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I wonder exactly what you find faintly disturbing about them and why they give you a negative feeling about PhotoLab. While I understand the artistry involved in the PhotoLab 6 and PhotoLab 7 splash screens, I don’t find either one particularly appealing, but I certainly don’t find anything disturbing about either of them.
Personally, I am amazed, and a little amused, by the recent negativity from a few people directed to a couple of splash screens that appear on the monitor for a few seconds each time we start up PhotoLab. To me it seems like a lot of time, effort and emotion being wasted on what to me is essentially a non-issue.
Sorry, but I cannot support any effort that would divert any resources from other enhancements for such a trivial new feature.
Mark
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We all have different perspectives. By itself, the PL7 splash image has a certain beauty to it. But for me, the image is disturbing because, as a community leader, I’m all too aware of how much of a problem vaping and smoking are in our schools (and the influence of marketing on the matter - whatever makes such behavior look cool and rebellious). Such perspectives should be respected, not derided in amusement. I think we can agree to disagree and have a rational conversation about the matter. Richard made his proposal in a very rational, level-headed way without imposing his views on others.
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You’re right, Greg, we all have our own perspectives. Frankly I never considered that he was vaping, and still don’t. I saw it as more of an artistic allusion to a fanciful Arabian genie blowing a copious amount of billowing smoke, and found the overall effect quite interesting. While I suppose it is possible the model was vaping to create the effect, I do not see it as an endorsement of vaping.
It just seems to me that these days people are all too eager to overly analyze everything searching for negatives, with one person in another thread going as far as suggesting that the image was part of some sort of a liberal plot to transform our thinking. 
Mark
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So much street photography I’ve seen portrays people blowing smoke. Regardless of what DxO intended in using this image to represent its product, this is what it makes me think of. Everyone will have their own point of view. The feature request here is simple: give customers who don’t like the image for whatever reason the ability to put another image in its place. Not a bad request, IMO.
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@mwsilvers best of luck with the few seconds but I am glad that for you it is a non issue!
I have objected to the splash screens for years!
Many of the tests that I do require DxPL to be restarted multiple times and I am typically thoroughly bored with the splash screen before the first EA tests are completed! The only advantage with a fixed image is that when starting DxPL it reminds you that you have started the wrong version because the tray icon is always the same!!
The amount of effort should be minimal, mostly the UI in the ‘Preferences’ to allow the user to navigate and select the image, and a location in the config file to hold that pointer to the image reference. About a couple of hours work, then the time to add it to the details of the new changes for the new release list, a few seconds!
Arguably it “removes” the product “image” but a change is as good as a rest, so let us be able to change it!
@RBEmerson don’t forget to vote for the item yourself.
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Well, I suppose if DXO’s competition gives users
the ability to easily alter splash images, then perhaps DxO might consider it. Does all or most of DxO’s competition give their users that option? If that is not the case, I hope DxO does not waste its time doing it
Mark
But isn’t DxO about innovation rather than imitation? 
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@Egregius very clever!
@mwsilvers I am not sure that other packages provide such a facility but I don’t spend nearly as much time staring at their splash screen as I seem to do with DxPL. Partly because the splash screen is on the screen for increasing amounts of time and I am frequently restarting after restoring empty databases etc…
I am running PL7.02 at the moment and it took 38 seconds to get to the bit where it stops and informs me about the existence of PL7.1. In fact PL6.9.0 took 45 seconds before getting to the PL6.11 bit!
I have reverted to PL6.9.0 to recreate a problem I encountered when attempting to use two machines to access one NAS directory at exactly the same time and actually managed to recreate the exact problem that I had reported (and yes it is a dumb thing to do but what follows from DxPL is equally as “dumb”, I feel!)
During the DxPL boot sequence it reads the entire camera and lens database and then reads all the presets and creates the internal preset tables among other things and that is before it loads the last directory and starts reading images and DOPs/database entries and rendering thumbnails.
Can’t you change the screen? Change Splash Screen Image - #4 by KameraD
Not keen on the one for PureRAW3.
It would good if they changed, boring to see the same image over and over and over again.
It’s a stunningly beautiful photo. It never occured to me that he might be smoking. I just thought it was some kind of vapor that could be illuminated brightly. (Actually, I never even thought about it; just enjoyed it.) It has a kind of billowing incense-in-a-cathedral look to me–sacred and magical. I don’t think it is designed to promote smoking, nor will it. It would be interesting to know how this was done.
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Looking at the image more closely, I got the feeling that whatever it is, emanates from a device behind the model’s head.
Nevertheless, many apps offer a setting that disables the splash display altogether. And as some might have discovered, I prefer choice over no choice 
Other than that, I’m not quite able to ignore the image yet, it’s compositional balance is a bit off imo.
Between no clothes and that, there must be a happy medium. 
On my midrange i7 Windows 10 desktop machine from 2016, with 24 GB of ram and a GTX 1050ti card, the splash screen is only visible for around 8 seconds when I start PhotoLab.
This thread and other similar recent ones reminds me of the title of one of Shakespeare’s plays, “Much Ado About Nothing”
Mark
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@mwsilvers with respect to
perhaps it is but if there was a convenient way for user to replace the image used by one of there own that is actually all that is necessary. Is it of major importance, not really.
Mine is an i7-4790 Win 10 system desktop system with 24GB of RAM, but I have been suffering from memory (computer memory) issues so I removed 16 GB from my other i7 earlier today, so the machine now has 32GB memory and a GTX 1050Ti.
My figures were given in an earlier post (38 seconds for PL7.02 and 45 seconds for PL6.9.0) and they are considerably more than yours.
My OS drive (C:) and my extension drive (E:) are on separate SATA SSDs, the database is on C:\ and the cache is on N:, an NVME fitted to a PCiE card. All images are stored on HDD.
I decided some time ago that presets have an impact on DxPL “boot-up” time but when I did tests this only added around 5 seconds but I have added more Partial Presets since then so it might have increased a bit more. My database is typically nearly always empty because of the amount of testing I do with database resets before such tests!?
So we have a more significant puzzle with respect to how long its takes for DxPL to get going and why does it take so little or so much time!?
I just installed PL7.1.0 and using a digital, manual stopwatch it took 27 seconds before the serial numbers appeared and 100 seconds before the splash screen was gone, however, this is the first start after an upgrade!
So second start and the serial numbers appeared after 14 seconds and the splash screen vanished after 42 seconds. Another start and 12 seconds to the serial numbers and 38 seconds to the splash screen vanishing.
My system is cluttered with lots of “junk” and so there will be competition for CPU but not for memory now it has had a boost!
This is DxPL starting up
and this is the machine “idling”
and the load took 10 seconds to the serial numbers and 38 seconds to the end of the splash screen!
PS:- on a 5600G (about twice the speed of an i7 4790K) but with C:\ and E:\ sharing the the same SATA SSD, database on C:\ and cache on C:. It took PL7.1 about 6 seconds to get to the serial number display and 29 seconds until the splash screen vanished!
The build in use is my test build and very lightly loaded so going from “idle” to loading PL7.1 and back to idle we have
Take the volume of response to the topic as an indication there is interest in being able to customize the PL startup splash screen.
Why do I find the splash screen disturbing to a degree? It reminds of the below (and others like it) from “the COVID times”.
Wow. That is so slow. From the time I click on the icon to start PL 7.1 it takes perhaps 2-3 seconds for the splash screen to appear, another 8 seconds duration during the viewing of the splash screen, and perhaps another 3-10 seconds until all the previews in PhotoLibrary are fully rendered, depending on the size of the folder. All in all, on average on my not particularly fast desktop, it takes around 15 seconds or less from the time I click on the icon until all previews in the PhotoLibrary are rendered.
Mark
Mark that’s good. I have a AMD Ryzen 9 3900X 12-Core Processor running at 3.704102 GHz 32Gb memory with all SSD drives and from starting 7.1 to 6 previews being populated was 26 seconds. Out of interest tried a few times and some 1-2 less some bit longer, but way better than BHAYT. This with almost no database as cleared out yesterday as I updated from my laptop. Where I agree with him is nothing else takes anywhere as long to load, may be all the checks PL does are needed but I do wonder if they are as no one else take as long.I do wonder why much that PL checkes each time could just be held in a database that changes would be saved to rather than reading them all each time.