DocBobB
Leading Member
I began the quest when I saw the thread in this forum about Exposure Software having no announcements of new Exposure X7 upgrades this fall. https://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/66539299
I have been a happy user since 2015 when the company was called Alien Skin. So I began to think about what I would do if it became abandonware. Last fall I bought DXO PhotoLab 5 Elite on Black Friday and truth be told I love it’s basic RAW development, with sharpness and noise control much better than X7, and ClearView Plus, but Exposure X7 beat it hands down for creative work… vignetting, colour filters, perspective control, overlays like skies, creative masking for bokeh and many other features alien to PL5 including much better keywording. And I need keywording.
At first I thought that On1 Raw 2023 was the perfect answer. Keyword, No Noise and Tack Sharp AI’s made it seem as if it could be a one stop replacement. What a disappointment. If you like sharpening artifacts and halos you’ll love No Noise and Tack Sharp but when you dial down the heat to something natural looking the results don’t hold a candle to DXO Deep Prime. It is also slow on my core I7 laptop with 8 gig of RAM and a fast video card. Keywording too was a big disappointment. Keyword AI suggests only generic things like “sky” and “people”. If you do stock photos then all this is useful, but I use my own controlled vocabulary which can identify specific people, styles, objects and the like. In order to attach these keywords you have to search for them one at a time. There is no list of recent keywords or a list of say the 50 most common keywords in the database. By the way, PL5 and 6 work the same way. Pretty unsophisticated. Ignoring the shortcomings just listed I did some development and creative work with it and got better results with my usual X7-PL5 workflow. So today I uninstalled it 3 days before the 14 day trial finished.
I looked at other keywording options to supplement a PL5 workflow - Photo Mechanic, IMatch and Photo Supreme. Let’s dispense with Photo mechanic. Its advantage is that it is very fast, but adding keywords works just like PL5 or ON1, no lists of recent or common keywords.
iMatch and Photo Supreme both have these lists and keywording is actually almost fun. The iMatch user interface is busy, complex and visually cluttered, so out it goes. Photo Supreme has it all - a really excellent program with a clean and easily understood UI. The issue with Photo Supreme (and iMatch) is the need to import everything to a catalogue, so moving files and folders has to be done from within the program in order to keep the database in sync with the file tree. Since I move and delete files and folders much more often that I do keywording, it is too much bother for me to use these cataloguers.
So I’m back to my usual Exposure X7 and DXO PL5 and as long as X7 keeps working I’ll keep using it.
What about the new DXO PL6 upgrade? I downloaded the trial. There are 4 significant new features. One is soft proofing. I print so this is helpful for me. Another is a wide gamut colour space, which by the time of printing is reduced to Epson’s RGB anyway, so I don’t need it. The third is DeepPrime XD which by my tests is definitely superior to DeepPrime and gives me sharper images with visibly less noise. Yes exporting is slower than with Deep Prime but not a deal breaker. I shoot Micro Four-Thirds so this is a real advantage. But the best surprise is that they have included perspective control in the Elite version and it is better and faster than Exposure X7’s. DXO Viewpoint, a paid add-on, does even more but the new included controls are enough for me. So I will upgrade to PL6 and keep Exposure X7 for keywording and the other creative edits mentioned in the first paragraph.
There you have it. Most of the new grass isn’t greener.
My $0.02, YMMV.
--
Bob B
In use: Olympus OMD E-M1 mkii; OMD EM-1 mki; mZuiko12~100; m.Zuiko 100-400; Panasonic 45-175 PZ; Pan/Leica 25mm f1.4; m.zuiko 75-300; Rokinon 7.5 fisheye; Zuiko 50mm macro and EC14; Zuiko 50~200 ED, fl36, old e-510.
On the shelf: e30, EC20, 18~180, 14~42, 40~150, Zuiko12~60,
I have been a happy user since 2015 when the company was called Alien Skin. So I began to think about what I would do if it became abandonware. Last fall I bought DXO PhotoLab 5 Elite on Black Friday and truth be told I love it’s basic RAW development, with sharpness and noise control much better than X7, and ClearView Plus, but Exposure X7 beat it hands down for creative work… vignetting, colour filters, perspective control, overlays like skies, creative masking for bokeh and many other features alien to PL5 including much better keywording. And I need keywording.
At first I thought that On1 Raw 2023 was the perfect answer. Keyword, No Noise and Tack Sharp AI’s made it seem as if it could be a one stop replacement. What a disappointment. If you like sharpening artifacts and halos you’ll love No Noise and Tack Sharp but when you dial down the heat to something natural looking the results don’t hold a candle to DXO Deep Prime. It is also slow on my core I7 laptop with 8 gig of RAM and a fast video card. Keywording too was a big disappointment. Keyword AI suggests only generic things like “sky” and “people”. If you do stock photos then all this is useful, but I use my own controlled vocabulary which can identify specific people, styles, objects and the like. In order to attach these keywords you have to search for them one at a time. There is no list of recent keywords or a list of say the 50 most common keywords in the database. By the way, PL5 and 6 work the same way. Pretty unsophisticated. Ignoring the shortcomings just listed I did some development and creative work with it and got better results with my usual X7-PL5 workflow. So today I uninstalled it 3 days before the 14 day trial finished.
I looked at other keywording options to supplement a PL5 workflow - Photo Mechanic, IMatch and Photo Supreme. Let’s dispense with Photo mechanic. Its advantage is that it is very fast, but adding keywords works just like PL5 or ON1, no lists of recent or common keywords.
iMatch and Photo Supreme both have these lists and keywording is actually almost fun. The iMatch user interface is busy, complex and visually cluttered, so out it goes. Photo Supreme has it all - a really excellent program with a clean and easily understood UI. The issue with Photo Supreme (and iMatch) is the need to import everything to a catalogue, so moving files and folders has to be done from within the program in order to keep the database in sync with the file tree. Since I move and delete files and folders much more often that I do keywording, it is too much bother for me to use these cataloguers.
So I’m back to my usual Exposure X7 and DXO PL5 and as long as X7 keeps working I’ll keep using it.
What about the new DXO PL6 upgrade? I downloaded the trial. There are 4 significant new features. One is soft proofing. I print so this is helpful for me. Another is a wide gamut colour space, which by the time of printing is reduced to Epson’s RGB anyway, so I don’t need it. The third is DeepPrime XD which by my tests is definitely superior to DeepPrime and gives me sharper images with visibly less noise. Yes exporting is slower than with Deep Prime but not a deal breaker. I shoot Micro Four-Thirds so this is a real advantage. But the best surprise is that they have included perspective control in the Elite version and it is better and faster than Exposure X7’s. DXO Viewpoint, a paid add-on, does even more but the new included controls are enough for me. So I will upgrade to PL6 and keep Exposure X7 for keywording and the other creative edits mentioned in the first paragraph.
There you have it. Most of the new grass isn’t greener.
My $0.02, YMMV.
--
Bob B
In use: Olympus OMD E-M1 mkii; OMD EM-1 mki; mZuiko12~100; m.Zuiko 100-400; Panasonic 45-175 PZ; Pan/Leica 25mm f1.4; m.zuiko 75-300; Rokinon 7.5 fisheye; Zuiko 50mm macro and EC14; Zuiko 50~200 ED, fl36, old e-510.
On the shelf: e30, EC20, 18~180, 14~42, 40~150, Zuiko12~60,
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