Just to get that out of the way first, I’m very happy with the latest version of PL. I haven’t had any issues with versions 9.5 or 9.6, and everything just works as expected. But of course, there’s always room for improvement… Most, or perhaps all my wishes have probably been worded before. I just wanted to write them here.
Make all PL settings available for images even when working on local adjustments. If that isn’t possible, at least keep the top bar showing which mask you’re working on locked, so it doesn’t scroll off the screen.
The new Diffusion feature could also work for all other local areas, not just with AI masks,
Improved search with logical operators such as And, Or and Xor, etc. And preferably the option to search for images without keywords in PhotoLibrary.
An option to view all files in PhotoLibrary, including those that cannot be opened in PL.
I think this is the one thing that is missing from PhotoLab. For me, having an AI removal tool is so useful. The current erase tool is so restricting and results are often not great.
You can always send your photo to a bit map editor like PS if you want to take that path. I sometimes use Affinity for inpainting etc. etc, but to me that is not some function that I miss in PL.
My favorite wish is to add an option to constrain crop to the image.
While using automatic crop in conjuction with Horizon or Perspective corrections is great, I often have to reposition the crop and then struggle not to include out-of-image parts.
I have few other wishes, like replicating C1 FaceRetouch Blemish Removal, better C1 Contouring tool, good and easy way to control all types of wrinkles and harsh light skin artifacts, some more precise HSL control, etc. Integrate some Nik stuff too, like diffusion in highlights and other Nik goodies in CEP and SEP (and find a way to keep the integration simple ).
On the other hand, I wouldn’t like PhotoLab to grow into RGB-editing monster like PhotoShop or Affinity.
EDIT: Last but not least: let users customize shortcuts. Personally, I prefer to use mouse all the time, rarely using keyboard. I would like to limit keyboard usage to a customizable minimum, which would be useful on one hand, and prevent accidental misuse on the other.
Yes, including FilmPack adjustments. Creative Vignette probably does not make sense, but the Fine Contrast sliders very much do!
If I was to limit myself to 3 choices for PL 10…
Allow Control Points to be elliptical and just offer a standard radial mask (a freebie, as a CP with zeroed selection sliders is essentially this).
Improve performance on Mac (I don’t care about export times, I just want the interface to be snappy when creating masks and adjusting with them).
Fix every bug that has been complained about in these forums. I’d also include in that missing functionality that should absolutely be there like re-ordering export presets.
The only new feature I would like to see in DXO PhotoLab is the ability to import image files and rename them in-process. I have a workflow for importing image files using Apple Automator to handle file renaming but the process is mostly manual.
Having an import feature in PhotoLab would be a nice to have but isn’t any kind of deal breaker. I’m otherwise totally happy with PhotoLab and love the results I get using it.
FWIW I started using Photoshop when it first came out on floppy disks and remained totally Adobe (mostly LR, PS, ID) until they announced their subscription model. I tried many alternatives, too many to list here, but settled on PhotoLab. I do all my BW conversion in SilverEFEX and for non-trivial image manipulation I use Affinity.
I no longer have LR/PS as ditched for PL9. Now very happy with what seems a more stable software. Having an AI removal tool would jusj be a nice extra and I’m sure it will come.
Brush and CP template selection. Like Brush1, 2, 3, 4, … with different flow, etc settings. Not just Brush/CP A and B, but 1, 2, 3, 4 etc. With custom user naming.
Additional Mask B&W mode - photo is grayscale in the background, may do some highlight/black curve ‘down’/‘lift’ to better see the mask white and black mask areas.
“Smarter” mask colour - Some content sensitive for chrome/luma. Not really for Mask editing (like brush) but to ‘better’ see the mask over the photo.
Some advanced vignetting
Filter for Virtual Copy. Note: Heyy, filter for Exact! NR type is there! When it’s come? 9.6?
I don’t think new features should be highest on the priority list this time.
I’d most like to see a thorough optimisation and polishing exercise. Get rid of all those lags and delays for what are (outside of PhotoLab) perfectly functional PCs and Macs.
Elevate and refine the editing experience to make PhotoLab viable for large scale and batch photo editing at a professional level.
There’s very little in PhotoLab’s competitors that I think “damnit, not having this in PhotoLab is killing my interest in the app” - it can output excellent images. Now it would really benefit from being smoother, faster, and more intuitive to use.
Most of the complaints on this sub currently seem to stem from performance issues or tool functionality not being clear, not being consistent across different platforms etc. - it’s sloppy and frustrating. Doing something about that would be a huge step forward IMO.
One thing which seems to have some potential for tuning, is more efficient use of GPU by DeepPRIME3. With i7-14700KF/RTX4070, GPU usage by DP3 is quite low, compared to XD3 or XD2s. But maybe DP3 logic requires too much single-threaded code? Can you name some other candidates for tuning?
Maybe limiting number of magnification steps could provide some room for further optimizations but it would be also controversial.
Separate preview quality settings for PhotoLibrary and Customize?
Not sure if it would be useful for many.
As a side-remark, DxO has only limited control of PL performance. DxO reasonably relies on some high-level interfaces, in my case provided mainly by Microsoft and NVIDIA. All DxO can do, is to work with them pointing out the problems. I think this actually happened with PL9.6 update, where most crucial changes for Win/NVIDIA users probably occurred in Microsoft WinML and NVIDIA TensorRT-RTX. This surely required some Microsoft and NVIDIA collaboration behind the scenes. BTW, PL9.6.1 update has installed “2026-03 Windows ML Runtime NVIDIA TensorRT-RTX Execution Provider Update (KB5083460)”, an update to KB5079257 installed by PL9.6.0. As another example, sometime in 2023 just updating NVIDIA driver provided significant performance boost of PL and some other software, as noticed by many.
My main gripe is that when editing (with high quality previews and DP rendering off - it’s worse still when enabled) I’ll still find lag when “generating a preview” on an image I’m working on. Any little change will result in some delay. Meanwhile in the likes of Capture One there is no delay and everything feels much more responsive up until I actually go to export an image.
This all gets oh-so-much-worse when masks are introduced. At times I’ve found the “generating preview” task doesn’t actually complete at all, or takes more than half a minute to complete. All that when changing something relatively minor in a mask.
There are times when I’ve found it quicker to guestimate my changes, export the image, and see if I’m happy with it outside of PhotoLab before going back into the app to make any changes and repeating the process without even waiting for the “preview” to generate. The performance hit is crazy. I’ve a feeling that Lens Sharpening Optimisation and/or Force Details in the NR tab are not helping here - fiddling with them certainly slows things down in the preview stage.
I’d welcome an option to simply not render these changes at all until the export stage (so anything in the preview/editing window doesn’t show their effects). Then it’d be my choice to live with the decreased fidelity in PhotoLab - but increased performance instead.
Again… I don’t seem to run in to this in e.g. Capture One. It’s simply doesn’t stutter like PhotoLab does.
Well, I would be more careful with that. In my case C1 (latest) often delays displaying changes after slider movement, which confused me a few times…
But, yes, in general you feel C1 UI is faster than PL, maybe also because it doesn’t signal too often that it’s working in the background.
I might as well restate a couple of things I’ve repeatedly suggested since DxO Optics Pro 8:
Customisable grid (percentages+sub grid)
Customisable keyboard shortcuts
Plus:
Vector masks (drawable polygons and closed curves)
Massive code optimisation
That could be true (I’ve not gotten too scientific with this - I am going off feels - but it’s a fact that my PhotoLab freezes up completely and won’t display an updated image until it’s ready, which could take upwards of 30 seconds).
Meanwhile C1 lets me keep moving sliders more-or-less constantly and doesn’t seem to suffer that slow-to-a-crawl-when-masking issue that PL does.
I don’t want to derail the whole thread but… I’d still like “slicker” and would happily drop in-app fidelity in exchange for a smoother experience that lets me get to “being able to output my finished edit” faster.
Edit:
To add to the ‘requests’ I too would like to see:
Constrain crop to image - So that it’s impossible to have the crop go out side of the image.
Make all adjustments available via masking - In particular I’d like to be able to edit curves locally, but really it’d be good to be able to apply anything available globally on a local scale.
).