That are the values that will be used when you activate the panel. In PL anyway.
The user interface isn’t the strongest part of PL.
George
I would agree that the sliders should not be so prominent if the panel is not active.
The macOS appearance for an enabled slider control is…
For a disabled slider…
… which would be better but…
At the moment, you can go straight to a slider and start editing the value because the slider is enabled.
If it were disabled, you would have to enable the noise reduction panel before you could do any editing of the values because the disabled sliders would not respond.
There are pros and cons for both ways of doing it. If it were my project, I would detect a mouse click on the disabled slider and enable it then.
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Joanna, yes I totally agree but I would say that having made the mistake. I would add that the sliders are quite large whereas the panel activation switch is small. I would much prefer the panels to remain grey until they are active if only to remove the need to scan upwards looking for the panel control.
best wishes
Simon
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Disagree strongly. The user interface in Photolab is by far the best of Lightroom, CaptureOne, RAWtherapee and DarkTable. I list those as those are the software I’ve really tried long enough to experience the user interface. I don’t remember anything particularly wonderful about Luminar or On1 interface and the results were pretty awful. Yes Aperture 2 had a better user interface and workflow but Aperture doesn’t exist any more and in any case Aperture 3 was a step backward in user interface (bigger, simpler, clumsier).
Dealing with your specific issue. Yes, it’s possible to choose which default profile your images open up in.
As the preset names suggest my default presets have absolutely zero adjustments included.
Now that I know Photolab inside out, I don’t like to use AI tools except in extreme cases so I don’t want to see my images with any ClearView or SmartLighting or lens corrections or even noise reduction applied out of the gate. I want to see the image in its pure form first.
So I’ve created a zero adjustments profile which removes all adjustments. That’s what I apply first. My next step is applying a camera specific preset. For each of my cameras, I have a default colour profile which I prefer (often it’s one of the Leica M family of profiles which offer high contrast, bright reds and richer colours than Nikon out of the gate, though lately I’ve been using Color Negative Film Fuji Superia 200) as well as Lens Sharpness, Fine Contrast, Auto Horizon, Auto Cropping Unconstrained.
So I build up from basically zero rather than allowing DxO to dictate the direction of my processing. It’s possible, it’s easy and it’s extremely fast. It does mean reading the manual and experimenting with editing and building presets.
Photolab is pro software and requires a bit of investment up front. At some point, simpler means training wheels and software which is not suited for professional use and professional workflow. Photo Mechanic for instance is the most painful photo software to set up and learn but it’s the most powerful metadata and cataloguing tool I’ve ever used and enormously speeds up workflow once the user is up to speed. (Note: I’m not suggesting DxO follow CameraBits example of creating hard to use software, Photolab is fairly intuitive and should stay that way.)
Photolab presets system is amazingly powerful, flexible and fast. One can create presets which zero all settings or only change certain ones, which means that local adjustments can be retained while changing presets for instance.
The next step I’d suggest is building a default set of palettes under Essential Tools which include exactly the palettes you usually use and no others in exactly the order in which you apply them. When one only sees the palettes one uses and has them in the right order, Photolab becomes a much faster tool.
Photolab can’t build the default palette set for us, as which palettes a photographer uses is user specific. My own list is:
- White Balance
- Color Rendering
- Smart Lighting (turned off)
- Selective Tone
- Contrast
- ClearView Plus (turned off)
- Lens Sharpness
- Color Accentuation
- Denoising Technologies
- Distortion
- Horizon
- Crop
- Local Adjustments (to turn on/off adjust opacity)
As I use ClearView so little these days, I should probably remove it from my default palette set and perhaps SmartLighting too, although I often use SmartLighting to see what is possible with an image before doing most of the relighting manually with manual exposure compensation, black levels, highlight and local adjustments.
Keyboard shortcuts to remember:
- C - to compare
- R - to recrop (récadrer in French)
More tips on how to set up DxO Photolab with images.
Learn your software well. It will pay dividends in both speed and results.
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The thread is about changing the default preset. But once a default has been set it is set. It kind of belonging to the demosaicing process.
George
My post includes direct instructions on how to change the default preset and build a custom default preset. Including screenshots.
Others have pointed out that it suffices to change the folder name to rebuild the database for the folder and apply the new default preset. That’s not necessary either though – if you build a “No corrections” profile as I have, you can manually apply that to a whole folder.
If you want to control demosaicing manually, you are looking for RAWtherapee. Good luck with the interface though.
Thanks Alec for your detailed description of how you use PL. I have saved your post to my notes file and will refer to it as I am sure it will be useful. As George says my original question was about changing the default profile used on an image after it has already been set. In many ways your post highlights the issue: for example if I wanted to follow your method on images that have already been viewed any use of the Reset command will take the back to the default preset that was in use when the image was first seen by the application. If I were writing the application a reset would take the image back to the default preset selected in the preferences at the time of the reset ; after all I am selecting reset and I would like to know what is going to happen to the image.
I find the UI very flexible but think that all the controls should be greyed out when the panel is switched off but I can appreciate that this is a personal view and there may be reasons why it is implemented the way it is.
best wishes
Simon the OP
I’m glad my notes are useful to you Simon. It took longer than I expected to put them all down in detail.
I would stay away from “Resetting” images. My “No correction” preset zeroes everything. If I really want to start over, I apply “No correction” first and then apply one of my other presets which take a particular camera in a particular setting (outdoor, night, indoor) to a good starting point.
I find the UI very flexible but think that all the controls should be greyed out when the panel is switched off but I can appreciate that this is a personal view and there may be reasons why it is implemented the way it is.
Palettes which are turned off are greyed out. Here you can see most of my Essential Tools palettes open with Smart Lighting and ClearView turned off and greyed out.
Where you are probably running into trouble is that you have not yet created the “No corrections” preset which disables all the palettes and greys them out. The next key step is building that Essential Tools default set so you don’t have to look at tools you don’t use. Be sure to add the “No corrections” preset first though as otherwise you could have palettes enabled (from another Default set) which you don’t see without clicking through all five palette tabs and which are affecting your image.
In Photolab 2 & 3, it was more intuitive to build that Essential Tools palette set as there were no tabs and Essential Tools are at the top. To get to Essential Tools now, one must click the tab which is already open (to disable it). It’s counter-intuitive to click an enabled palette tab until a photographer knows about it. Once a photographer knows that Essential Tools appears when all the other tabs are disabled, it makes perfect sense.
DxO could make this easier by including an Essentials tab but that creates visible tool duplication. Better that DxO send new users to read my posts on how to set up and use Photolab effectively.
More seriously, I don’t know if that “No correction” preset comes in the default Preset. I think not, I have a vague memory of building it by hand. DxO could make new users life easier by including a full “No corrections” preset if they don’t do so already.
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His remark was that the sliders aren’t greyed out. It seems to be in Apple.
Your ClearView slider shows a value of 50. It’s wrong information. That value is the value that ClearView will be using when activating. But when not activated it’s no-info.
It’s also hard to figure out what preset was used as default. That’s a kind of info I would like to know when playing with images.
George
Notepad and the dopfile would take care to see which preset is used. (as i remember correctly.)
Edit:
yes you can find the original preset in there.
But yes it would be nice. To see the applied preset highlighted in the list of presets.
But the problem is when you start customising your presets it doesn’t matter that much.
Apply preset and start editing means preset is gone, it’s a startingpoint.
Shut down pl and reopen means historylist is gone.(i believe it’s changed or maybe gona be change. (featurerequest is made.) to store history list so by reopening it’s stil available. Then you could revisit all your steps. (at the cost of a uge cache and database for this.)
What would be nice is a stickynote feature tagged to the iptc xmp data which allows you to write reminders taged on one or more images.
Then your issue is gone.(you need to do manual write down which preset but it’s tagged. 
Alec,
Although you may have built your own, I believe DXO does include a “No Corrections” preset with PhotoLab. I have one and I don’t recall building it myself. Is that what you were unsure of?
Mark
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Thanks for the feedback. I spent some time building custom presets at one point (since then I’ve been able to just duplicate and modify my existing presets and it’s very quick). If there’s a full “No correction” preset built into Photolab that’s what Simon (and others) should use when they want to “start over” with an image (which is something I do quite often myself).
To decide if one wants to start over with an image, the C command to compare is very useful. If the C command shows more potential in an image untouched than I’ve achieved in the edited side, I’ll usually zero the image and start over again. Of course if I think the work up until now might be useful, I’d create a virtual copy, Command-D first.
Ah, arguably that’s true. The sliders for AI tools should also be grey, as they are for Selective Tone and Color Accentuation when turned off. Example:
There’s a clear user story here for DxO: “Make the AI tool palette sliders when disabled look the same as normal palettes.”
It’s also hard to figure out what preset was used as default.
Finding out what the current default preset is requires Command-, to see whatever it is. I don’t change my default preset often and I’d be surprised if many photographers do.
That’s a kind of info I would like to know when playing with images.
It’s fairly easy to tell which preset one added after the default preset. In my case, I look at the Color Rendering to tell which preset was the starting point. Most of my presets are quite similar except for Color Rendering as I find it more useful to add to an image than to subtract. The Photolab default presets are chosen for their wow factor and to show the potential of Photolab, not as serious attempts at judicious photo processing.
I can’t imagine a place where I’d like to see additional information. The Photolab interface is arguably too busy as it is. Prominent default preset would be visual noise most of the time. I truly hope DxO does not add this information unless it can be permanently hidden. If you really want to dig in and can’t figure it out otherwise, Advanced History does provide that information.
I use “No Corrections” for that purpose quite often.
Mark
@skids
To ‘control’ what I have done, I activate “Active corrections”.
Try it with applying “Reset”, “Standard” preset and “No Corrections” preset …
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Nikon, and all brands I believe, have something as picture control in their camera. They are used for internal development of the raw picture to a RGB raster image. They can be seen as a preset.
The sequence in PL is RAW->demosaicing->initial edits among which the presets->initial image->my edits. As far as I know, and that’s not much, PL is the only converter that adds the presets before the initial image. Others,Nikon at least, do add the preset as a normal edit with an own palette after the initial image and is visible to the user.
Maybe I must correct my statements later 
George
Sometimes I think the use of the English word “preset” can be misleading.
The “pre” prefix can imply something that comes first - a setting or settings that are done before all others.
But, more usually, in terms of image editing tools like PL, it simply means a pre-composed set of adjustments.
PL provides for both full presets, which overwrite everything and take all adjustments to a certain state to give a certain effect; and partial presets, which simply apply a group of adjustments, in addition to those already made.
@StevenL As others have suggested, what about a button that changes the default or base preset, so that resetting the image no longer means to the default in preferences?
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Joanna, this is looking for trouble where there is none. The photographer can create his or her own base preset(s) so when s/he wants to zero an image it’s just a question of applying that other base preset.
As you well know, applying a preset is a reversible action (undo works, command-Z). Which means going back to defaults and returning to where one was is a click of a preset and then undo. If one wants to zero and explore another path, command-D to create a virtual copy is there. Most other RAW development software does not offer either of these luxuries for exploring multiple paths.
From what I can see George is just looking to carp that Photolab does not work like x or y software. These cases are more or less hopeless. Until Photolab loses its personality and becomes a cluttered mess like Lightroom or a clunky awkward tool like DPP or RAWtherapee, these users will never be satisfied (and even then).
I am delighted to help those who would like to learn how to do user Photolab better and are open to learning. But indulging those who would destroy Photolab to “improve it” is an exercise in self-destruction.
Alec,
This is basically a non-issue for me as well, but I can understand why some users may be confused by the current behavior because the default preset is the first entry in the History List.
Here is a simple example. Let’s assume that the default preset is “DXO Standard” and during an editing session you apply a different preset to an image such as “No Corrections” and then exit Photolab. When you restart PhotoLab, the default preset for that image will still indicate “DXO Standard” in the History List since it was the default preset when that image was originally edited. If I understand the issue correctly, I believe some would prefer that the History List entry should be changed to reflect the currently active preset.
If you changed the presets for all the images in a folder to “No corrections” before exiting and restarting Photolab, I believe they would all still indicate “DXO Standard” as the default preset in the History List.
Obviously, for those of us who don’t use or even look at the History List this is a non-issue. I do use the History list extensively, but I am not bothered by the reference to the default preset in it. I guess the question is whether the current preset in use should be displayed somewhere.
Mark
No, that’s not true. It’s just that in the Nikon software, that’s the only one I have beside PL, the used preset is visible. I dont’have to guess or play Sherlock Holmes. It’s so easy to fix that, just highlight the used preset in one of the preset lists. PL won’t change with that.
My former post is not correct 
George