The reason I ask is that I have PL5 Elite and Nik4 (I'll upgrade these when the price drops to a reasonable upgrade level-DxO charges too much for upgrades, negating their advantage over Adobe's subscription model and the least they can do is cut the upgrade price to 50% of its current level to reward loyal customers!) and I've been frustrated that Perspective Efex (which I thought basically replaced ViewPoint, but apparently not) and the other Nik plug-ins can't handle RAW files (plus PE needs the original file to work). Perhaps this is the thing that will make me finally convert an image in two ways and combine the two with masks later to get exactly what I want out of an image.Please confirm if one can use ViewPoint 4 within the PL6 space as a first step before applying other corrections (such as tonality/color). I definitely like to have the choice, and knowing that it is possible I will certainly play with that slider a lot in upcoming conversions. The standard value of 0 gives a little more sharpness, but for the cost of more noise in the uniform background than I could see in the image that was developed by PL5 with DeepPrime. When I choose to eliminate all the noise (-100 on the slider), the background turns out very smooth, while not giving up that much fine sharpness. I tested it on a macro image with a background that should be mostly uniform, so any difference in noise will be very visible there. The thing distinguishing DeepPrime XD from DeepPrime (or rather: PL6 from PL5, because in PL6 the slider is there for both DeepPrime and DeepPrime XD) is the addition of a slider ("Rauschmodell", translates to "noise model") to decide how much noise you are willing to exchange for more sharpness. Here are some samples, utilizing both DeepPrime XD at "magic wand" default levels and the Wide Gamut (K-3 at ISOs 5000, 4000, 2000, and 500, respectively, all processed to taste you can view full-res JPEGs on my SmugMug website by clicking on the samples):
DXO PHOTOLAB 6 ELITE TRIAL
I will upgrade from PL5 as soon as my budget allows, although I'm hoping to get a slightly better deal when my trial expires or in the Black Friday sales. I did notice that with some images I will have to use the "Protect saturated colours" slider a bit more to avoid colour clipping, but the results still look better than before. Encouraged by SmugMug's recent announcement that they now retain wider colour spaces of uploaded images, I also gave the DxO Wide Gamut a try, which indeed leads to richer, more natural-looking colours on my BenQ SW2700 when I switch it to AdobeRGB.
Played around fairly extensively with the trial version of PL6 and came away quite impressed with the DeepPrime XD noise reduction, which is significantly more effective in removing noise than the regular DeepPrime and also better at retaining meaningful detail.
What are your thoughts, will you upgrade or even get it new (209€ for the PL6 Elite version is steep though!)?
ViewPoint 4 seems even less enticing when you already have version 3. "Expanded working colour gamut for increased accuracy" and Soft Proofing - don't think I would benefit from that in a significant way. The ReTouch Tool looks nice, but I can achieve what I want within FastStone I will probably have a look at the test version though. I don't think I need more or better than what DeepPrime already offers. So if that stays true for the next major version, I will probably upgrade then. I currently have PL5 Elite and could upgrade for 99€.
DXO PHOTOLAB 6 ELITE SOFTWARE
See DxO PhotoLab 6: The most advanced RAW photo editing software and Why upgrade? - Compare your version - DxO to compare what the newest version has that yours has not.
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