Hello friends i am finaly back on dxo forum with a new desktop with dxo plv8

OXiDant · April 23, 2025, 8:44pm

hello every one old and new,

geesh owning a new for me/us house is time consuming.
time flies when your having fun, eh work to do.
because my older pc wasn’t able to proces my images any more in a normal speed and i didn’t had the time to wait after every adjustment i just stopped for a wile processing images.
But my son is now also enthousiast photographer, race cars mostly, so the raw files where piling up.

So i assembled my bought new desktop parts and started in between my renovation jobs which my wife "asked me to do, to rebuild my working applications and such on this new desktop. (Which pointed me out that i was forgotten a lot how i did set up things…
wel almost everything is done… and my old desktop is running next to my new so i can shift mid screen to both.

Which brings me to the subject dxo photolab v8 elite suite.
1 recreated my workspace to the 2025 v8 possibility’s made my own palettes.
updated my 2-023 preset for default

preferences:
which brings me to the question how good/bad is the xmp syncronise metadata and keywords now a day’s?
in earlier version i was checkboxed read only modes for keywords and metadata, but it seems that in v8 this checkbox is gone.
So it seems that synchronize checked is needed in order to read.
i use adobe bridge to create a xmp file is the dxo verison the same value? ( if it sees no xmp file it will automaticly create one i read in dxo preferences.)

i have set up a few folders which i prepared in bridge ( tagging and meta data and skimming/culling) So i hope i can scheduwal one’s a week one evening sitting behind my desktop to edit and such.
retraining my skills on dxo photolab because geesh it 's sunk deep in my brain i am afraid.

so any tips and heads up about v8 would be welcome

when i have some “5 star” images processed i will post them in the “share your images”.

right, time to stop for now. Have to work tomorrow and i try to go to bed before 0:00 now a day’s instead of 01:30 . yep i am getting older or wiser or both … ( unlikely in the wiser part by the way.)

@mwsilvers quick question do your filmpack presets still work in v8? or are those “broken”?

regards,

Peter

mwsilvers · April 24, 2025, 3:03am

Welcome back Peter! My presets still work except for the Fuji film types. They can now only be used with raw files from Fuji cameras that support them. This was as a result of a recent request from FujiFilm. Keep in mind that my set of presets (which was also updated by @Joanna with new film types several years ago) has not been updated with newer types since then.

Additionally, one of the very useful new features of PL 8 is the ability to immediately see the results of almost all drop down menu items in the editing window, including all FilmPack film types, by hovering the mouse pointer over them. As a result, all the film types in the Color/B&W Rendering section’s dropdown menus can now be viewed this way. This feature reduces the value of my presets significantly.

Mark

BHAYT · April 24, 2025, 8:07am

@OXiDant Peter welcome back and I am glad you have finally built your new machine, mine are still the same but in new cases and all liquid cooled.

But why rebuild the software from scratch and not clone? You will still have to re-enter the licences for a lot of software but not all, albeit you would then have to upgrade from Win 10 to Win 11!

As far as I can tell not changed whatsoever, it is as good today as it ever was, or not depending on your opinion.

There has never been an automatic “read only” mode for keywords and metadata and that has been a contentious issue for many years, with some on us!

So the options in PL7 were and the options in PL8 are as shown below

Camera metadata is automatically read but IPTC and keywords are read optionally but the option for synchronisation is just one option and it will set automatic read AND write.

To “prevent” synchronisation, where DxPL with both read and write the metadata, i.e. it will read it from the image or the xmp sidecar file and will write its own format for keywords back the the image (or sidecar), you will need to use the settings shown for PL8 in my snapshot.

To then read the metadata you must select the images from which you wish to read the metadata and execute the ‘File’/‘Metadata’/‘Read from image’.

This is the only way that the metadata will be transferred from the image (and xmp sidecar) into DxPL.

If you then want to update the image (xmp sidecar) you must then use the ‘Write to image’ option shown in the snapshot.

BUT setting the ‘Preferences’ option that way will mean that any metadata contained in the DOP will be read and entered into the database when the image is “discovered by” (imported into) for the first time, i.e. if it is not already in the database.

Once in the database then any external changes made to the metadata will be detected by DxPL and flagged with an “S” as follows, rather than being automatically discovered and read if the ‘Synchronise’ option is set as shown in my snapshot for PL7.

As an example, in PL8.5 I select an image and enter the keywords “Tulip” and “Faded” but to update the image I need to write that metadata back to the image.

I then change the metadata externally and PL8.5 detects that and warns that there is a Synchronisation error which I can ignore or fix with a 'Read from image", if I so choose.

Peter, I hope that helps.

Regards

Bryan

PS:- The keywords in the DOP

OXiDant · April 29, 2025, 7:40pm

sorry for the late reply, juggling more then 2 balls at the same time…,
wel the old pc was also a installation from 2011 whicxh wassn’t that "fresh " anymore.
So i bought a new licence win 11 pro and did a new fresh instal.
then i choose an other password manager then lastpass. i choose “proton” european and never bin breached. and it has lot of other features i consider to buy.
( for now i still in “free mode” testing)
al the software i had on the old one i checked for usage/usability/ need in the past en future before i installed it on my new.
i wanted to be as clean as possible and it gave me a drive/ need to re edjucate/learn about the win 11 and the applications again. lots of geesh how did i do that a few years back?

hmmm, i recal in the first moment in the v5/6? we had this or was this only in Beta?

Wel never mind, if it’s reading the changes and stors them in the database zo i can see them it’s fine.
when i stil was able to edit without waiting til i dropped every slider change i was manualy changing images iptc by choice true the menu export/import metadata

at this moment i am in bridge 2025 re visiting all my images in the folder “import new photo’s” which i still need to process.
tagg and keywording and editing… for 2023 til now.

i have writing keyword also “off” because i do this in bridge2025. the only thing i do in dxo is gps data because bridge doesn’t understand Gmaps version of location and Dxo does.
What i hoped was that i now could use “synchronise metadata with xmp side car files” and not keywords those must be read only because those where often a discusion here in a way that they didn’t play well with other party’s.

owh and i bought me a gift last week…

a big brother of my g80.
his former owner put it on sale . it is nearly new and a few clicks.
four battery’s 475 euro ( body and battery’s only the lens was allready mine) couldn’t resist. Next month me and my son and a friend from my son we go to the historic races in Spa. So now we both can use a m43…

He is wants to buy a R8 but with his job filling shelves in the supermarket that can take some wile.

in the mean time he can borrow my stuf. He and his friend are having the same hobby’s so that’s fun to see.

Peter

BHAYT · April 29, 2025, 11:13pm

@OXiDant As far as I can remember there has never been a “read only” mode with automatic synchronisation and I have been “playing with” keywords since PL5 Beta.

BUT the outcry when PL5 was released was that prior to that time, i.e. PL4, DxPL did not write anything back to the image, it was all contained in the database and DOP and it might well be that which you remember.

There is nothing particularly wrong with the way that DxPL formats hierarchical keywords, it is the same as some other packages and different from others! But users were prepared to accept the exported images containing keywords in a different format to their other products, e.g. Photo Mechanic prior to PL5 but then started complaining big time when the keyword formats of the original images were changed!!

You now own the camera I have been using for a few years now. I went from G7 to G80 to G90 but the G90 jumped focus when I was videoing my wife with one of our granddaughters plus I hated its increased crop for video.

So I added the EM1 MKii (with a 12-200, 24 - 400, Olympus lens, now “welded” to the G9) but ultimately hated its user interface and finally moved to a second hand G9 and sold the G90 to part finance that deal.

I also had a GX80 but sold that and bought a GX9 which is almost as good as the G9 but better for street photography because of its size and the tilting rear screen (and viewfinder).

Have a good time at Spa but don’t forget your ear plugs.

Regards

Bryan