I’m running PL 7.14 under Windows 11 and am trying to clone out a small branch on a bird image. Clone settings are 100% opacity and 20% feathering. The selection process works, and PL selects an area from which to take the clone image, but instead of putting the clone source in the target area, it makes the target black (see image attached). I’ve tried restarting PL, repairing instead of cloning, moving the clone source area, and resetting cloning. All with no improvement.
Suggestions?
just checked in PL 7.14 … and no problem here
try to choose another source area
(did you perhaps crop or use perspective corrections?)
Thanks for the quick response. I did try selecting other areas. I tried different target areas, and different source areas. In all cases the target area was made black.
The image is cropped. Cropping was done prior to attempting to do the cloning. I’ve never had a problem with cloning on a cropped image in the past. Is that a known issue? I vaguely recall reading here of some having issues with cropping and edited image, but not the reverse. But my memory may be faulty.
That is a very unusual problem you’re having. I’ve never had that issue myself and I don’t recall anybody else reporting a similar issue. I am running PhotoLab 8.6 and PhotoLab 7 on Windows 10 and have never had a similar issue when cloning. There could be a corruption somewhere. Have you tried running the PhotoLab 7 repair feature? If you are unaware how to do it, it’s very simple.
This may not fix your problem, but it is the first thing I would do to address this issue.
Note: I believe this repair option is only available for the Windows version of PhotoLab. I’ve only used it on Windows 10, but I presume the process is identical on Windows 11. If I recall correctly, Mac users don’t have a similar Repair option.
Mark
Thanks, Mark. I wasn’t aware of the possibility of repairing a PL installation. After reading your note I also realized that the one thing I knew of and hadn’t tried was rebooting my computer. So I did that first and tested cloning again. It did not work properly. So I rebooted again, ran a repair, and still no luck. Possibly the dark clone target area was not as black as before, but still much darker than the source area.
Just an idea …
… maybe it helps ???
Make sure your video drivers and other system drivers are up-to-date. If nothing fixes this, you’ll need to report this to DxO Support as a bug. (support.dxo.com)
Making the edit in an uncropped virtual copy didn’t change things. The target area was dark again.
My only qualification to that is that I am not a way to undo a crop other than to manually move the crop bounding box back to the corners of the display, and to manually set the aspect ratio to Original.
So if there is another, automated way to remove the crop, please let me know how to do it and I’ll give it a try.
The computer has the current Nvidia Studio drivers installed, and Windows is otherwise up to date. Unless there is something else, I think drivers should be current.
When to undo Crop I reactivate the corresponding tool and click “Reset”. The same thing works with Perspective Corrections.
When to undo ReShape, to reset I hit the “twirler” in the top right corner (Windows).
To transfer (paste) e.g. the Crop …
Wolfgang, thank you for both the reset suggestion and the guidance regarding transferring the crop back. I had never looked down to the bottom of the screen other than to focus on the bottom of the image, so I was unaware of a second set of cropping tools present there. I always used the tool in the right tools panel. Similarly, I had never used the correction transfer dialog box.
Unfortunately, resetting the crop did not eliminate the problem I’m having with cloning/repairing that branch. The behavior is unchanged even with the crop reset rather than manually changed.
An interesting development. I used “Image/Reset Correction Settings” on a virtual copy and subsequently I was able to properly Clone out the tree branch in my image. But when I went to the Original and “Copied Correction Settings” and pasted all but the “Retouch” setting to the virtual copy, the cloned repair turned black (when it should have been unchanged). My next step should probably be to past back the corrections one at a time to see which one causes the Cloned area to darken, but that will have to wait. I’ve already invested more time than I should have on a middling image.
That is indeed strange.
Now that you’ve successfully configured all the settings on your virtual copy, simply transfer them all at once back to your “original.” If this was successful, delete your virtual copy.
have fun, Wolfgang
The only way I can get the Cloned/Repaired branch to process correctly is to process it on an otherwise uncorrected image. I tried to then copy only the retouched item (the cloned branch) to a second virtual copy (keeping the other corrections) and the branch in the 2nd virtual copy turned black.
As I was restarting PL later in the day I got notice of v7.15’s availability, so I updated PL and tried again. The branch still turns black.
I think that this is fate’s way of saying that this image is done.
Thanks all for your insight and assistance.
Would you be willing to post the raw file and the .dop file to Dropbox or some other file sharing app to allow us to see if we can resolve the issue?
Mark
(post deleted by author)
Thanks to all who have offered suggestions. I have to delete the linked folder, so access to the files will be lost. I will also delete the post containing the link that was above. I guess the behavior will remain a mystery unless DXO tech support works out the cause.
