LR Classic V5 with DL PL and new camera body

DxO PhotoLab
21

I went ahead and loaded the trial for LR and PL7 and I’m not having an easy time of it trying to find a workflow that would have me import images in folders into LR, and then use PL7 as my “develop” module. I haven’t had a lot of time to play with it, but I tried using the “Plug-in Extras > Transfer to DxO Photolab 7” option to open an image. I made my edits and then “Export to disk - Export as DNG (all corrections applied)” into the same folder. For something to test, I lowered the exposure a lot, and then changed to tungsten white balance. Once in LR, I had to import the image to get it back in the catalog. Not sure why I thought otherwise. I then opened it in Develop mode and tried to change these two settings back. I was thinking that the DNG would show the two settings changed, but it didn’t. I made an opposite exposure correction and didn’t check in detail but that seemed to reverse it. For white balance, very bizarre because I tried setting the Temp and Tint settings to the same as the original CR3 file and that was way off. So I use the eye dropper and got it back to close and now the CR3 and DNG files look identical but their Temp and Tint are way different.

So in summary, unless I’m missing some easy steps, this is probably not worth the hassle just to use LR as a catalog and PL7 as my “develop”. I will definitely keep playing with it for a few days but most likely I’m going to just pick one or the other to go with and not worry about it. If that is PL7, then my old LR will be on my windows machine if I want to go back to them for some reason.

22

Continuing on my journey here. I roundtripped some more files from LR to PL and back and its not that big of a hassle after all. The first couple I did weren’t working right, but now it seems like they show back up in LR without me having to do anything other than the export from PL, and the DNG is stacked together with the CR3.

I canceled the LR trial today to see how that worked out and other than a big banner trying to get you to subscribe when you open LR it works fine without the subscription for the catalog and is easy enough to jump out to PL. It seems like LR is a lot faster than when its fully turned on, which I guess makes sense.

I’ve now used the latest LR and PL to edit a lot of pictures side by side and frankly I’m struggling to decide what I want to do. LR is very familiar and I’ve learned and adapted the new tools quite easily. The new LR masking is quite impressive. I miss not having control points and control lines but with a munch of YouTube videos I’m learning ways to accomplish similar things in LR. That is frankly one of the drawbacks with PL, is that there are so few instructional videos available. This forum is great, but its not the same as a library of available instruction. Not much DxO can do about that. I do feel like I get a nice looking image quicker out of the box with DxO, but once you start diving into things they equally have their pros and cons and as I’m trying to match the results with the same image its pushing me to explore both a bit since there are usually many ways to accomplish something similar.

I’m leaning towards doing the LR subscription, but exploring also buying either PL7 or the Nik Collection 6 as a plugin to have available control points and control lines and some of the other stuff when LR can’t get it done. I will keep playing with PL7 for now since I canceled LR and then when BF sales happen I’ll decide on what I’ll do.

23

I went ahead and loaded the trial for LR and PL7 and I’m not having an easy time of it trying to find a workflow that would have me import images in folders into LR, and then use PL7 as my “develop” module. I haven’t had a lot of time to play with it, but I tried using the “Plug-in Extras > Transfer to DxO Photolab 7” option to open an image. I made my edits and then “Export to disk - Export as DNG (all corrections applied)” into the same folder. For something to test, I lowered the exposure a lot, and then changed to tungsten white balance. Once in LR, I had to import the image to get it back in the catalog. Not sure why I thought otherwise. I then opened it in Develop mode and tried to change these two settings back. I was thinking that the DNG would show the two settings changed, but it didn’t. I made an opposite exposure correction and didn’t check in detail but that seemed to reverse it. For white balance, very bizarre because I tried setting the Temp and Tint settings to the same as the original CR3 file and that was way off. So I use the eye dropper and got it back to close and now the CR3 and DNG files look identical but their Temp and Tint are way different. So in summary, unless I’m missing some easy steps, this is probably not worth the hassle just to use LR as a catalog and PL7 as my “develop”. I will definitely keep playing with it for a few days but most likely I’m going to just pick one or the other to go with and not worry about it. If that is PL7, then my old LR will be on my windows machine if I want to go back to them for some reason.

I’m sorry; I didn’t see this post until today, or I would have stepped in and tried to give you more guidance. There isn’t a lot of guidance out there on using PL and LrC together. I realize you’ve figured some of this out by now from your post earlier today.

The material that follows assumes the user has started with one or more image files, preferably Raw, imported into Lightroom Classic, used File > Plug-In Extras > DxO PhotoLab, performed some edits in PhotoLab’s Customize module, and then used in the bottom right the Export to Lightroom button to return DNGs to Lightroom. If instead one uses Lightroom’s Photo > Edit In > DxO Photolab to perform this transfer to PL, TIFF is used instead of DNG. TIFF is a fine editing format that some people prefer, but unlike DNG, it is not a Raw format. Transferring in DNG allows a user to maintain the advantages of Raw formats.

For starters, convergent, you do not have to re-import DxO’s exported DNG back into the LR catalog; it’s already there in the sending folder. What’s very confusing and very annoying to many trying to round-trip images is that when the image comes back from PL, LR opens it displayed in a DxO Collections folder in Library, sorted by date and time of the export, instead of reopening it in the catalog folder from where the image was sent to PL, which I happen to sort by date and time of the original image capture. I believe this annoyance is DxO’s fault, not Adobe’s. IMO there should be an optional setting in PL that blocks this annoying behavior, but there isn’t. There is a script I’ve seen on the web that you can hack into a DxO configuration file that defeats this behavior, but updating PL, typically done monthly, will install a new configuration file that reverts the hack.

So what you get in the habit of doing instead is waiting for all your DNG files exported by PL at one time back to LR to reopen in LR’s Library > Collections > DxO PhotoLab. Ignoring that, scroll up to the original Library catalog folder and select it. Then switch the module to Develop. Your PL DNGs should be adjacent to your CR3s in that folder; if not, you may have applied a Custom Sort in LR. The files may be at the end of the filmstrip; you can drag them back adjacent if you want to maintain the custom sort. You can right-click one or more DxO Collections folders and choose Delete, then confirm. No worries; doing this does not delete the files PL exported back to Lightroom. It just removes the confusing reference to them from the DxO Collections folder. Those folders are likely of no further use to you anyway.

Adjusting color temperature in Lightroom first before going to PL will also confuse things. In fact, before I send a Raw file to PhotoLab as a DNG, I have a LR User Preset that resets ALL changes made in LR. Note that when I run this preset, my LR changes are not erased from the image History in Develop. They’re still listed there, and after the image has returned from PL, I can see again what my Raw file looked like before by clicking one step down below my use of the resetting user preset.

As we’ve discussed before, when you send a DNG this way into PL, your LR changes are not displayed anyway in PL, but I don’t want my LR changes being reapplied to the DNG when it comes back from LR, which is what happens if you send out a DNG with embedded edits PL ignores. I’m going to start over editing the image in LR after it comes back from PL.

So what I do is run my user preset on the file to reset all sliders. (If you are processing a new image with no LR settings previously applied to it–all sliders are default neutral–you can skip this step. But I suggest not skipping it if any LR sliders are non-default.) Use File > Plug-In Extras to send it to PL. In PL I automatically apply a preset I’ve added to PL’s Preset Editor that is specific to the camera body I used. It applies the following settings: Exposure: Vignetting: Correction: Auto with DxO Optics Module, 100. Color: Color Rendering: [set for the specific camera body used]. Detail: DxO Denoising: Deep PRIME or DeepPRIME XD, depending on my ISO and visible noise in the image. Lens Sharpness: 0.99, Details 50, Bokeh 50. Chromatic Aberration: Lateral checked, Intensity 100, Size 4. Geometry: Correction: Auto with DxO Optics Module, Intensity 100. And that’s it. That’s typically all I do in PL. By having a PL import preset for my camera with all these settings, I can in-and-out of PL in seconds. Send them all to PL, then highlight them all, check them all quickly, and Export back to LR. If my exposure was way off, I will get the Histogram in the ballpark in PL using Exposure and/or Smart Lighting, but that’s usually not needed. You can choose to do more. I prefer LR’s and PS’s approach to local adjustments, but since you often prefer PL’s way, if you want to do some local adjustments in PL, go ahead. When finished, highlight all images being sent back to LR. They should all be DNGs. If there are any JPGs or TIFs mixed in, PL will want to send all your images back as JPGs or TIFs. Click the Export to Lightroom button. Set Action to: Export as DNG (all corrections applied). Include: All [metedata options checked].

Now back in LR, navigate back to the sending folder in Develop module. NOW adjust Color Temperature, and make any further refinements you want in Tone controls. You shouldn’t need to adjust Noise Reduction. You shouldn’t need to adjust Sharpness, unless you missed focus. Do any other Local Adjustments last. It’s fast. It works great.

24

No worries… I kind of figured folks immediate interest in this may have waivered, but wanted to keep the rest of it in case anyone else were going through this. I did figure a lot of this out already, but it helps to confirm it in a well written manner. With LR’s subscription currently turned off, it is a little simpler because anything new coming in I don’t have the option to do anything with the files in LR! I’ve also gotten myself a bit confused in some areas doing the PL6 trial and then shortly after doing the PL7 trial. So if I concentrated back just on this now for a few weeks relying solely now on PL7, it will help me better get that ingrained in my head. For some reason the first soccer game I brought into PL7, the colors were way more vibrant and I think “over” saturated a bit by the preset change between PL6 and PL7. I didn’t notice that right away. I noticed it when I tried to run them through LR and found that even though they were over processed in PL7 to start, I could more quickly get to where I wanted vs. the default LR behavior. All of this on both sides can obviously be configured to the way I want it.

Thanks again.

25

These discussions can always be beneficial to others lurking later, trying to figure stuff out, especially for questions like yours where there isn’t a lot of step-by-step guidance available on the web. That’s why I went through my workflow in some detail as well. Somebody else reading your thread may benefit from this discussion later, even if you never return to LR.

There are things I feel I get best results with in Lightroom and Photoshop, including cataloguing keywording, GPS mapping etc., tone controls, color temperature, and local adjustments. There are things I get best results with in PL, including optical and color adjustments specific to the camera body and lens, noise reduction, and sharpening (if my original shot was reasonably well-focused.) I use Topaz Sharpen AI only when needed for slight misses in focus that PhotoLab doesn’t fix. I use Radiant Photo to speed my general workflow (after returning from PhotoLab) as well, another quick hit of preset adjustments that make almost all my images look better. I wish I had one app that did all this optimally, but I’m happy to have several apps to get it done, as quickly and effectively as possible. If I don’t need to do any local adjustments, all of this takes me about 5-6 minutes per minutes per image once it’s all automated with presets.

I wish you good luck in editing and shooting!

26

One question as I played around with this today. I’m trying to get my culling process worked out too so experimenting with a few things. My Canon cameras let me do a rating in camera, and they also produce large embedded jpegs. I was trying to push myself to cull before import to LR, but then I found the option in LR to use the embedded jpeg as the preview, so its super fast to import and start culling. It also retains the rating, so this all is useful immediately… and actually if I wanted to bypass LR entirely those ratings are there for the picking in PL7 too.

I also didn’t notice before the little LR logo’d export button in PL7’s library section. I edited through the images I sent and then just hit that, and bang, they went back over.

Now my question. The returned images as DMGs stacked with my original CR3s, with the edits all done. They are stacked, but the stacks aren’t collapsed. Unfortunately if I collapse the stacks, then the edits are hidden in the stack where it would seem more logical for the top of the stack to be showing, not the bottom. I’ll need to fiddle around in LR to see if this can be changed and understand stacks better, but wondered if you had a tip on this in your workflow. I can imaging if I end up with several hundred images edited in a folder of a thousand images, then it might get confusing, especially when I’m viewing my library I want to see my edited images not the original unedited versions.

Thanks, again.

27

don’t they have both RATING and COLOR LABEL ? mark processed images with some color label

28

Yes I’ve struggled with this Stacking issue as well, and here’s what I do with it. My penalty flag for this problem is thrown on Adobe, not DxO, because Adobe stacks images returned from all external-editing apps bass-ackwards as far as I’m concerned, and they don’t have a setting to customize stacking the way the user wants.

Personally I want only one copy of an image visible in LR’s Library/Develop, generally, which is the final edit. But I want to retain my original camera Raw file, and have it in LR. I want the final edit stacked on top of the original image file. As you’ve seen, you can’t do this automatically with images coming back from PL or other external apps.

When an image comes back from PL into LR, it’s “stacked” by being linked to the original file. They’re not really one on top of the other, as you know, but LR appends a number in a small box in the upper left (a “1” which changes to “1 of 2” if you hover over it) on the original file LR sent to PL. The other file that came back from PL doesn’t show a number at this point but should be adjacent and is usually found to the right of the original file; it’s “stacked,” but only logically.

LR oddly won’t let you stack the edited photo on top of the original photo, numbered as stacked, until you first manually Unstack it. The easiest way to manually Unstack all the DxO DNG photos is actually back in the DxO Collections folder in Library module, before you delete that folder. Select them all, right-click one, and choose Unstack. If you’ve already deleted that folder, you can still do it Library or Develop module. Select them all, right-click one, and choose Unstack, but be careful about what you’re selecting. (The drawback to doing it this way, in the Library or Develop module catalog folder, rather than the DxO Collections folder, is that it’s easy to mess up and unstack too many photos, including some you really do want stacked still. Unstacking in the Collections folder only unstacks the most recent group of PL Exports, which is what you want to do.)

When I’ve finished editing and I’m ready to stack them the way I want, edited photo on top of the original, this has to be done one pair at a time. Select the LR-edited photo that will be on top of the stack, and then CTRL+Click the original; it too will be highlighted, but dimmer than the edited photo. Right-click and choose Group Into Stack. Now they both get a number in the upper left, and the final edit is really stacked on top of the original, so it’s the only one you see, unless you Unstack them again. If you get them backwards before Grouping Into Stack, so that the original image is brighter than the edited image and would go on top, just click the edited image so it’s brighter than the original, and then they will stack properly when you right-click one and choose Group Into Stack.

I told you I often use other apps besides DxO and LR. I do that before performing my final edits in LR, and then the only copy I’m going to keep is the LR-edited copy that was returned by the last external app. This could be from PhotoLab, but in my case generally is not, so I actually delete all my DxO DNGs, when I’ve used another app afterwards. It’s easy to regenerate a DxO DNG if I need it again, but just to save disk space, I just want to keep the finished image, and the original image, and not the various intermediate external-app images. There have been times, frequently over the years, where my workflow has changed, and I’ve wanted those original camera Raw files so I could start over with a particular image, so I really recommend keeping those somewhere. And if you’re going to continue to use LR as your cataloguing app, I think they should be in LR, paired and stacked beneath your final edit if that’s in a different file format than your camera Raw.

There’s another benefit of stacking your images this way, the final edited copy only visible on top of the stack. You can review all your images in a folder with a Lightroom Slideshow. I do this every time when I think I’ve finished editing a LR catalog folder, and almost invariably find inconsistencies in color temp, exposure, or needed local adjustments. Then I do more editing until it’s right. Slideshows are very helpful, but they only work well if you are viewing only your final edits. With the images stacked this way, that’s exactly what LR Slideshows display.

29

This is a great explanation of this annoying problem with stacking. I agree with all you said here about always keeping original camera RAW files and not ever losing those which I consider the digital negatives, and keeping the final edited 3rd party file at top of the stack. Frankly the fact that DxO mixes the sidecars in there is a little uncomfortable, but I’ve learned to live with it. I’ve always kept everything but the camera RAW files (with LR, it’s just the catalog and various exports) elsewhere) outside my masters folder.

After some basic testing this week, yesterday I did a soccer game where I took a couple thousand images. The first real test. I bright into LR, culled them, and then used ratings to pick 22 I wanted to edit as a priority. Everything was efficient and flowed so well until I got to the mid-stacked files. Because I had rated them uniquely it made it easy for me to sort them in the catalog folder. I just had to go into the collection first and apply the rating which didn’t get passed from the CR3 to the exported DNG. The collection didn’t contain the original CR3 files so I didn’t see got I could stack them there.

I got it done, but it was tedious and highly annoying with just 22 stacks to go through this stacking. I can only imagine if it were many not images. This 22 was only one player and I didn’t mess with the other 200 picked for other players yet. I’m afraid this one inefficiency is probably going to lead me back to using LR as my main editing tool. I will probably pick up a license of PL7 for when LR has a gap on a particular image. And I now have a workable solution if I want to turn off LR for a while if I’m not shooting y pictures. Thanks so much for helping me with this. If it’s Adobes code that does this, I can imagine they have zero incentive to improve it.

30

I don’t normally use star ratings, but I assumed the LR star rating would round-trip through DxO and come back in the DxO DNG as part of the passed metadata.

So I just tested it, and you’re right, unless we’re both missing something, it turns out that LR and PhotoLab apparently don’t understand each other’s star ratings. Even if you rate the image in PhotoLab and tell PhotoLab to Export to Lightroom, including Attributes, of which PhotoLab ratings are a part, Lightroom doesn’t “get” them.

That’s annoying!

31

Just tested it with DPL 7.0.2 and LrC 12.5 on macOS 12.7 and found that

  • exported files show the star ratings I set in DPL
  • original files show the star ratings when
    • they were written by DPL to files (raw file in my test, writing creates a .xmp sidecar file)
    • LrC is asked to read metadata from the file(s)
    • and the same is true for rating in LrC and reading MD from file(s) in DPL

→ no issue here, at least not with manually reading/writing metadata

32

I’m not sure I followed all of that. I don’t think you are saying that if the star rating was set in LrC, that it was retained after the round trip? The funny thing is that I wasn’t even really bothered by the lack of the star rating in the DNG file until I read it from dxodm. The stacking being out of preferred order is kind of a killer for any practical use in volume and I was only using the rating in an attempt to find a way to speed through that. Its getting to the “do I really want to deal with this all the time” turning my workflow into a real grind which I don’t want to have happen.

33

platypus, are you using the Plug-In Extras > DxO PhotoLab method that sends a DNG, or the Edit In > DxO PhotoLab method that sends a TIFF?

I’m using Windows 10, LR 13.1, PhotoLab 6.10.1, and the Plug-In Extras method to round-trip a DNG, and going that way PhotoLab doesn’t observe the LR rating, and if you rate the image in PhotoLab before sending it back to LR, LR doesn’t observe the PL rating. Other metadata including filename, keywords, and GPS location pass normally and come back to LR in PL’s DNG file.

34

I usually use this to edit the original RAW. Only this provides DxO’s optical and noise treatment.
I also read from / write to sidecars manually…and don’t edit metadata in PhotoLab but in LrC.

35

Yeah me too. But… hmm. Why are we getting a different result, not transferring star ratings, than you? I doubt it would be the MacOS difference. Could it be an issue with LR 13? convergent, have you been trialing LR 13 or 12 still?

36

I trialed LR 13 on a Mac for about a week and then turned it off so at this point I just have the LR 13 catalog going. I brought the images for that test into LR first, culled them and assigned ratings, then filtered by a rating and pushed them over to PL7 to edit, and finally pushed them back. Everything was very smooth until the returned (edited) DNGs were on the bottom of the stacks. And now seeing that they are missing the ratings too. The ratings is a good option for culling because my Canon bodies will let me assign them in the camera if I have time, and both LR and PL seem to see that initially (after import in LR and in the folder in PL). Odd that both of them see the rating set by the Camera (so not originating in their application), but then can seem to share it between each other! I am not that fluent with metadata. If the rating is present in the CR3 and its not in the exported DNG, then it must be that PL is not adding it to the DNG when it does the export, right?

37

The star ratings exchange seems to be working fine under platypus’ setup with LR 12 and PL 7. It’s very possible that Adobe changed the way plug-ins exchange metadata with LR 13 and just need to get it working correctly again with a patch, or that PL needs a patch to adapt to the new way LR 13 is doing it, if indeed LR did make a change. I had some other minor issues with LR 13.0 not involving PhotoLab that got fixed, apparently, in LR 13.1.

38

I doubt that Adobe has changed the handling of star ratings and I’m not getting LrC 13 anytime soon. There might be one thing to check though: When an image is rated in camera, the star rating is written to a (probably well proven XMP Rating) tag in the RAW file. Lightroom and PhotoLab do read these stars, but save theirs in sidecar files (.xmp and .dop) for RAW files or into JPEG, TIFF et al.

Now, if the RAW file contains a rating of, say, “3” and the rating is changed, we get conflicting ratings and the apps will do whatever they do - probably take the one from the file with the newer modification date - but I’ve not tested this, so you might want to see how things work under such conditions.

Another point is, that DPL can be set to sync metadata or not, but there is no option to automatically read or write metadata separately like can be set with .dop sidecars. I set both LrC and DPL to NOT automatically read/write/sync and do it manually with the respective menu items for full control.

Moreover, metadata should be written in one app only (single point of definition), all other apps should be set to read only. This would help conserve metadata sanity…but many apps don’t provide the options. :person_shrugging:

39

With regard to setting ratings in the camera, I just mentioned that for information but it isn’t probably relevant to this. The one that I was really talking about was the rating was set in LR directly and then didn’t make it back to the DNG. I can play around with it when I get a chance, but as I said, the stacking thing is kind of an obstacle anyways. Thanks for the help on this.

40

Just to circle back on this discussion… I did just buy PL7 Elite in the Black Friday sale. I was disappointed that the bundling wasn’t more attractive, but just went with PL7. I’m using LR now primarily, but want to have PL7 for the images I edited during the trials, and as another option if a particular image is giving me trouble. If I ever solve the stacking order problem I may go back to this.