I have been trying something different. Instead of editing my photos in PhotoLab (7) I edited some of them in a pixel editor (PhotoLine) and then used the Filter functionality to mask part of a layer and send that masked layer to PhotoLab for further processing. All of that worked just fine until I tried to return the image to PhotoLine…
PhotoLine’s external editing functionality saves the image in a temp folder with a temp name and reloads it when the called app exits, so I thought all of this would work just fine, but when I went to export the image from PhotoLab I found it would not allow me to over-write the original temp image and nothing I could figure out to do allowed me to replace the temp image with the Dxo version. In the end I had to save it with a different name, go into the temp folder with Finder, remove the original image and then rename the one saved with PhotoLab. Then, when I exited PhotoLab PhotoLine reloaded it. That worked, but involved a lot of manual intervention.
I have been using Dxo’s editor way back since Optics Pro so I thought I knew it inside and outside, but I could not easily solve this problem or find a way to overwrite an exiting image. Is there some way to do that?
The export function gives you the option to overwrite or rename an existing file it has the same name as the export file. If you are sending to an application then I am not sure how the files are passed along. Maybe someone else can help there.
The whole idea of using a pixel editor to call PhotoLab for additional editing is to have the pixel editor automatically reload the image after the editing. This would allow me to create multiple layers in the pixel editor, mask one of them, send that layer to PhotoLab, edit it and then have the saved edited layer automatically reload in the pixel editor. Thus I could mask what I wanted and have only that masked area changed via PhotoLab. Changing the name, even by adding a suffix, prevents the pixel editor from being able to automatically reload the image.
In short changing the file name, even by a suffix, destroys the entire paradigm of using a pixel editor to call PhotoLab. All I want to do is have PhotoLab overwrite the edited image.
I think I understand your requirement, but PhotoLab is a non-destructive editor and does not support overwriting of an image that is being edited.
There is no save feature in PhotoLab. Exporting to an image file with a different name or file type is the only option. For instance, you can export a tiff to a jpeg, or DNG without changing the file name. There is one exception though. You can probably export to a like named jpeg or tiff as long it is in a different folder. What you absolutely cannot do is is overwrite a file currently being edited which is the opposite of a non destructive editor.
So as @mwsilvers suggests DxPL is protecting the original image but I am not sure that this is to do with the non-destructive behaviour of DxPL or because DxPL is actually using that image while creating the export!?
Is there a possible scheme using “original”, “original_PL” and “original_DxPL” where PhotoLine reads from “original_PL” and exports to “original_DxPL” and DxPL reads from “original_DxPL” and exports to “original_PL” overwriting the previous image in “original_PL” providing PhotoLine does not have the image locked!
I have checked part of the process as follows:
Opened a RAW (.RW2) in PL and exported a TIF to “_DxPL”
Opened the TIF in DxPL, made edits and exported to “_PL”.
Re-exported the image after edit to “_DXO”, but this is still the original RAW I am exporting.
Checked the TIF in DxPL and it applied the original edits to the amended in PL.
Re-exported to “_PL” and the overwrite worked just fine.
So I switched PL to edit the .TIF
I inverted the colour in PL and exported to “_DxPL”
DxPL picked up the changes so I made an obvious edit and exported to “_PL”
PL picked up the changes and …
So there may be a working scheme there but I am unclear what type your initial image is!?
Well, this has been interesting and enlightening, and I learned something I never knew before because I never tried to do this before.
If I load an image into PhotoLine, duplicate the layer, mask one of the layers and then send it to PhotoLab it opens properly and I can adjust it. None of that is new. What is new, at least to me, is that if I open the Photo Library tab rather than the Customize tab before I export the image and then export it without any file suffix it opens the window allowing me to overwrite the original image. But in the end that is not helpful because doing that destroys the image that was opened. That is, after the overwrite action the image is completely missing from the temp folder. And that is not much help.
Fortunately for me PhotoLine is a very flexibile editor and allowed me to create an “Action” to load an image as a layer. That allowed me to Export the image I adjusted in PhotoLab with a suffix and then load that image into the pixel editor as a new layer, and that solved my problem. It is not an automatic reload, but it only takes 2 mouse clicks and it is done, so it is good enough.
My previous normal usage was to use PhotoLab for almost all of my editing and if I needed special process, then to use the Export to Application functionality to send the image to Photoshop or PhotoLine. Here I have reversed the process, loading the image first into PhotoLine and when I needed some special processing like ClearView, to send it to PhotoLab.
