those who can’t afford a powerful enough computer, they compromise on full screen rendering at lower zoom levels.
Getting a sufficient approximate preview of corrections at reduced size is not the only and maybe not the worse shortcoming and “archaism” of PL.
I’m pretty sure you understand that.
What makes it easier to do at 75% and above than other sizes ? I ask this to the consultant software engineer here.
Is there a real reason ?
Interpolation errors are less significant at higher magnification levels, so it becomes easier to determine which side of a pixel boundary to place the next pixel.
So that’s not related to “render high resolution images that have to be demosaïced on the fly” as I understand.
It seems so that this is not related to any photolab specifictiy compared to any other demosaicer which have this feature (correct me if I’m wrong) ?
Or maybe this feature on other demosaicers get so wrong results that it is in fact not really usable (trustable) ?
What is your take on this ?
ok so that implies that it is certainly possible to reduce the zoom level and still get a high quality preview but it’s just not made available because it might take a bit longer
PL leaves it up to users to decide which denoise algo to use, why not give us the choice of what zoom level/time penalty we find appropriate?
hardware has moved on a lot since PL1
But it still doesn’t show the fully de-noised image, no matter what the zoom level, until you actually export the image and look at that image.
As have the sizes of camera RAW files.
It seems there are two problems with previews here: denoise results and preview colors.
That’s a very valid rationale. I think LR Denoise AI doesn’t show the results “live” (it’s said to be even slower than DxO DeepPRIME) but it has a “Loupe” tool to see the results for image fragments. So it is not true that “every other software” shows all the corrections results. That said, PhotoLab should provide users with a preview option to view the 100% outcome without having to go through export and they should rework the ‘Magnifier tool’.
But on the other hand, the CA corrections do not require that much calculations. When I started using PL, I was tricked several times into doing wrong WB corrections just because the colors at 70% looked different than at 75% (happens rarely to me but still happens). Now that I know that, I can live with it, but still I would prefer having correct colors at all magnifications, at least on my rather high-end workstation (I use my low-end laptop to preview the exported jpegs, without DP applied, when I’m in the field, so no problem with that).
Isn’t that a pureraw4 feature (I think it is ?) ? Which would mean it will be pl8 feature too.
An important weakness solved if I’m not wrong about this !
What percentage of DxO users fall into each of those two categories?
What percentage of DxO users are currently pleased, vs. frustrated?
What should DxO’s priorities be?
I don’t know, I don’t have PR. But DeepPRIME 100% preview in PL should be on demand only, otherwise many PL users would go crazy.
I think the old code and way DXO renders images was chosen to be fully displayed upon export with some computationally intensive effects, like noise reduction with ML etc. They have reworked this in PureRAW 4, but not yet in PhotoLab 7, we can only hope they do it in version 8.
In the mean time, workarounds include exporting the file and using it as compare mode to preview results, or simply exporting and seeing it outside of PhotoLab, which is not ideal but considering automated noise reduction is pretty much automated, generally I just export and often don’t worry about it. Its not a deal breaker for me, but I agree it is about time DXO changes the way the results are previewed in application itself.
I agree with you that “live” DeepPrime at any zoom level is not needed (the loupe is fine for that.
But all the other corrections (CA, sharpening, etc) should be applied indeed, at any zoom level, as they are not that intensive. And anyway, as said thousands of times: leave it as an user-selectable option. Since that 75% limit is defined by a SW variable, let the user select his own value. If DXO would be willing to take the few minutes to recompile a beta build with only that 75 changed to 25 or 40 (and nothing else in the code!), I would be glad to evaluate how it works. Almost zero effort.