9.5.0 Build 40, macOS: Local adjustments are lost upon export, erasing hours of work

DxO PhotoLab
1

This is the second time this bug happened to me within the past 2 weeks, and hours of my work have been erased, once again. I am livid at the moment.

I don’t know how exactly this bug gets triggered, but I think it has to do with moving files around in a given directory. Earlier, I had a number of DNG files in my project directory, and each of the files had its own set of Local Adjustments. But about an hour ago, I decided that I didn’t want L1070509.DNG, so I moved it out of the directory (when I did that, PhotoLab automatically deleted the corresponding dop file from the directory), and then I moved L1070508.DNG back into the directory and edited it.

The week before that, the same bug happened when I right-clicked on several images and clicked “Rename Image…“ to rename them. Some moments later, I realized that my Local Adjustments suddenly looked all wonky, so I just told to myself to never use “Rename Image…” functionality again. Alas, I should have paid more attentions and reported the bug at the time.

Once this bug’s trigger condition is met, the disaster seems to happen when you export multiple images at the same time. When you choose multiple images and hit export, somehow the Local Adjustments of the first image is copy-pasted onto every single image that is exported subsequently, replacing all the changes you’ve made in Local Adjustments panel for the other images. The adjustments made in the other panels (e.g., Light, Color) don’t seem to be affected. But for Local Adjustments, it paved over and erased hours of work I’ve put into making individual image edits.

Here is a screenshot of an image that was affected by this bug. These 5 adjustments were copied from the first image that I exported (the first image is the only image that wasn’t ruined by this bug), and the rest of the images in the directory have these exact same 5 masks. It shows an exclamation mark for AI Mask, and it says “Unable to select the chosen predefined mask”.

image
image634×504 41.7 KB

I tried putting back L1070509.DNG into the directory and restarting the application. Unfortunately, I was not able to recover my local adjustments.

Here are my export settings, I used these two settings simultaneously when I exported:

image
image1286×1378 144 KB

image
image1296×1486 152 KB

I can’t believe the image editing software that I paid more than $200 for can’t even preserve edits I’ve made to my images. This is completely unacceptable. Along with the bug some months ago that exported all my images without Lens Distortion adjustments, I just can’t trust DXO products anymore, and I don’t plan to use it any further, at least for now. I wish I could get my money refunded.

For those who use this software on macOS (no idea if the same bug happens in Windows), I’d advise you to be very careful about moving files around in a given directory once you start editing images in the directory. Without making backups first, I wouldn’t add more images to the directory or rename/remove images from it. Good luck, and I hope this bug gets fixed because I don’t want more people to suffer extreme frustrations like I did.

2

This looks like a possible cause for at least one of the issues:
:warning: Moving files with anything but PhotoLab

Move a file with Finder and PhotoLab will react to that action as you describe.

Moving images with Finder will make PL’s database contain references files that don’t exist (from the selected folder’s point of view) and bringing the file back to its original location will make PL see the file as new and applies the default preset…and everything else is lost, also because the sidecars have been deleted with the move before. Previews might still look okay because of caching, but export will tell the real story.

Please test a new way of working in which you move files with PhotoLab. Its Library module allows drag and drop…and test with a smaller number of files until you see how things work.

It’s good practice to organise files before any editing is done.

4 Likes
3

Hi Platypus, thank you for your kind response. I deleted PhotoLab from my machine, so I don’t think I’ll be testing the new workflow you suggested anytime soon, but if I ever return to PhotoLab at some point, I’ll make sure to make backups and to not move around files using Finder.app. If moving files around without potential file name conflicts is a dangerous operation (honestly, it shouldn’t be), PhotoLab should display warnings to users when it detects such activities rather than just silently cleaning up DOP files.

Now that I think of it, “copy all correctional settings” and “paste all correctional settings” were involved at some point. The below was the approximate sequence that happened.

  1. In my directory, I selected the bottom bar, and pressed Cmd+A to select all images in the directory.
  2. I hit “Export” to export all the images.
  3. I looked at L1070509.jpg and realized that some areas were not really focused. So I went to macOS Finder and removed L1070509.DNG from the directory.
  4. I put back L1070508.DNG into the directory by moving it from another directory.
  5. I copied all correctional settings from a different image.
  6. At the bottom bar, I clicked on L1070508.DNG, and right-clicked “paste all correctional settings”.
  7. The image looked good after applying the settings, so I once again pressed Cmd+A to select all images at the bottom bar and hit “Export”.
  8. I looked at the resulting exported jpegs, and the colors looked all wonky except for the fist photo.
  9. I realized that my Local Adjustments settings for every image (except for the first image) had been overwritten.

(The step 4 may have been performed before the step 3, I don’t clearly remember.)

I’m 100% confident that I didn’t accidentally copy correctional settings from the first image and pasted it onto the rest of the images. L1070508.DNG was a landscape image, and I copied/pasted correctional settings from another landscape image. Also, I never use copy/paste partial correctional settings – I always use “copy/paste all correctional settings". The fact that only Local Adjustments were paved over leads me to believe that this is a software bug.

4

Have you reported this problem to DxO via this page:
https://support.dxo.com/hc/en-us/requests/new

DxO will not pick it up from this forum.

5

No, I have not. Thanks for the reminder, I’ll go ahead and file a ticket. I genuinely don’t want this to happen to other people.

6

Thanks for sharing. Am not a Mac user but what concerns me, if this is a not falsified issue, is that it has passed “quality control” before getting released. DXO can’t afford errors like this to happen any more.

7

My personal rule is to never manipulate files in Finder, always in Photolab. To move them you hold Command and drag them. To delete it is Command-Delete. To copy it is Oprion and drag. When you do it in Photolab, the database remains coherent, and the .dop files are moved along with the image file. I you touch files with Finder, issues will arrive. So refrain from using the Finder and do these manipulations within Photolab,

2 Likes