Woke up this morning and saw some announcements about DxO Photolab 7. Checked what this year's new features are and to be honest, I'm quizzical about it. The last few years have had substantial upgrades added like Deep Prime, control lines and that kind of thing, but I'm at a loss as to what the current set of changes will add compared to the prior version 6.
Here's what their site lists as new compared to v6:
Color calibration
LUT support
Local corrections palette for a cleaner interface
ColowWheel (HSL) correction available in local adjustments
DxO Styles and renderings for a distinctive starting point
Black and white workflow
Channel mixer (previously only available with FilmPack)
OMDnext wrote:
A quick review of new v7 by Roger Whaley
?si=R9XqC4sVqvR1k_Be
Thanks for that! Explains the changes much better than the website.
For my purposes, it looks like local adjustments are much improved in that they now have a whole section in the right hand menus, rather than the floating adjustments in the image. It looks like that will make it much easier to be precise about them.
I don't think it's a big change in the way that control lines or Deep Prime were, but for usability it may help out a lot. The clunky menu with the current/old local adjustments put me off from using them much. The upgrade might help with that.
Will probably do my usual of waiting until it's on sale in late Oct/Nov and getting the upgrade then.
So far as I can tell, no change in the DeepPRIME noise reduction technology than what is currently available in Photolab 6. Therefore, I'll probably wait until the Thanksgiving sale to upgrade.
They did it again. They linked their new luminosity mask to FilmPack 7.
The channel mixer was previously available only with the purchase of filmpack but is now fully integrated, so it took the opposite way.
The idea that they are so good that they can postpone for a few years the full integration inside DPL of some tools seems ridiculous to me.
They should really stop trying to push artifically their other softwares. In the long term, I guess that it will harm them. It's really starting to harm them in my mind at least. It's petty, I hope that their calculation about this strategy is right (or maybe I secretly start to hope that it's wrong). Their business, not mine.
The lut implementation would have been nice but DPL is not my main software anymore. The improvements in the UI of the local adjustments are welcome (but were long overdue). The calibration tool is nice if you don't use any third party software like I do (Lumariver).
I mostly use it as a denoiser these days, so there is really not enough improvements for me to upgrade. I think that it will be the first time since I bought DPL3 that I won't upgrade...
I upgraded to PL7 and FilmPack 7. The local corrections are now more refined and rich - the Luminosity masks add important flexibility. There are more color profiles to choose from. The changes may look incremental, but I don't mind supporting the company. Overall, I like what they are doing. I understand the point that PL7 and FilmPack 7 might have been a single product.
Upgrading from PL5 to PL7 will cost $109. Add DxO FilmPack 7 for another $139 and the total comes to $248.
New customers can buy DxO PhotoLab + DxO FilmPack for a time limited offer of $229. New customers make out better than current DXO PL5 licence holders. Not good for me...
exdeejjjaaaa wrote:
crap... it is creating a simple matrix profile, no luts in it ... total junk
I didn't take time to inspect the profile created with it, but you're right, a simple matrix profile. Why ? So useless... Most users will find out in the end that their new profile have stranger colors than the other dcp or icc profiles... Not a clever idea.
exdeejjjaaaa wrote:
they even did not bother to give an option to have a bigger preview window so that people with proper GPU can select something better than keyhole
That is their method to not slow things down during editing. The time I added when exporting.
First time I've been pleased with their policies. I upgraded from 4 to 6 last week or the week before but I decided to hit the upgrade button again to see how much more I'd have to spend. The price? 0.0.
masimo wrote:
First time I've been pleased with their policies. I upgraded from 4 to 6 last week or the week before but I decided to hit the upgrade button again to see how much more I'd have to spend. The price? 0.0.
Within 30 days they will honour it but most companies do that. Anything outside of that and you are out of luck. DXO is not flexible on that.
