Intelligent Masking

DxO PhotoLab Feature requests
121

What would be data that is contained in such a DNG? Exported from Capture One, I mean?

Wouldn’t that be same as TIFF?

Also, as a side note. I have tried for example to apply Lightroom Noise Reduction AI and than open that DNG in PhotoLab. DXO sees it as just a regular noisy RAW file in DNG format, and as far as I noticed it works like original RAW file, but it does not recognize the noise reduction made by Adobe. I do not know if this is because Adobe does not save it in a way others can read it, or does DXO need to do something to read it. But I would imagine that different proprietary technology would not be available for further adjustments, effectively losing any advantage of doing so.

PhotoLab does record linear DNG, but lot of the info is backed in, stuff that only works in DXO , while the standard data about dynamic range and color etc is open for other apps to work with. It makes sense for that workflow because DXO is not strong in database mangament etc as are other apps. Plus its for users to already use Lightroom or Capture one and want to continue to use it, but also want the best image quality and best corrected lens problems that DXO offers.

If by opening up RAW, you mean RAW that is converted to DNG and opening it up in DXO. I am curious what would be the advantage of that over say TIFF? Because DXO if I’m not mistaken calibrates their lens sharpness and optical corrections manually, and if that is not done by DXO, where would that correction information come from? This would only leave DeepPrime de noising and demosicing technology and with that I can agree it would be useful to use it in a non supported RAW files , saved or converted to DNG, with for example DNG converter from Adobe. Interestingly, though when Adobe released their latest Noise Reduction AI , it too does not support DNG, or TIFF or JPEG, but only original RAW files. I don’t know what is the significance of that.

122

I’ve tried to say all this many times on many threads but that second point seems all too true.

I rest my case.

Once more for ultimate clarity. DxO support cameras.

I’m beginning to think DxO would do themselves a favour by blocking JPEGs except from supported cameras. Just to get the point across.

123

Sorry, this is nonsense.

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124

Robin Whalley made a great little tutorial explaining how masking works in Nik Collection, but much of it works in PhotoLab. Great educator. I wanted to do something similar for this thread, but I’ll just share his well made tutorial.

How to Select It Using the Nik Collection 6.

"Welcome to this video where we explore creating detailed and complex selections using the Nik Collection 6. Join us as we dive deep into the process, focusing on Control Points and the recently released Control Line feature. While I’ll be demonstrating with Nik Viveza, don’t worry. This information can be easily applied to other Nik Collection tools as well. These selection tools are built on the powerful U-Point technology used throughout the Nik Collection.

As part of the video, I reveal insider tips and tricks that I personally use in my editing workflow. I’ll be sharing invaluable insights on techniques like grouping Control Points and Control Lines, as well as how to protect specific areas using Control Points. I suspect you may be surprised by the untapped potential of the versatile Control Points in the Nik Collection. These tools do have the potential to enhance your results in ways you may not have realised."

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125

I completely agree, and am sad that I felt the need for it after arguing this point endlessly in recent times.

Cameras. Anything else is a bonus.

126

Yes I think the use of smart AI masking is irreplaceable and different from any human driven image tuning.

Human driven maskin you put points or whatever in places you need on a single picture.

Here is an example use case I can only do with AI smart masking.

I am taking many beach pictures of people family etc, at different days conditions etc.
I want to push colors of sand, trees etc in certain directions, without affecting people skin.
Of course I want to do this in batch for dozens of images without drawing around people faces, arms, nor brushing on their skins. I want to do something special for their clothes like desaturate.

The AI mask that would say anything except people skin, or people’s clothes is just the definition of the smart mask. It applies automatically to all pictures.you want without further work.

I hope this example enables readers to understand what is the AI masking feature, it is a logical definition that applies automatically to many images of some series with no efforts. Detects objects, people, sky, etc. with no need to say where they are on each picture.

I stopped upgrading my DXO versions and will switch to LR even though I much prefer DXO unless they add a strong “logical” or “semantic” editing roadmap.

Such a pity when the overall approach is cleaner and simpler with DXO than LR (for my taste).

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127

Seems like this kind of mass batch processing is anti whatever DXO is representing which highest quality of raw conversion with human control, not mass batch processing the kind that the likes of meta or google is doing. There are tools out there probably for the kind of low quality specific batch processing like that. I hate to see DXO ever try to cater to that market, because it is a race to the bottom and it will never be able to out compete the previously mentioned soulless giants that that are essentially data processing companies of giant proportions, legality and ethics be damned. How about we keep DXO what it is and improve of what is good at instead of trying to cater to market that DXO was never intended for nor should be used for.

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128

Good post @MSmithy. I guess the issue is can PL survive if development is restricted in that way? Will the market be big enough or willing to pay a premium? Is there a way perhaps to create a product that services both markets? Certainly I would like to see PL move into the realms of Ai masking - batch processing has holds no interest for me.

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129

@MSmithy
I think you are missing where things are heading with the AI -masking and smart AI-driven batch updates (…heading, well we are already there … except in Photolab maybe)

There are smart batch processing tools too already that just doesn´t apply a certain effect or adjustment without analysing each and every picture of a batch before committing the changes and they might be able to use AI-masking in the layers used as well without any restrictions from what is possible even globally in the case of Capture One at least. Might not be the case though for Lightroom locally.

With Capture One for example wedding photographers can increase their productivity a lot with a function called Smart Adjustment. Look at this video for an update. Why do you think it is a good idea for a company like DXO to “remain on the platform” when everybody else continue to develop and refine layers, smart color grading even in layers and AI-driven batch processing??

Your recipe might just be a death sentence for a DXO and a product like Photolab unable to catch up with the pace several other competitors are running this development with. For this kind of more sophisticated work I have used Capture One a long time now.

With friends like you here, DXO and Photolab might not even need any outspoken enemies. There are enough of people who will love Photolab to its death. I have always been a fan of DXO and Optics Pro / Photolab since I left Adobe a long time ago but I will stop upgrading now because I think it is pointless for users like me. I have fossil systems like Pixmantec Raw Shooter and Lightroom and it looks like I´m heading for a fossil Photolab-world too for the moment I still am forced to use both Photolab and Capture One but like the others it is beginning to fade away.

I´m a little puzzled though that you of all people isn´t able to see what is happening now in front of our eyes as well. Face it! Photolab is light years away from this you can see below!

AI-masking

AI-driven Smart Adjustment and batch processing

Really advanced Color Grading for everything since there isn´t even anything called global or local adjustment in Capture One. Everything is layers and all relevant tools are available everywhere - both Adobe - Lightroom and DXO - Photolab have a lot to learn there. And both these softwares have to be totally rewritten to accomplish that

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130

I still would love to see what kind of work people except to do with AI masking in a program not used for compositing. Because only in compositing software does precise masking of subjects really becomes a tool to use. In an application designed to provide bets quality of RAW files with AI makes more sense in the department of noise reduction ,demoseicing and areas where DXO has indeed invested. Actual compositing where precise subject masking is needed is not meant to be done in DXO nor would the application be a great choise. Simply not made for that.

Actual changes you want to make to tone and color of the image are already there. And I’ve been around long enough and used just about every tool out there, I can say with experience, AI masking is not really needed for just about anything one would do in an application like PhotoLab. Any normal type task for such an application is already there, and can easily be done. For any actual compositing, retouching or similar jobs, there are far more mature, specilized and better tools out there. And this is not a bad thing.

My initial point was more about that, DXO is a very small company compared to Adobe or something similar and they should stick to the niche that made them what they are, instead of competing with large companies that have the resources DXO team will never have. It seems to me that AI masking is something people want because other companies are marking it, rather than being a tool that truly handicaps PhotoLab in any real way.

But lets assume AI masking is the direction DXO goes for. Maybe they will I have no information on that. Where does it stop? What’s next? Layers? Glow effects? Luminar has done that already. Generative Fill? Where does it stop? And what is the point. DXO could never be number one in that niche, but they can remain number one in the niche they are in. And if you can’t be among top three in your niche, you won’t survive for long.

DXO can’t compete with Luminar or Adobe in AI and Capture One has been turned into a woke garbage company now, by being sold off to some bankers or something. Now they promote DEI and ESG and are going for subscription. So is Affinity being sold of to Canova I think. Another AI subscription company. If these companies really cultivated loyal although small fan base, they could have stayed number one in their niche, now they will be hacked off by greedy bankers. I hate to see DXO ends up that way, since they are probably the last top end company that still is not subscription and part of some other larger greedy company.

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131

Ok, beyond the fact that Capture One has been sold off to firewood to promote ESG and DEI by some bankers, none if the stuff for color and tone adjustment is of advantage with AI masking you show here, compared to what we can do in PhotoLab. People either have no skills about what they are doing or wrong expectations. Its like DNG support all over again. People just don’t know what they need, and want what what someone else has, because they don’t have it, not because they need it.

Argument that you have to have AI masking to develop a raw file in a tasteful way is not a valid argument. Its simple not. You don’t need it and offers no real advantage other than more options to do something very similar. Its by no means a tool one must have and that seems to be your argument, that this must be implemented or people will go somewhere else. People are strange, that is for sure. Maybe they will, but it won’t change the fact that its not needed. And if you personally need it because for some strange reasons you can’t live without it, there are tools out there that do it. There are no tools that do what DXO does with raw processing. And that is the point you seem to be missing.

132

The point is that the AI masking is making it a lot easier and faster to process many images. In Lightroom, I was batch processing a whole photo shooting with just one click to slightly smoothen the skin of a model. If you are arguing that there are better programs for retouching, then I wonder, why would you need Photolab at all? You could just use PureRaw and do any further processing in Photoshop. The point of doing everything inside a single application is to have an easier workflow. Right now, Photolab is not competitive.

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133

Than why not use lightroom or whatever other program you think does that already? Sounds like you don’t need PhotoLab. On the other hand the kind of stuff PhotoLab does with AI and lens corrections etc. You can’t get in Lightroom , but you can use Pure RAW + Lightroom if that is the specific need you have. Clearly DXO decided not to try to compete with the likes of Adobe by building a Lightroom clone and insteady leveraged where they are better (RAW processing and other lens corrections) and created a bridge in form of PureRAW .

Errrr. PhotoLab is never and never was a retouching program. Neither is lightroom. or Capture One. They have some functionality added over the years, but retouching is for Photoshop which is made for that. To try to make Photoshop into Lightroom is equally foolish as trying to make PhotoLab into Photoshop.

Yes. As it was meant to be. Unless you are removing something simple.

No, its to have a bloated, buggy mess of an application. Give me ten specialized bug free efficient applications over one bloated, buggy mess any day of the week and twice on Sunday. Photoshop is now something like 4.5 + GB just to download and still most of the bloated functionality is in the cloud. AI adds either cloud stuff or lot of GB to the app for all the AI models. And if you want that, fine. If you don’t want that. you surly don’t want to be forced to install it all in one app. I want a choice.

Look at Topaz and their attempt to make PhotoAI instead of 3 apps that worked. Gigapixel for upscaling, Denoise and Sharpen for obvious things. Instead they tried all in one app for your conviance and created a turd called PhotoAI that is so buggy and messy and still inferior to dedicated apps its not even funny. Thanks, but no thanks. Stick to dedicated apps for dedicated work.

Right now, PhotoLab is the only competitive app out there for me. As for you, I leave that to you.

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134

You could do everything in Photoshop if you wanted, there is not even a need to have any other program. Programs like Photolab and Lightroom specifically cater for the needs of photographers, to simplify the operation and to ease batch processing. Exactly the strong points of AI masking.

I was a happy Photolab user, until the competition went ahead and allowed me to achieve professional results in less time. Maybe I am the only one who switched. I doubt it. I also doubt that DxO can afford it to consistently lose paying customers. I would love to return to Photolab, as I believe it has its strong points. But at the moment, there are too many disadvantages.

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135

I second that.
I loved the years where I used photolab, but now that my competitors switched to lightroom/Capture one and improved their workflow, I also had to do the switch: it was a situation of “Adapt or die” …

Maybe we are a minority, but from what I see on nearby photographers, photolab is no longer an option.
Let’s hope this does not reflect whole market

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136

Beyond personal preference , do you have any actual legit arguments or is that all you got?

Maybe instead of complaining what you wish PhotoLab had, you should focus on using the tools it does have. Because the grass is always greener at neighbors house for those who are not ready to appropriate what they have in their own.

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137

AI is no ploy; it is all about productivity. Yes, we can use extra more specialized tools even than Capture One like Photoshop BUT it has a severe backside - the price is a pretty reduced productivity and a need to use a stone age intermediate very inefficient file format like the extremely storage, workflow and performance inefficient TIFF. I really hate TIFF and rarely use it. Can´t even use Deep Prime with it.

We will see what happens with CO and the Danish/Swedish venture capital company that bought CO. They are not the only one. Even the Norwegian DAM-company FotoWare was bought by another venture capital company and the reason I guess is just the fact that a small Company like Fotoware (that had maybe 30 max 40 employees) just doesn´t make it without external support and huge and increasing demands - not the least by the strain AI-development imposes on them. Both CO and Photoware are living in niches not that big and even if we would love it there isn’t just that financial support from their users in general that often are reluctant to buy them support even by yearly upgrades even.

I don´t follow your discussion at all around “compositing” as the only reason using layers. Have you really worked with the last version of Capture One?? Even Photolab has layers but really archaic implemented and fairly useless as they are. The Color Wheel too is just an uncompleted attempt but a very poor one. Comparing that to the Color-functions is a joke. What does a color picker do in the Color Wheel? Picking one of the color balls?? I don´t know why there is a picker at all then! What does that add?

I feel they have done a lot of productivity-oriented improvements in Capture One the last years that have dramatically improved productivity. Before I thought Photolab was far more efficient than CO as long as masking issues was not involved since I felt these functions was so poor in Photolab that I felt it wasn´t even an idea trying to use them when I could do the same things in CO with far better precision and productivity.

The whole idea implementing these highly productive AI-tools in a RAW-converter is to increase productivity. You are expressing that you don´t understand the need of AI-tools in Photolab and don´t understand what people are using them to. Have you really looked at the videolinks I posted? Have you so hard to understand them that you can’t see the productivity gains they can add to a software like Photolab?

Why does Photolab have to be number one in AI-support for converters, you ask?? … well I do think that when considering the ongoing proletarianization of the worlds photographers, it will be crucial even for the photographers to start thinking a lot more on productivity, because the ones that don´t will get pushed out of business. If Photolab won´t be able to support and address these productivity demands of the professional photographers it will be considered a toy for purist oriented enthusiasts. The same goes when it comes to be able to be part of a professional image workflow containing C2PA-certified pictures. If they fail with that too it will be an open goal for Adobe and Lightroom or really more of a walk over.

I don´t think your stand in these issues will support DXO at all. It will be the death of both DXO and Photolab. Since Lightroom have developed a lot during the last years DXO won´t even be able to sell their plugins like PureRaw anymore and even if Nic Collection have been popular and appreciated among Adobe users there is a lot of other companies offering competing plugin with presets etc. So, it doesn´t look good att all for DXO. Maybe it is time to decide if there is time to decide whether to invest or not. I would not be surprised if DXO will follow the path of CO and other smaller companies like Camera Bits. The later company have just announced they will also start using the “subscription model”. The reason is shrinking sales and increasing costs and subscriptions is almost a must to survive for mature software companies with decreasing development pace.

138

But Smithy, can´t you see that we all turn away from Photolab of productivity reasons?? Using the tools Photolab have is then not the answers to our needs anymore in more and more respects. In some cases there isn´t even possible to do what we need to do in a reasonable time with Photolab. Hobbyists and people that don´t value their time might be fine with that but I´m not despite I´m retired. I´m getting old and I definitely feel I don´t want to spend unnecessary hours with dull tools like Photolab. The rest of my life is too short for that. That is also why I maintain my metadata with specialized tools like the ones in PhotoMechanic instead the dull and inefficient ones in Photolab or Capture One´s metedata tools too for that matter.

We are not just complaining Smithy. We are leaving DXO and Photolab for good now and since we are not alone to do so of productivity and performance reasons it will further undermine the economy of DXO. You can sit still here and convince yourself and others that you are living in the best of RAW-converter worlds but it really seems to me that version 7 was the last upgrade I will ever buy of Photolab. It costed so much (because we had tu upgrade Filmpack too) and gave so little.

I have upgraded every year until now from times this software was called Optics Pro, just because I needed and wanted it to survive. Today that reason is gone I´m sad to say. Adobe Lightroom will never be the alternative for me. So, if you really want Photolab to survive it is time for you and the shrinking user base of Photolab and DXO products to stop talking and step up and replace us because DXO will need that! Personally I´m tired of waiting for features and maintenance of known issues and design flaws that likely never will come or be fixed and I´m tired of a completely absent DXO staff that doesn´t seem to care at all about participating even the slightest in their own source of customer dialog - DXO Forums.

139

You speak in absolutes when you should speak in relatives. AI is not about productivity, its about a lot of things, weather the outcome is more productivity and weather or not that is the primary goal is a whole other matter.

Peter Drucker, a renowned management consultant, distinguishes between efficiency and effectiveness. According to him, efficiency refers to doing things right, whereas effectiveness refers to doing the right things. In other words, efficiency is about optimizing processes and achieving a high level of productivity, whereas effectiveness is about achieving the desired outcomes and results.

Drucker emphasizes that many organizations focus on efficiency, trying to get a lot of things done, but often neglect the importance of effectiveness. He argues that doing the right things is more important than doing things right. This means that organizations should prioritize setting clear goals and objectives, and then focus on achieving those goals, rather than just focusing on being busy and productive.

In essence, efficiency is about being busy and productive, while effectiveness is about being purposeful and achieving meaningful results.

“Efficiency is doing the thing right. Effectiveness is doing the right thing.” - Peter F. Drucker

Are you sure you are not missing the donut by looking trough the hole? (Its a rhetorical question)

About venture capital. I don’t think you want to go there my friend.

Its simple really. The only time you would really have a serious benefit from precise AI masking of subject or object is when compositing. Total and color correction, short of highly stylized look, is not something you need. What you need is skill and foresight to understand the different. I would think its obvious why such masking is reserved for compositing. Since you seem to be missing skill in professional level composting its crazy to me that you would be so big on AI masking tools when you haven’t even learned how to take advantage of basic tools that are already there. But maybe that is the reason. Maybe you can’t figure out how to work with existing tools in a good way, so you hope the magic of AI will save you. It won’t.

I reference Peter again.

I have ask this in the past. What kind of things are you talking about. The area of people using PHotolab is vast, and so is their intentions. And skill. You talk of productivity as if its standardized set of goals with predicable outcomes. lol Are you in management or something, because you don’t don’t like a leader, and yet to presume to know where DXO should lead their company.

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140

I still have my copy of his book the Effective Executive from when I was in college in the 1960’s. I don’t mean to hijack this thread, but he was brilliant.

Mark

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