Image development trees : optimization and factoring out workflow ; graphical view of input and output transformations

[Lucas]

@pierre5018

The first part of this proposal is to retain in memory, behind the scene, the basic development process such as conversion from raw and lens corrections. Those initial steps should be computed only once for a collection of images derived from the same source. The additional post-processing would resume from a common checkpoint. This would speed-up processing of virtual copies, and further processing via external applications such as Nik collection. Additional processing such as light and color could also be retained when virtual copies differ only in repairs or cropping.

For your information this is what the export menu “Export as DNG (denoising & optical correction only)” does starting from DxO PhotoLab 4. This will apply demosaicing, denoising and optical corrections as its name suggests. So you can do the heavy operations once beforehand, then open the exported DNG and apply lighting and color, without losing quality compared to doing all the operations at once. The identical quality with this intermediate export is a major difference with the other DNG export mode (all corrections).

This allows exporting with DeepPRIME during night then working on the preprocessed DNG faster when you have time behind your computer. The side-effect is that you’ll see DeepPRIME result in the main viewer of DxO PhotoLab 4, instead of just the loupe.

Another major difference with PhotoLab 3 is that PhotoLab 4 is now able to read the DNG that is has exported (whichever DNG export mode you choose), even the ones exported in earlier versions of PhotoLab.

However I can see two limitations with respect to your initial request:

• The pre-processed image will no longer be able to receive changes on denoising or any optical correction based on DxO’s calibration data: at best some optical corrections palettes will remain usable but in manual mode only.
• Nik Collection applications do not support DNG files, so this workflow is only valid within PhotoLab or other applications that support DNG files.

Edit: I’ve covered this in more details in a dedicated thread: Partial solution to work with DeepPRIME in PhotoLab's main viewer