There have been a few threads about this in the past, but it’s been a few years, so I’d like to make a fresh request for DxO PhotoLab to offer round-trip workflow integration with Apple Photos libraries.
There are several other applications that have built such workflows to provide custom RAW processing workflows: Photomator and Nitro are a couple of good ones. In both these applications’ cases, they offer tools for navigating the Apple Photos library and editing RAW photos stored therein, writing back the rendered image along with a sidecar to Apple Photos, where it appears updated in place (with the original, unmodified files still stored alongside).
I’m in the process of moving away from Lightroom Classic, and the biggest feature I’ll miss at this point is round-tripping to DxO PhotoLab. Please add this capability!
you better copy/paste your post and do it at the right place. when you selection where your post will be, check to make sure it’s in “Feature requests” so you can add your vote and so does others.
That would be nice indeed. Both ways of storing photos should be supported imo. Photos copied into the database and photos not copied.
If I remember correctly, Apple Fotos can only accommodate external editors through TIFF files. If this is really the case, the best workaround would be to go along this:
Develop images in PhotoLab
Export customised photos to the Apple Fotos app - using the provided means
I mostly do this for shared albums or easier handling in a macOS context, in which case I use JPEG instead of TIFF to preserve some disk space.
Yes, that’s all correct. When invoked as an external editor from Photos, PL receives a TIFF file, meaning you’re unable to process the RAW. That limitation seems to be why these newer apps like Nitro and Photomator are providing their own UIs to browse and select RAW files via the Apple Photo Library API (and both apps also support browsing the file system too, of course). I’d love for DxO to take the same leap!
For photos that I want to process fully, I’m definitely taking the originals into DxO PL, then exporting a processed DNG to Apple Photos. The thing that’s changed for me now is that my originals also start in Apple Photos (rather than Lightroom). Because I take just as many photos with my phone as with my camera, having a single repository for my originals now makes the most sense to me. I wrote a blog post on this subject recently.
An important element of supporting a Photos-centric workflow would be writing back not just the processed image, but the DxO settings sidecar into the Apple Photos library. That way, I wouldn’t have to store my originals outside of Apple Photos in order to keep a record of my DxO edits.
If Apple Photos copies image files to its database, you’ll find them in the folders in “originals” near the upper end of screen capture. I set AP to NOT copy files, therefore, the “originals” sub-folders are empty and the “masters” is the container.
DxO added a possibility to dig into AP’s database folders, but I’d not want to use that in order to prevent incoherences. I suppose that this looking into packets feature is some kind of preparatory step only.
