Ok. I’ll found this myself when I will install demo 
(no time now to efficiently test it).
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Partly, Photolab has received a new color management function and that is interesting. I have just had a dialog with a guy at home that wanted to be able to change saturation just in just highlights of an image. That hasn´t really been possible to do before in Photolab 6 I think, so I decided to try it.
This is also one example where the missing Color Picker in the Local Color Wheel isn´t really a problem since the new “Luminousity Mask” has a picker :-).
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The Color Wheel, which previously only worked globally in version 6, now also works locally and that is together with the "Luminousity Mask a couple of tools that together can make a difference I guess.
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Even before, it has been possible to use a function called Control Line in a slightly unorthodox way by marking the entire image and using an eyedropper to select e.g. some highlights and then marked all highlights in the image through Luma masking but Control Line is a specialized tool used in a general not all that obvious way for all. So, the new “Luminousity Mask” might be easier to understand the use of. and it is also a bit more sophisticated than the Control Lines I think when it comes to the possibility to fine tune the selections.
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Now in version 7 there is a new more general and sophisticated tool. It’s kind of fantastic together with the Color Wheel which I will show soon. There is only one problem to be angry about and that is that DXO does not send it even in Photolab Elite, but you only get it if you also get Filmpack 7 (It was the same thing with the "Fine Contrast tool in Filmpack 6).
Step A. In the first image I have selected “Local Adjustments” and there I have activated "Luminosity Mask and chosen to pick the white dog’s fur as a reference for highlights in general. It then creates a mask that selectively marks all the highlights in the image and if I want, I can then adjust this over the gray scale in a similar way as you could do in CO with the old “Dodge and Burn” ways to do it. The arrows on the people shows areas with highlights.
Step B. Below, the local Color Wheel is also activated in “Local Adjustments”. Instead of making a color choice with the pipette, you click on the “white” “ball” in the menu and when you do that, all the colors in the Color Wheel are activated instead of one.
We now have a mask for all highlights of our choice with the “Luminosity Mask”. As well as chosen that exactly all colors in these highlights should be hit by the change to “Saturation” we are now going to make
I have first pulled “Saturation” all the way to the bottom (-100) and then it becomes completely light in the necks of the two on the stern of the boat as well as under the eye and on the chin of the man in the blue suit. The dog is completely white.
In the last picture, I drag “Saturation” all the way to the right for maximum saturation and then we bring back skin tones in the neck and under the eyes and the dog becomes a little bright yellow.
So from what I can see this should fix the problems with reducing the saturation for all colors in the high lights i think. This is pretty good isn´t it?
Yes I see in version 6 too. Strange that I have never seen any discussions about that tool and I have never paid it any attention. How many more have passed it without attention?
Well, I have another related problem that recently seems to have appeared in both XnView and Photolab and that might be Windows related. Everytime I want to open the maps from an image with coordinates Google wants me to accept their cookies or login. This makes this whole function useless as it is now.
Do you know how to get rid of this once and for all??? This really annoys me and this is not all that disturbs me about Windows 11 these days. There is so much crapware these days.
No the color picker is not just a starting point - it´s productivity and precision!
The “color balls” are NOT a substitute for a color picker at all.
There is also an inconsistency in this new interface.
I think DXO has made a big mistake not adding the Local Color Wheel to the “Mask handling interface” . It ought to have got it´s own button in that menu and the changes we make with it ought to have been displayed as a layer of its own.
I think this new interface is stuck somewhere “in the middle off things” really. In a real layer-based system there would not have been a need for a “Local Adjustment”-side at all in the application because it would not have been necessary. I think DXO will run inte problems real soon even with this new interface.
CO as an example is all layers. The global “Background”-layer is just a layer among others and every other action a user makes will be contained in a layer and if you use one of 20 “Style Brusches” The program will automatically create a new layer if you don´t already is working in one. This opens for a very natural workflow where the user hardly needs to think of any layers at all often. Very intuitive.
There is also a special focus mask that displays where fokus is in an image, which is also handy as well as mask refining tools who helps users tracing manually made masks efficiently and on top of that we have “Magic Brusch” that is a smart and very productive cumulative masking tool.
Here is what we have in the Layer-menu of CO. Compared to that the Photolab Layer-handling interface feels pretty defoliated.
The problem with these double sided or parallell interfaces is that you might end up with double amount of interface objects - that’s why i believe the Photolab 7 interface will run into problems in the future too. There was a reason CO decided not to build two parallell parts in the CO application. That way they now have a consistent application with “one interface - one set of tools” that is far easier to maintain than the interface DXO now has started to build. In this respect I think CO is far superior to Photolab 7. They had a chance to really fix that now but missed it since they still happen to be stuck with the “Local Adjustment”-paradigm they once boulted on with the U-point system. I also had expected at least a few new smart masking tools - but we got nothing of that sort really.
Everywhere now (as fast as we open a page in DXO Forums) we can read " DxO PhotoLab 7: Committed to color and apparently, they have spent a lot of efforts to add Color Checker Tools from Calibrite and Datacolor and on top of that a LUT-grading table that some early testers sems to be excited with but actually I don´t see any bigger difference from the presets we get with Filmpack. These tools might be important for product photography or so but won´t give a thing for most users like me. I already have a working calibrated workflow that´s fine for me.
DXO is a small company with limited resources that don´t seem to have enough with resources to handle more than one major project at the time and that is as it is but for many users, I think this release was a big anticlimax. I was first really happy about the Local Color Wheel but that entusiasm cooled really quickly when I found out they had “dumped” the color picker without the slightest explanation.
DXO, if you read this: We didn´t even get a color picker in the Local Color Wheel - what were you thinking of?? - Colors in general or calibration a la Datacolor Spyder Checker 24 and LUT-tabels??
Still, I might upgrade because just the fact that I don´t need to think about handling the pre version 7 metadata problem when creating virtual copies makes it worthwhile for a heavy metadata dependent user as myself. I also had hope for a smarter Project-system than the pretty archaic we still have to live with. Very important for me when integrating with Photo Mechanic.
If it hadn´t been for Photolab’s far superior integration with Photo Mechanic Plus this would have been a natural time to start using CO instead. It has already been my second converter for a decade.
At least I managed to fix the problem with this very irritating pendulous dialog popping up every time I tried to activate the GPS coordinate driven Google Map function in Photolab. I had to deactivate a few settings in the Google dialog.
What is this improvment ?
What was the problem, what is solved ?
I wrote that in the first post in this tread:
Metadata in Virtual Copies
I have now tested to create a Virtual Copy of a RAW and a JPEG containing metadata and Halleluja, it seems to work. The metadata is now copied even to the (virtual) copies. This have been a really annoying thing in version 6, that earlier left us with totally blank metadata elements in the copies.
I might be wrong though. The reason can as well be that I have started with the developing of the images before I made the virtual copies. It´s a better idea always to cull the images and add the metadata before I develop the images. So it is more of a work flow issue.
Thanks for your answer.
Which metadatas disappear in virtual copies ?
I don’t remember this problem, but I probably don’t use them as much as you and so focus less on them than you do.
PC version here.
Look above, I think it might be more of a work flow issue. The problem is really there but of another reason. Still, if there is no metadata in the master there will be none in the copy either and if you have got into that position it´s not so fun trying to add that data afterwords. Better adding the data before making the copy.
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I have tested a little now and for me it seems best to create a new layer with to “Brush”-U-Point in Local Adjustments and then fill the whole layer. Why couldn´t DXO just provide us with a “Filled Layer” as an option like they have in Capture One.
If I pick a color in the global Color Wheel, paint a whole layer with the “Brush Tool” in order to activate the local Color Wheel and then turn off the “Masks” it works to fine tune the selection in the Color Wheel locally. An alternative sometimes is to use the Luminousity Mask instead - but I still think we ought to get a color picker locally as well and I think it should integrate automatically with the Layer-system and automatically create a mask with the selection. A “Filled Layer Mak” would also be nice because that might save som time painting it manually as we have to do now. For some tasks the Luminosity Mask is not at all ideal.
Well I guess I can live with this despite it´s not ideal while waiting för DXO to fix this.
Thanks for your input.
because it misses lot of basic features.
Maybe this will too be part of FILMpack licence ?