Hello,
While i use both Pc and Mac. (most of the time Mac 
)
Sometimes i want to us the PC. But then i have no mac build presets and projects 
Is there a way to copy these settings and projects?
Best Regards,
Ron
Hi Ron,
Any presets you have created are stored in a directory that you can access. Iâm a Windows user of PhotoLab 8 and with a Windows PC they are stored in:
C:\Users<user>\AppData\Local\DxO\DxO PhotoLab 8\Presets.
The online (or downloadable PDF) user guide on the DxO website will give you the equivalent location on a MAC.
Copying the presets from your MAC directory to the Windows PC directory will result in the presets being usable with your PC PhotoLab.
I donât use Projects but from everything I have read in the manuals and many threads on this forum (try a search) the only place information pertaining to projects is stored is in the PhotoLab database. Everything I read suggests you canât copy the database and expect it to work so I think youâre stuck with being unable to âshare / Copyâ projects across the two platforms.
1 Like
Hello Paul,
Thanks for your extreme fast response! 
And now you mentioned the place on Windows. I can copy the files from the mac location.
Now only find the Projects location. Probably the directory next to it. 
Projects are held in the database and cannot be transferred
Unless you copy the database too!
You need to make sure that all paths are the same in both machines. Not sure what what PL will do with â/â and â\â which are different separators on the two machines. Windows is actually quite good with accepting both these days so you may just be ok 
@KeithRJ The database definitions are not compatible, even the Table definitions are not the same, similar in many ways but not identical.
Hence, I believe that it is totally impossible to use a Mac database with DxPL (Win) and vice versa.
Transferring data would need to be via DOPs and there is no âProjectsâ data contained within the DOPs.
This is for the PL6 database
Mac:-
Windows:-
I did not know that 
Thanks for pointing it out.
The more I learn about PL the more I realise how different Windows and Mac versions are. Does not make sense from a development and maintenance point of view 
@John-M and I tried to exchange DBs between Mac and Win a while ago. I donât remember if we tested restoring a DB backup though. Restoring a DB can do a few adaptions, but I donât expect cross platform exchange to work.
@KeithRJ Sorry to disappoint you.
@platypus Thank you for reminding me about the exchange tests.
If you want to try a âRestoreâ test (just to rule out the possibility) here is small PL7 Win 10 database with 5 images and 1 project
PhotoLab.zip (12.6 KB)
All,
Thanks for the fast and detailed answers.
I have also dit more investigation. And i know that Photolab use SQLite as database engine.
So it should be easy to unload and load the right table. Probably works it on the table level and the transfer of the project (name) the rest is probably not possible. Due to the unique id that the photo get at ingest time. And for 100% sure they are different.
So i wil give up this quest. And create manual the projects in windows via the usual paper transfer with the photo names. 
Thanks again for the extra info.
For those who want to dig deeper.
I made two screenshot of the two? tables related to Projects? The only thing whats readable is the project name in (ZDOPLIST) the rest is database internal readable for those who have the complete Database scheme. (Only DxO 
)
Can anyone send me a Windows database via a PM? I just want to confirm the structure and compare it with the Mac version.
I believe that the Mac version is maintained via the Apple CoreData framework. At least, the âZâ at the beginning of column names is usual for the autogeneration of tables and columns for that framework.
Of course, that framework doesnât exist for Windows, therefore, I would expect different table and column names
True, different numbers (and names) of tables and rows. Still, some content overlap should existâŠbut Iâd greatly prefer DxO to eradicate this issue at its root.
Meanwhile, the only transport between Mac and Win are the sidecar files. My Macs index about 1000 images per minuteâŠand the computer should be kept from sleeping while importing, sorry, indexing. Benefit of such a transfer would be a clean database - at least for a while.
Thanks, did not work, even after renaming the database.
@Joanna shows some more details above. Thanks for that.
Which isnât problem-free either. For example, with DCP profiles the absolute path of the profile is written to the sidecar (with drive letter on Windows), so you have to edit dop files to get make them usable on the other platform.
DxO could solve the problem by allowing profiles to be placed in a known directory on each platform and only writing relative paths, but they havenât in 6 major releases since DCP support was added in PL2, and they created the same problem with LUTs in PL7.
Indeed, and such design flaws were often put away aboutâŠ
30 years ago.
A migration utility could do, something saying Please point me to ??? because Iâve not found ??? and fixing the paths. Maybe not usable for everyone, but better than nothing.
On this forum we have regularly exchanged raw files with their associated DOP files and placed the two together in a directory very different from the original owner. I have never had, or heard of anyone having an issue with path names in this scenario.
I suspect that PL updates path names for matching pairs of photo and sidecar files.
Easy to teat but I have not tried yet!
Way too easy and far too useful to fix the DCP profiles, LUTs, drive changes and then with a teensy weensy bit more code DOP versus database clashes (Unwanted VCs).
Where would it all end, with a system a whole lot less flaky than the one we have.
Not really! The database schema is embedded in the SQLite database
So for these âProjectsâ
containing these images (including VCs)
we have the following database entries
From
âProjectsâ to
âProjectsItemsâ to
âItemsâ (Images) to
âSourcesâ to
âFoldersâ and follow the pointers within âFoldersâ to reconstruct the original directory, nothing is hidden.
Just donât ask me to write the SQL but when I have time I will try to write some PureBasic to create a text file which represents the Projects and their contents.
However, that will have to wait for the next two days because we have our two youngest granddaughters visiting.
PS:- But there are some excellent SQL writers amongst this topicâs responders.
The image/sidecar paths isnât the problem, itâs the path of any DCP/LUT/ICC files referenced by the dop. Donât use any of these features and thereâs no problem. Do and the referenced files must exist at the same path or the result is either an error in displaying the image or that the missing profile is silently ignored.
For example, edit using a DCP profile on Mac, move the image/dop to Windows, enter Customize, and the result is: âInternal error (SetColorRenderingData fails)â. The dop needs to be edited to replace the absolute path written by PL on Mac for it to be possible to edit the image on Windows. From Windows to Mac the results is that the profile is silently ignored if I recall correctly.
Itâs the same problem without swapping platforms: the path of a referenced profile is expected to reside at the same absolute path on the host the image/dop is moved to. Itâs just that this definitely wonât be the case when moving between Mac and Windows.
This makes using any of the profile-based features (DCP, LUT, ICC) impractical if you regularly edit on both Mac and Windows. Migration between platforms is certainly doable, but expecting users to have to write a sed script (say) to massage all their dop files in order to do so successfully is poor usability at best.