Exactly. That is what I am saying happens. The content of the child/sub folders is not visible. There is no switch.
⌠which is PLâs standard behaviour
While Iâd love to have some basic DAM functionality in PhotoLab Iâm in doubt itâs going to happen.
I use XnView MP for my DAM needs, with my RAW files and their .dop files configured as âcompanion filesâ to the JPG. DxO renders to âOriginal image folderâ and no suffix, so ABC123.ARW becomes ABC123.jpg
XnView MP companion files (add more extensions as needed):
{ext}.xmp;{ext}.dop;arw;arw.dop;rw2;rw2.dop;dng;dng.dop;cr2;cr2.dop
Another good, free option is DigiKam if you disable its RAW support and configure your RAW extensions and their .dop as sidecars.
With the above configuration, if you move or rename a jpg, its .xmp and .RAW and .RAW.dop files will be moved or renamed along with it, as a bundle.
Unlike some software, PhotoLab does not display the contents of subfolders in the top most folder. You need to select the subfolders individually to see their contents. I prefer it this way.
Mark
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Supâ Soup? - this will do your head in as it did mine until I got into the habit of checking if any filters were selected in the library module (not at laptop so apologies for description). I often filter so I can just see raw files and 4-5 stars - IF you forget to reset filter, (from memory) it stays as set between sessions. Hope this helps.
BTW - I have subscriptions to LR and PL - LR for Dam and iPhone DNG/heic file conversion, Topaz suite and have dabbled with Skylum as well (eeeewww!). Without reservation (amateur not pro) PL far surpasses all the other programs in terms of what I can get out of my images and once you get your personal workflow sorted it is fast. Just donât consider it a fully fledged DAM (never built for that).
All the best.
Stay kind everyone! 
Yet you unfortunately continued to post.
Well I also use old software but then I work on advanced systems as a profession.
It isnât the âdark agesâ you have a strange perception.
To expand that:
PL7 maintains a database which contains information about image files it recognizes. Information includes some basic file metadata, correction settings (copy from DOP file), camera/lens module id, uuids of preview and thumbnail images kept in a separate cache, image processing state, editing history (on Macs), etc. When PL visits some directory for the first time, it reads all images in the directory (but NOT in subdirectories), updates its database (which requires parsing metadata inside the file, finding matching camera/lens module, etc.) and spawns background thread(s) to update previews and thumbnail cache. This may take a while but it saves your time later. Itâs like Lightroom import, but PhotoLab does it automatically. When PL visits this directory next time, it just updates the database with the changes it detects, including those made by the user manually, outside of PL. This is usually much faster than on the first visit. It also detects directory changes made by the user while PL is active (at least on Windows, where PL registers to receive directory change events, maybe on Macs itâs similar). No free lunch, as usual.
Now, imagine PL was scanning subdirectories and you opened root directory with over 100,000 image files in all subdirectories (my case, similar for many here, I think). Certainly you would NOT like PL to scan subdirectories. Imagine someone importing that number of files at once in Lightroom. DxO made a design choice for imports to be automatic, which has both positive and negative sides. Adapt, or use other software, if you canât. You may also use PL Projects to get some independence from the filesystem structure. DOP files are quite easily parseable, so if you consider applying âtranslatedâ corrections made in PL to some other software, it would probably make it easier than it was with old (and perhaps current ?) Lightroom.
The largest number of raw files in a folder I had was about 4,000. PL had no problem dealing with it, did it in a reasonable time, but I understood whatâs going on and stayed patient (it may take minutes). I once did a trace of system calls made by PL processes after a directory change. It would probably take a small book to describe whatâs going on there, and which can almost surely change in some details with each update, so it makes no sense for a summary here. But itâs quite a lot.
Windows indexing/caching and maybe something else can also slow down access to your folders. Recently I had to wait some 30 seconds before Windows File Explorer opened a folder with only 850 image files (having strong CPU, fast M.2 SSD, more than enough RAM). This does not happen too often with Windows, but it happens.
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Thanks for your reply. I attached a screen shot of a partially expanded view of my master image folder. Like many of us, I have been doing this a long time and settled on a storage organizing strategy a long time ago. The first few years are digitalized film scans. See screen shot below.
The problem is that I have organized into folders long before Lr or DXO even existed. With DXO not opening sub folders I dont know if it can sift all my images to sort by keywords?? I cull my collection so its about 30,000 images to date. I am remiss to allow it to digest the whole lot of them as it will create 30,000 DOP files that I dont know if I want or need (if I dont settle on DXO).
On one hand I am glad that I didnt click on my master folder and have thousand s of DOPs created. On the other, it not being able to look at subfolders is a major failing for anyone that has a large collection of images that need to be part of the image editor / system.
I would almost think that it would be better to have the DOPs be hidden in a master file that is easily deleted or managed - maybe this is what Lr is doing under the hood . This is a quick thought on my part and I am sure that there are dozens of complexities and implications that I cannot even imagine with such a scheme.
NX Studio has an option âShow files in subfoldersâ, off by default, which you can set per folder. Something similar would be useful in PhotoLab indeed. It should not cause problems if used knowingly.
Photolab does not need to charge all 100,000 images at once. It will only need to charge all images that fit one the screen, like 20 thumbnails or so, a few more in cache, and when you scroll, it could charge more. Every website with infinity scrolling behaves this way.
Regarding the above quote, $10/month for the Adobe Photography Plan seemed so reasonable that I am still paying for it, even though I rarely use it, but PhotoShop is so powerful that Iâve used it several times for things that I didnât know how to accomplish in my other software programs.
There are other choices that allow you do download software at no charge, and will continue to function until/unless an update to your computer causes them not to run under that computer software update.
Here are two choices:
You donât pay for them.
You donât pay for updates.
They do not âexpireâ.
Missing you Mike - RIP
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