@KeithRJ Thank you for your response, I have successfully used PM to pass a number of photos to PL5 BUT I wind up with more than one external selection (1 for each in the list containing 1 photo or only 1 photo in total if PL5 was shut down) rather than one external selection that contains all the selected photos. Plus if I try drag and drop from PM to PL5, PL5 immediately opens the entire directory (I seem to remember that the selected items are also selected in PL5 but with the whole directory displayed)!!
It is possible that this is as a result of some configuration issues with the way that I have set up PM but…
@jch2103 I’ll try to enjoy Imatch but I could bought a medium priced cordless drill to add to my collection or 3 of them if I bought them from Lidl. You can never have too many drills!!!
Hi @BHAYT Make sure you set the default Editor in PM preferences to run PL (see screenshot). Then when you select multiple photos in PM and right-click and select Edit selected photos or Edit selected photos with. You can also do the same from the Image menu. This will create an External Selection in PL. These External Selections remain even after reopening PL and the only way to remove them is to delete the External Selection.
If I just drag and drop files from PM to an open PL then PL will navigate to the directory and highlight the photos that were dragged. These two operations are very different.
As others have mentioned, it’s not a good approach to point PL at a folder containing 1,000s of images … it will be very slow, as you have found - and it’s pointless; because you’re almost certainly not about to work on all 10,000 images.
One way around this is to use a “work-in-progress” approach - - - which is very much faster.
Create a WIP folder
Move your source images (RAWs + their corresponding sidecar/.dop files if the images are ones you’ve already worked on before) into the WIP folder a batch at a time (say, 20-30 images per batch).
Do all your processing within the WIP folder - and when finished, move the results (RAWs + sidecar/.dop files + Exported image) to your storage structure.
Repeat (from step 2).
This way, you’re leveraging PL for its unbeatable strengths as a RAW file processor - and not expecting it to also be an image browser … which, as you’ve found, is not its strength.
@KeithRJ Thanks for the data which was exactly what I had managed to fathom out, the old brain cells just about work. However, I was disappointed that PM did not provide access to more than one editor (other than the default as well) at one time when some much cheaper programs are more generous!
However, when you use that facility do you wind up with 1 ‘External selection’ containing many photos or many ‘External selection’ items each containing 1 photo? I personally would prefer the former but appear to get the latter with PM to PL5.
If you use that facility with e.g. Lightroom does that change or do you get the exact same (equivalent) situation i.e. is PL5 “playing” badly with PM while other software is playing “nicely” (and it does then depend on your definition of what is “nice” and what is “bad”).
To me “nice” would be all selected photos winding up as a single group at the target (editor) but I do know that PM to XnViewMP opens multiple windows, 1 for each photo passed (at least in my tests, I am trying to test the products not my own ineptitude) so I am less impressed with PM (but I am not a PM user so I can’t really complain to PM!!)
Scenario 1:
I have a folder called “2021” with 8 pictures, selected all in PSU and opened DPL vial PSU. The folder was opened withouth problems in DPL.
Scenario 2:
I selected “one” photo from folder “2021” AND one other photo from a folder called “2020” and opened DPL via PSU. DPL created a project called “2020” with exactly the two files I selected in PSU.
I repeated above with “DPL” already launched - same result.
If you have multiple photos selected and send them to PL I always get a single External Collection with ALL those selected photos in the selection.
In PM you can also select what program to use to edit for each file type so you do not need to select a program to edit with. Look in the same place in preferences for where you set PL to be used.
Mac user asking a stupid question: What is an External Collection? Can’t find that term in DxO’s user guide… Are you talking about the thing that PhotoLab calls a “project”?
Apparently it is not documented but when you send multiple photos to PL directly from another program you get an External Collection which is basically a Project (found just under your projects) with the photos sent from the other program. You can have multiple External Selections and they remain when you exit PL so you can continue working with them at another time.
They’re different, but similar. And you need to use a separate program to create them, as @KeithRJ has documented. No documentation from DxO about this, unfortunately, so no idea if this should exist on Macs.
@KeithRJ Merry Christmas and sorry but on my Win 10 machines it does not work the way that you state, i.e. just repeated the test on my main machine and I get multiple ‘external selections’ (for both JPGs and Raw) every single time.
So there is an option somewhere that must be causing the differences. I experienced the same from PM to XnViewMP and had multiple windows opened in XnViewMP.
From my setup PM is passing each photo separately!?
@sgospodarenko, can you please ask someone to say something about external collections, their function and how they compare to projects? Maybe they are a workaround for something?
… Created via Irfan.