"Export to application" creates duplicate DNGs

DxO PhotoLab
1

I’m trying to understand Photolab’s behavior here. When I use “Export to Lightroom” it sends the DNG to Lightroom Classic. That same DNG appears then appears in the Photolab image panel and folder tree. But Lightroom also creates a time-stamped DXO Photolab collection with each import, which is more than a bit irritating as they multiply.

Using “Export to application” and directing it to Lightroom eliminates the creation of the collection. But for some reason it also makes a duplicate DNG (DxO_2.dng) that appears in Photolab (but not Lightroom, because that duplicate hasn’t been imported). This gets confusing, as as well as unnecessarily taking up space.

Why does Photolab do this, and is there any way to stop it? Using v.5.6.1 in Windows 10.

2

I think the issue is that DxO do not believe there is any reason to “send” a photo to another application from PhotoLab without doing something to it first. On the basis that “something is done”, then the photo sent must be a separate file. At the most basic, PhotoLab will de-mosaic the RAW, applying its optical corrections, and optionally de-noising, creating a Linear DNG for Lightroom (or whichever application you choose) to work on.

I personally think this makes sense, but if you want to just open a file in Lightroom, then you will need to do just that, and not ask PhotoLab to do it for you.