exactly. I was very disappointed when testing PL4 and missing this feature.
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Really like this update on Windows 10. Especially DeepPRIME and the new UI. Nicely done!
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DeepPRIME is a game changer, the extra detail retained in the image is outstanding!
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I have worked with every version of DxO since DOP V.4. PL3 Elite already had very good noise reduction with Prime. I was therefore sceptical whether PL4 could really bring any further progress. But the difference is incredible! So it was worth buying this version as well.
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I downloaded PL4, and I have to say that I am underwhelmed.
DeepPRIME is great but I havenāt yet found it a giant leap from PRIME, but it does remove the little artifacts that PRIME had. Other than the artifacts, Iām not seeing a big difference; PRIME already did well.
The tool palette stuff? Totally worthlessā¦ I have a workspace set up and I find that the new stuff provides absolutely no benefit. Maybe it will help someone.
Advanced history? Thatās nice but itās nothing that I ever missed having. In other words, I might use it, but I have never (since starting with PL2) felt the lack of a history tool.
Renaming files? I have software that does that and does it much better (because I wrote it and it does exactly what I want). If I didnāt have that software, I donāt think I could make it do the kind of renaming I need. I donāt think so but Iām not sure because I canāt find where the batch rename is hidden. Oh, waitāI finally found it. Nope, doesnāt do anything useful that I can see. I rename my files using metadata from the file. This tool is mostly find/replace with a few other silly features.
Selective paste? OK, finally something useful! I wrote the request for this feature and the specs for it and they seemed to have followed them (basically: do what Adobe is doing).
Thatās it?
Heck, I donāt even use the database. I hate relying on a single source of corruption. Databases are just useful for keyword searches and Iāve found keywording to be too big a pain to bother.
What other feature would have been really useful (besides DeepPRIME and selective paste)? The one I would salivate over would be the ability to create luminosity masks and the ability to combine masks (union, intersection). When creating a mask, I would want to specify the luminosities selected as well as how they taper off. With that, I could actually do a ton of actually useful stuff.
Most of the features of PL4 are things I could live without. Iāve even learned to live without the selective paste feature, so DeepPRIME is about the only reason to upgrade. So: do I want to spend $69 just for DeepPRIME? That is the questionā¦
Hi Freixas,
Thanks for your detailed notes. My own impressions are more positive.
DeepPRIME is great but I havenāt yet found it a giant leap from PRIMEā¦PRIME already did well.
Iām a night sports photographer and work a lot with Prime. I agree with you that Prime was already amazing. The visual advance of DeepPrime is somewhat exaggerated, I agree. On the other hand, having a tool this fast makes it a whole lot easier to do test proofs for my images. When I know I can open up a 100% jpeg with DeepPrime processing within 10-15 seconds, soft-proofing becomes a reality. Waiting the 40 to 90 seconds per image with Prime means hope for the best and review the whole set later.
The tool palette stuff? Totally worthlessā¦ I have a workspace set up and I find that the new stuff provides absolutely no benefit.
I thought that at first and then realised that my Essential palettes and linear workflow with all the right tools side-by-side is the new default. When none of the tabs are available one has access to oneās own palettes in oneās own order. After that having quick tab access to the tools together is a nice small improvement. For new users who have not set up a linear workflow in Essentials, C1 style tabs probably make it a lot easier to get a running start with the Photolab interface. Thereās deeper conversation about the new interface on this thread.
Advanced history? Thatās nice but itās nothing that I ever missed having. In other words, I might use it, but I have never (since starting with PL2) felt the lack of a history tool.
I was against advanced history thinking it would be intrusive and in the way. Frankly itās a lot like in Photoshop and quite intuitive. Itās nice to be able to step back to an exact point precisely. Try it, like me, you might really like it.
Renaming files? I have software that does that and does it much betterā¦
I agree, totally underwhelming. To bring renaming up to a useful level for very active photographers would be months more of work. The way itās done, it does little harm and some good for less sophisticated users (no need to make walls of entry too high).
Selective paste? OK, finally something useful! I wrote the request for this feature and the specs for it and they seemed to have followed them (basically: do what Adobe is doing).
I was against this feature as well. Done this cleanly and just like Adobe, it is useful just to see what is coming over (Iām not turning much off at this point). As almost everyone has used Lightroom at one point, at least the learning curve is low. Thanks for writing the specs.
Counterpoint: I could live very well without this enhancement and do find it makes the workflow a bit busier and fiddlier than I like (I like the minimalist Zen of Aperture 2.x and old Photolab). But it does open up Photolab to more users. It would be great if the tool would remember the last checkboxes checked when working on a full set of photos so that we wouldnāt have to be unchecking the boxes for every paste job.
Heck, I donāt even use the database. I hate relying on a single source of corruption.
There should be an option to just turn the database off and open images one at a time. I also dislike this tendency to turn Photolab into a (very poor) photo management tool instead of a pure RAW developer which interacts very well with base OS file management and other photo management tools.
At least the database did not become more intrusive. DxO please make it an option to not have a database at all and just read the files from a folder from fresh every time, while writing changes to star ratings, copyright and keywords back to the XMP files where they belong.
the ability to create luminosity masks and the ability to combine masks (union, intersection). When creating a mask, I would want to specify the luminosities selected as well as how they taper off. With that, I could actually do a ton of actually useful stuff.
Hopefully luminosity masks will come soon. Weāve talked about this before but a lot of similar work can be done via the U-point interface in Local Adjustments. Adding luminosity masks to Local Adjustments would be fantastic. At some point, Photolab will have to make a big leap to layers to improve selective editing and make all the tools available to masks. Thereās a real risk that RAW processing, especially with large files, could become so slow that Photolab essentially becomes unusable.
DeepPRIME is about the only reason to upgrade. So: do I want to spend $69 just for DeepPRIME? That is the questionā¦
Thereās more good things in Photolab 4 than just DeepPrime as my notes above suggest. Thereās real performance improvements at least on my Mac tower with 12 cores and a Radeon VII graphic card. I canāt try Photolab 4 on a more modest laptop as nabobs at DxO have decided that all 2011 MBP should be cut off (last OS which works on these MBP, the last to have 17" screens and anti-glare screens and robust keyboards, is High Sierra 10.13). Only the ever more obnoxious system requirements (just last two Mac OS) leave a sour taste in my mouth.
2 Likes
Geez, I had a long review of the features and missed (at least) two:
The color picker is nice. That should have been there on day one, but itās still just a nice-to-have. While Iām glad itās been added, I never felt its absence strongly.
The watermark feature is also nice, but Iāll never use it. My work flow is PL ā TIFF ā Affinity Photo ā further alterations + resize + sharpen + watermark ā final image. Placing a watermark in PL would mean the watermark would be affected by a lot of stuff in Affinity Photo that I wouldnāt want it to be affected by. It comes too soon in the workflow.
And I canāt even drag the watermark into place or resize it with handles. I have to use the interface boxes. Yuck!
Amen! It looks like projects and keywords are the two things only stored in the database, as far as I can tell. Adjustments and corrections go into both the DOP and the database. Iād like to turn off the database. And yes, Iād like the star ratings, copyright and keywords in an XMP file, where they could be shared with other programs.
Customizable luminosity masks without mask union/intersection would sort of miss 90% of the benefits. To be honest, Iād like masks based on luminosity and masks based on color range/taper (as with the HSL control). I should probably write up a detailed spec for what Iād like and propose it as a new feature (I proposed something a long time ago, but it was half-baked and didnāt get much attention or votes).
If necessary for performance, I could live with just a one-level ability to intersect one of a set of lobal color/luminosity masks with one of the existing masks (paint, gradient, control point) to create a combo mask. Combining multiple masks in arbitrary ways (intersection of a union of intersections) could be done with a lot of caching and a lot of coding, but just having one level of intersection probably satisfies 99% of the use cases.
Speaking of performance, PL4 seems to run slower for me, not faster. The final image generation might be faster; I havenāt checked. But switching from one image to another seems to have a new and noticeable delay.
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Yep - That was my initial reaction too ā¦ See here for how I made it work for me (with actual improvement over my previous custom workspace).
Again, ditto for me ā¦ and a key feature of PL, for me, is that I we can choose to use sidecar/.dop files instead.
Since youāre already doing this (renaming images from outside PL), I presume youāre aware of the pitfalls of doing so whilst PL is actually running ā¦ Right ?
John M
Support for HEIC?
There is no support for HEIC at this time.
Mark
A highly welcome upgrade, particularly for the overdue evolution of the existing Prime NR. My first peeks at what DeepPrime does look promising indeed. Congrats to the team! 
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Iāve never had a problem, whether PL is running or not. My software renames both the file and the DOP to match. As I understand it, the DOP has precedence, so Iām not sure there are any pitfalls.
I had already seen your write-up when I wrote my statement. I donāt see it as buying me anything over what I have in PL3, which is really simple: I have a custom workspace. Lesser used features or panels are collapsed. I can expand those when needed. When things get too cluttered, I just reset back to my default workspace.
If I were starting new with PL4, I might have choose a different approach, but it wouldnāt necessarily be a faster or better approach.
It sounds like your self-written rename utility is ensuring that {image+sidecar} combos are being renamed together (as a pair) and āinstantaneouslyā ā¦ which is as it needs to be - but, which is not necessarily the case with, say, File Explorer.
John M
Thatās been the case since PL1. Nobody here uses HEIC? Seriously it reduces file size buy half while maintaining image quality compared to jpg.
On the other hand, raw doubles or triples file sizeā¦
That depends on what you regard as a ānormalā file size. In fact, RAW files are amazingly compact, considering how much information they contain. JPEG files have been compressed and often lose information that would have been in a RAW file. e.g. a JPEG file is usually 8 bit, which means it only contains 256 levels of each colour, whereas a modern RAW file is around 14 bits, containing 16384 levels of each colour, thus providing for much smoother tones and graduations. The really big hitter is the TIFF file at 16 bits but at a much larger file size.
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I donāt use HEIC, none of my cameras use HEIC and I have tonnes of storage space so size of file is not at all important to me. Compatibility with editing software is important to me and after hearing all the comments here about HEIC over the past week or so I wonāt be moving to HEIC any time soon
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I hadnāt even heard of HEIC until I saw this. I see that right now the interest seems Apple-driven. Since I stay away from Apple products, itās not surprising I havenāt heard a lot about it.
As a JPG replacement/alternative, it sound great. Anything that decreases files sizes and retains more image quality has to be a good thingāonce everything gets updated to handle it. And most image-handling programs are already well set up to read dozens of file formats; one more shouldnāt be a problem.
But itās not a RAW replacement at all. PL needs the RAW sensor data in order to do some of its magic. For instance, I believe that PRIME, DeepPRIME, and Lens Sharpening are all applied before or together with demosaicing.
PL handles JPGs and TIFFs with some feature reduction. Iām sure theyāll support HEIC if it becomes prevalent, but not before. And it should be a low-priority item. Right now, they donāt even support Canonās sRAW and mRAW files, which are also not RAW files but are produced by cameras DxO supports.
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Yes, both files need to be renamed if you donāt want to lose your changes.
File Explorer doesnāt automatically rename the pair, but one can manually rename both the RAW and DOP files using File Explorer. The renaming doesnāt have be āinstantaneousā. Take as long as you like as long as PL isnāt running.
Renaming while PL is running might create some problems. If you havenāt modified the file you are renaming, youāre OK (thereās no DOP file). I did a little testing and sometimes PL gets a little confused and creates a second DOP file, but it does seem to retain all changes. Itās clearly relying on the database. Iām not sure what algorithm they are using, but it seems like this is a bug.
Congrats team DXO 