I just got myself the Photolab 8 on a impulse purchase and I’m so hating it. To start of there are no simple keyboard shortcuts even for tagging an image. There is no right click anywhere on the image for quick access to the most needed features. In the photo browser, I’m not able to view multiple images for quick culling/selection like I can in LR. And this is just the start. I feel as I start using it since I’ve already jumped the gun and bought it, I’m now stuck with it until God knows when these niggles will be sorted out.
Edit: Lest anyone here think I’m bashing PL8. Nope. Contrary to that, exploring hands-on is my workflow and hence I stumbled on this. No idea why it did not work as it should have however a quick restart sorted it out and all is well now. Much thanks to all who chimed in to help.
That’s the problem with impulse buying. Are you aware there was a free 30-day trial you could have taken advantage of? You could have found out that PhotoLab is not for you at no cost.
@Joanna showed you features from the Mac version of PhotoLab. In French. If you’re on Windows those features look a little different. Unfortunately I’m not at home right now so I can’t paste images of what those features look like in Windows.
I hope you purchased the Elite edition and not the Essential edition. The Essential edition is missing over 20 features available in the Elite edition, and many of the missing ones are key features, including the new image compare and DXO’s world class DeepPRIME XD2S AI based denoising. I doubt any of us here would ever recommend the purchase of the Essential edition. It is just too basic and is missing many of the tools that really defines PhotoLab.
If so, you could always upgrade to the Elite edition but it will cost you more money and may still not meet your requirements.
The features Joanna showed you are available on Windows too.
There are plenty of keyboard shortcuts, but I agree that they are sub-optimal, especially for colour coding. However you can get round that by assigning your own keyboard shortcuts, either with keyboard software (I use Logitech keyboard mapping), or with other 3rd party tools such as PowerTools Keyboard Manager (a free windows utility).
The main thing about PL8 is that it makes it very easy to get the best out of your images.
Yes! One of the annoyances with PL8 Elite on Mac is that there is no keyboard shortcut to set the current image as the reference for image compare. But as said, you can add your own app specific bindings in system preferences - I currently have it set to CMD-ALT-R.
With the addition of the keyboard shortcut, comparing and tagging images (eg to select from several near identical images only the ine that is best in focus) is quick and easy.
Stenis
(Sten-Åke Sändh (Sony, Win 11, PL 6, CO 16, PM Plus 6, XnView))
7
Excerpt: In the Windows version this is written in the short cut list
Stenis
(Sten-Åke Sändh (Sony, Win 11, PL 6, CO 16, PM Plus 6, XnView))
8
Talking about short cuts.
How to select a “Reference Picture” with shortcuts?
How to unselect a “Reference Picture” after it has been selected - with short cuts and without?
I expect a function like this to be binary (on/off)
Now I seem to need to select another picture to remove the selection but I expect to be able to be able to just unselect an R-marked picture.
… and is it someone else that feels the “Compare”-menu lacks a few shortcuts too?
The only shortcut on the Mac is ‘D’, which briefly shows the reference image (useful if trying to match editing styles, for example).
To setup a shortcut to set the reference image, go to System Settings / Keyboard Shortcuts, click the Keyboard Shortcuts button, then select App Shortcuts on the left. This gives you a dialogue where you can add your own shortcuts to any application.
Fortunately, for tagging/rating there are multiple existing shortcuts setup, so with the new reference image system it is very quick to rate, select or reject images.
Software such as Capture One, is still significantly more capable in several areas (multiple images displayed for editing/review at the same time, AI image grouping etc etc). But unless you are shooting something like a wedding every day with thousands of images, the scheme in PL8 will do everything that you need.
As of PL8, the biggest missing feature for rating/tagging etc is the utterly broken undo system. If you tag, rate or keyword something, there is no !&!!!* undo. Quite why this should be the case for a company’s flagship software in 2024 is beyond me.
Thank you. I didn’t think of looking there. I expected to find it in the settings or the file menu.
It wasn’t working at the time of me commenting on this. Perhaps after a reboot it did. But this works only on the images in the channel strip and not on the main workspace window.
Yes, it was hidden/collapsed and I found it after much searching.
That is the definition of an impulse buy! And FYI, I wasn’t screaming. That was just my opinion. But you wouldn’t probably understand that cause your comment was definitely not polite. However thank you for taking the time out to help me and showing it in french even though it is not a language that I speak. I hope you didn’t assume I speak french.
I’m never a “read the manual” type. I explore and test anything and it works for me. I spent a good part of the day working with it and like I said, after a system reboot, things become clearer…with a cup of coffee and I think I’m liking it now!
I think that’s where you’re coming unstuck. I move between PhotoLab, Luminar Neo, Lightroom, Topaz Photo AI, and more, and none of them are alike. Spend some time with it and you will find many workflows can work really well.
But be careful. Presently, Cmd-Shift-R resets all edits irrecoverably
I would highly recommend not using R for any more shortcuts as an accidental reset can be painful.
One thing that is definitely missing, unless I have missed it, is a means of deselecting the presently selected reference image, even if you change the current folder. This looks like a bug, or at least, an oversight.
And it never hurts to consider PhotoLab is localised to five languages. As it is, to rotate the image by 90°, the shortcuts are Cmd-L and Cmd-R, whereas, in French, Cmd-G and Cmd-D for “gauche” and “droite” would be more appropriate.
For me (Mac with PL8), I can undo resets reliably. The reset shows up as an edit step in the advanced history panel, rather than the panel being cleared. Maybe this got fixed in one of the updates?
There is a bug where the Reset button in the UI is sometimes left disabled even after edits have been made. I have not yet figured out to reproduce this reliably.
Aaaahhhh!!! I never normally use the history panel and, being a bear of simple brain, had assumed that using Cmd-Z for Undo would automatically move back in the history.
But that wasn’t happening - until now when I checked for this post. Now it has started to work
Ahah!!! Cmd-Z only works after a reset if the history panel is open - at least for me.
The only way to step back beyond a reset is to reopen the history and use the arrow keys/mouse to effect the “undo”.
Also, if you close PhotoLab and reopen it, although the history is still there, and the panel is visible with the steps, no amount of Cmd-Z will affect the history position.
It seems Cmd-Z only affects the history list if the edits recorded happen in the current session.
For me at least, it does not need the history pallet to work - I can remove it from the UI completely and it still seems to work correctly.
I do not think that undo/redo simply step through the history panel. Instead,undo/redo work like any other application except that they only seem to work if the actions resulted in a change that shows up in the history panel (so not rotations, keywords, tags, etc).
selected a folder in the browser (in the LH dock in PhotoLibrary)
selected all images and applied a few presets
pressed command-Z … and all images stepped back one step and did with each command-Z
switched to customise view
all images a) had the same history entries and b) sat on the same entry
pressed command-Z … and all I got was a beep, no matter which image I selected or if I selected all images. Doing the above seems to disconnect command-Z
Notes:
switching views (and back) does not disconnect comand-Z
changing an image selection seems to pull the plug
switching to a different app and back seems to pull the plug too
and I think I’m liking it now!
