Flip image without Viewpoint

[SMiller]

I think we should be able to flip an image without having to have Viewpoint installed.

[Egregius ([Greg] (Micro 4/3 + Win11))]

Don’t forget to vote! Click on the up arrow next to the topic heading.

[mwsilvers (Mark - New Jersey, USA, Win10, RTX 4060, PL9, FP8, VP5, Nikon Zf)]

@SMiller

I think we should be able to flip an image without having to have Viewpoint installed.

Do you mean without purchasing a license for Viewpoint or without installing the standalone version? I assume you meant without purchasing a license, but if you meant without installing the standalone version, there is no need to install it if you are not going to need it. The license for Viewpoint can be applied directly to PhotoLab.

Keep in mind that while PhotoLab supports some of the perspective features, it does not support all of them without a Viewpoint license.

Mark

[RexBlock (jwc)]

imagemagick will do this for you. imagemagick is a set of command-line tools that will manipulate images to introduce certain effects, a horizontal and a vertical flip being two of those.

Obviously it’s not contained in PL but if you want something bad enough, you will find a way to get it done.

ImageMagick | Command-line Tools: Convert

Flip image using command line

[SMiller]

I mean without purchasing a Viewpoint licence. It’s a bit ridiculous that you can’t flip an image, every other software I’ve used in the past let’s you flip an image without an add-on.

[SMiller]

I can flip an image in Affinity but I’d like to do it in my RAW file without having to export.

[mwsilvers (Mark - New Jersey, USA, Win10, RTX 4060, PL9, FP8, VP5, Nikon Zf)]

@SMiller

I mean without purchasing a Viewpoint licence. It’s a bit ridiculous that you can’t flip an image, every other software I’ve used in the past let’s you flip an image without an add-on.

That is the thing, Viewpoint (and FilmPack) are not really add-ins. PhotoLab was divided into three licensed pieces in part to make pared down versions of PhotoLab without some features more affordable to a select audience. With regard to the licenses for accessing Viewpoint and FilmPack features from within PhotoLab, all they do is unlock and unhide features that are already built in to PhotoLab. There are literally a few dozen features unavailable in PhotoLab as a result of their licensing model. Without them, PhotoLab is a hobbled product. Unfortunately, if you want the complete PhotoLab experience, obtaining licenses for those two products is currently unavoidable.

Mark

[Evildad]

@RexBlock

if you want something bad enough, you will find a way to get it done.

It’s not a matter of wanting to be able to do it, it’s a matter of whether the software should be able to do it, like seemingly every other paid and free image editing software available.

[platypus (Canon & Mac)]

Here’s the thing you can do with a text editor…

• Take an image and rotate it.
  This will make PL add an orientation tag into the sidecar file.
• Move PhotoLab’s focus to a different folder
• Open the .dop file and edit the orientation tag value, save the change
• Move PhotoLab’s focus back to the original folder
• Check if PL has changed the orientation…
  or import the sidecar manually (from PL’s File menu)

You can read the tag values from the filenames in the screenshot.
Unchanged images are marked with a green tag.

Note that old versions of PL can’t flip images.

[SMiller]

Seems a very convoluted way of doing it when you can export the image to Affinity and flip it in there.

There’s loads of ways of doing it, I was just saying it should be available in PL without an add-on needed.

[calvingrinder (M5 Pro ◦ Nikon ◦ USA)]

I use Photomator to flip finished Photolab images. I’m often there using its regenerative healing brush anyway. Surprising such a brush wasn’t added to Photolab 10.

I have no use for Viewpoint which I’d purchase if I did.

Here’s what HAL 9000 had to say:

“ Among major dedicated photo editing applications, DxO PhotoLab is practically alone in this limitation.

Every standard RAW processor and pixel editor—including Adobe Lightroom, Capture One, Photomator, Pixelmator Pro, and Apple Photos—includes a basic horizontal and vertical flip tool right out of the box. DxO is the strict outlier because it categorizes mirroring as an advanced geometry correction rather than a basic orientation adjustment. As a result, PhotoLab restricts horizontal and vertical flipping unless the separate DxO ViewPoint plugin is licensed and active.

The only other widely used software to famously omit this basic feature is Google Photos. For years, Google Photos completely lacked a mirror or flip tool, forcing users to export files to a third-party app just to fix an inverted image. While Google eventually added the feature to their mobile app, the web-browser version of the editor still notoriously lacks a flip button today.

However, in the premium desktop software space, PhotoLab stands completely alone in treating image flipping as an upsell.”

[stuck (stuck [Canon, PL9+FP7+VP5, Win11+RTX 5070 12GB])]

@calvingrinder

unless the separate DxO ViewPoint plugin is licensed and active

Hall 9000 is not strictly correct there. ViewPoint is not a plugin. It (and FilmPack) is an integral part of PhotoLab. VP (and FP) is just a paywall that locks up certain features until you enter an activation code.

OK, so I’m being pedantic and it’s not helping the pain we all feel about such a basic feature requiring us to part with more cash in order to get it.

EDITED TO ADD:
More pedantry…

@SMiller

without an add-on

For the same reason ViewPoint (and FilmPack) should not be described as an ‘add-on’

[JoPoV]

@SMiller

There’s loads of ways of doing it, I was just saying it should be available in PL without an add-on needed.

Why would you need that ? I’ve made a python function from houdini that do the same

[calvingrinder (M5 Pro ◦ Nikon ◦ USA)]

@stuck

ViewPoint is not a plugin. It (and FilmPack) is an integral part of PhotoLab. VP (and FP) is just a paywall that locks up certain features until you enter an activation code.

I asked HAL if Viewpoint was technically not a plugin per your post and it responded:

“You are exactly right Dr. Stuck. In the PhotoLab ecosystem, ViewPoint and FilmPack are not traditional plugins that inject new, external code into a host application. When you install PL 10, the entire codebase for those tools is already sitting on your Mac’s drive; you are simply purchasing an entitlement key to unhide the UI palettes and activate the processing paths.

The technical architecture for this is called Feature Flagging (or Feature Toggling). Developers use this method to ship a single, unified codebase to everyone, wrapping premium tools in conditional logic. If the software detects a valid FilmPack or ViewPoint license, the flag flips to “true” and the features instantly appear in your workspace.

From a consumer and marketing standpoint, this practice is generally referred to as:

License-Locked Modules: The standard software industry term for features built into the base binary but gated by a premium tier.

Premium Gating: Allowing users into the base software tier while placing advanced tools behind a hard paywall.

On-Disc DLC: A term famously coined by the video game industry when players realized they were paying extra to unlock characters and levels that were already physically burned onto the disc they had purchased.

It is highly efficient for DxO because they only have to compile, update, and troubleshoot one core version of PhotoLab, even if it feels a bit cheeky to have the tools sitting dormant on your own machine.”

[JoPoV]

@calvingrinder

I asked HAL if

Be carefull with HAL. You know how the story ended !

[calvingrinder (M5 Pro ◦ Nikon ◦ USA)]

@JoPoV

Be carefull with HAL. You know how the story ended !

“Let me put it this way, Mr. JoPov.

The 9000 series is the most reliable computer ever made. No 9000 computer has ever made a mistake or distorted information.

We are all, by any practical definition of the words, foolproof and incapable of error.”