I bought one of those devices that is supposed to help capture lightning photos. If I ever get it sorted out, and get the opportunity to do so, I’d love to capture some good lightning photos. Storm photos too, but I don’t want to go out in the rain, even if my camera gear is supposed to be “rain resistant” or whatever the official wording is.
Welcome to the forum!!!
Not that it hasn’t been said before: stop talking (writing) and experiment to find out and have fun, what you can do with PL.
Well, I wonder if that mattets all that much these days. In my country we have had authorities since the fifteen houndreds who have had absolutely total control over the people. Swedens first modern king brought in some germans to build an effective taxation organisation. The church did the rest keeping all the registers updated down to every single person living in a farm or in a town.
A long time we hade just one telephone company owned by the state as a monopoly. Today they are numerous and so are the commercial adress search engines that gives anyone access to adress, birtdates and telephone numbers - and some exposes even our official personal number that really nails us. Today you can not exist here without one.
This day of the year we always get the same stupid debate around that the schools that have banned people from taking pictures in the schools when pupils perform danses etc. for the audiences. The reason is to protect people living with protected identities - or political refugees not wanting to be exposed to their former countries authorities … but it is never about taking the pictures but that these phothographers just is unable to stop there. They just have to publish it on Facebook and Insta. and doing so they do it with all the GPS-data too of course.
Here there is always an outcry when the state maintains registers of personal data but if it is done privately by Facebook and Insta nobody seems to care at all despite the data there is far more problematic socially often.
I have never used Facebook because my father was a stalinist and was one of the communists that was registered during the fifties and sixties so I understood early to keep a low profile of that reason. I was considered a communist already as a sperm but I have used Insta just to get into contact with the part of my relatives living in the US since more than 100 years.
When writing an old relative I instantly was served many other relatives and all of her friends too. The same happened on the Swedish side and that is due to both Facebook and Insta is building “sociograms” over all our relations in a matter the Swedish state just hasn’t been allowed to do until these days when everything seems to be OK in order to stop gang criminality running totally wild with more than 50 gun related kills a year.
So in the light of that I doubt a telephone number or mailadress in the metadata of a picture is our worst head ache. Our real problems is our limitless naivity.
Yes sir!
Personally, I’d rather know what I want/need to do, than what I “can” do, but if you think I will ever catch up with @Joanna, you’re dreaming. 
I know you think it’s silly, but I would usually prefer to capture as much as I can in my camera, and only use any image processor to correct mistakes when possible, and to make the image look like what I remembered seeing.
There are times though when I want to recreate what I felt, not what I saw, and that’s when your suggestion is most helpful.
The Biscayne Bay Sunset photo I recently posted - after over an hour of trying to make it look better than the original un-edited image, I gave up, and found a B&W Preset that matched what I wanted to show. If I understood PhotoLab as well as you, I could have edited the photo on my own, instead of resorting to a “preset”.
Have fun? Almost always when I’m using PhotoLab I am having fun, but this shows you are right - if I understood it well enough, I could have adjusted that image on my own, rather than using a “preset”. Not even @Joanna has tried to edit that image, so perhaps I made a mistake when I captured it, or I just don’t understand PhotoLab well enough to do what I wanted, and as a third possibility - when I started to edit it, I didn’t really know what I wanted. I thought I did. I was wrong about that, too.
I sure do understand. I used the facebook for a year or so, then dropped out. This is back when the facebook was just getting started. The only time I use instagram is to view images from one of my friends, who insists on posting them there for who knows what reason - probably because his birdwatching friends use it.
I used to believe all the good stuff people wrote and said about the United States, but apparently a large percentage of the people believe the lies being posted over the past few years. I guess “freedom” is something that needs to be guarded.
I’ve got to admit - I don’t know very much about Sweden, but everything I think I know sounds wonderful! …but this is going to take things much too far “Off Topic”, so I’ll shut up. But I’d love to visit on a vacation some time, before I get too old to do so.
Mark, by now you should realize that what you describe is “me”, un-focused and all over the place.
As to “doing something about it”, most, but not all, of my ‘issues’ are slowly being resolved. I’m only using one camera, which according to you guys is good.
If DxO does start the DxO Cafe, you, and everyone else, should use it as you see fit. For the most part, I think the things I write about are good topics, worthy of discussion, but so are the ones other people here start.
As to PhotoMechanic, I used it for ages before I ever heard of DxO, and had Adobe Lightroom not changed to a subscription service, I’d probably still be using it now. Back to PhotoLab, there are two essential things that need to go along with it:
Apparently you disagree, but those two things are very important to anyone selecting PhotoLab. Adobe includes all those tools. DxO does not. Joanna has written her own tools. I still see no reason to change from PhotoMechanic.
I think they are both worthy of discussion, for anyone who wants to take advantage of this wonderful tool we call PhotoLab. Maybe I’m wrong about this?
Times have changed. Twenty or so years ago, when I was using the www.sportsshooter.com website, that was how people did things. It was a commercial site, and users wanted to be contacted by potential customers and clients. It wasn’t a mistake - it was very deliberate.
People couldn’t even join Sportsshooter.com until they submitted enough sports photos to show they had the talent, and until they knew how to put proper captions below any image they posted. You couldn’t just join - you had to prove you had what it takes.
As I wrote, “times have changed”. But by having included that personal information, email and phone, people were able to contact me. You guys are more worried about this than I am. But back then, I was earning money from my photography, which is no longer the case, so that personal information now is now mostly irrelevant. All people need to do is go to the message board or forum, and send me a message. I get notified by email.
Thinking back, when I lived near Seattle, people didn’t lock their doors, and I could cash a check at any store I shopped at. Not any more…
Are you paid by DxO for this (they are able to do a such mistake), or do you feel lonely ?
Oh, your bait click title, which suggests that we’ll find useful information, works like a charm !
By talking (writing), you waste your precious time filling your dwindling memory with things that won’t get you anywhere. – IF you are interested in PL, you must use it regularly.
I think most of you all makes things far more complicated than they are.
There can be metadata stored both using old IPTC and the namespace of IPTC in XMP or EXIF for that matter. Some data can be stored in both of compatibility reasons and that is optional using PhotoMechanic.
In PM you unlike Photolab build your own metadata forms and when doing so XMP schemas are built in the background.
If we open metadata added in Photomechanic in Photolab these schemas might not be in harmony. Probably some data elements/fields might seem to be missing in Photolab or vise versa depending on how your schemas are designed in PM or Lightroom for that matter and if doing so the data might be there but will not be visible and this might be a problem say migrating from LR to Photolab…
You seem to have been very preoccupied with just keywords. They might be very useful in organisations using standardised controlled vocabularies for their systems but keywords are modtly of no use at all outside your own archive or organisation DAM because keywords often are drowning in the Internet buzz.
You asked also why anyone would add a lot of metadata in the images or as sidecars and that statement really surprised me. This is really important for people like me publishing quite a few photo illustrated stories on the net. If I want people to find my material and images these metadata helps.
Concerning PM we also can get PM to add a lot of metadata totally automatically using their wast collection of variables. It is just one of the things that makes PM just so much more effective than using LR or Photolab for that job. Quite a few of my elements also are populated by defaults. We might think some elements are redundant but they might for example be important just for populating Windows “Information” properties that I think always have been a little bit odd.
Personal Opinion - So many people were concerned that my personal data was included inside my photos, but that was done at a time, like what you describe, when I wanted people to be able to do this. Nowadays, for me, it no longer really matters to me one way or another.
I want the following:
The cost is also important, but it’s not as important to me as how well the software works.
For many years, I used Lightroom for everything, getting a new copy of the program as often as I needed.
At the time, I didn’t like the idea of Lightroom going “subscription”, so I tried switching to PhotoLab and loved it.
I may not think about it that much lately, but it’s important to me that I be able to find my older photos as years go by. I’m still paying the monthly fee to Adobe, so whatever worked before still works now - but none of my photos for the past four years are in Lightroom.
Last year I decided to buy the more powerful version of PhotoMechanic, that included DAM. So now, I’ve got both.
I like what people have said here about using methods included with their computer to find images - Joanna explained this best, I think. …and if I stopped using PhotoMechanic, the only path open to me is to do what Joanna does now.
As others have commented, for the small amount of editing I do, maybe I no longer need PhotoLab. Perhaps DarkTable is all I really need, for no charge. But I enjoy using PhotoLab, even if all the rest of you think I’m “lost”. If someone is stubborn, being “lost” isn’t always that big of a deal, from my point of view.
I wish more people here posted their edited images from PhotoLab. No idea why so few people do this…
… because you’re just looking for entertainment.
If you remove the word “just”, I wouldn’t argue with you.
“Entertainment” is a very powerful word.
Of course I am, along with lots more.
Curious, what are you looking for?
Methinks that the best people in this forum who are teaching others, are entertaining them at the same time. You’re included, when I spend an hour trying to figure out what you meant in many of your posts.
“Entertainment” is likely a big part of why many of us take photographs, at least that’s how I see things. Entertainment, or the lack of, probably influences how other people react when someone posts.
I would hate to lose the excitement, and joy, and pleasure that comes with my photography. If it wasn’t enjoyable, sort of meaning entertaining, why bother?
If that is important to you. I have no problem with that. I am not here for entertainment, I have more than enough other sources for that. I am here for the sole purpose of sharing information about DxO’s products with like minded posters. The fact that I have developed good relationships with a number of other posters here is an added benefit but I certainly wouldn’t describe it as entertaining. Perhaps your idea of entertainment is different than mine.
Mark
That is not how PM is working. You are always able to add keywords, both structured and flat ones and search for them in PM Plus. Exporting to the RAW-file is an option.
XMP will always be written and both maintaning the old IPTC-metadata set and writeing data inside the RAw are options you can use in parallell. I dont understand the fuzz about the writing to the RAW-file. Is it really anything different to what we already do with DNG, TIFF and JPEG?? Yes I know some looks upon this as a dataintegrity problem but I don´t. Sony for example already writes the camera settings metadata to EXIF that is used to create a similar starting point for editing RAW as the camera gives its JPEG:s - If you use Sony’s Imaging Edge RAW-converter - and they are not alone to do so.
Not just the XMP-files !!! The right to write is that XMP-data is … It doesn´t matter if the XMP-data is stored in an XMP-file or inside the files in XMP-headers “If there are any - TIFF I think do not have a well defined header as DNG and JPEG and that is part of the problem with slow TIFF-files in DAM-systems”. As long as there is XMP-metadata to find in sidecars associated to RAW or inside TIFF, DNG or JPEG, the indexingsystems will find them and will be able to rebuild a searchable index in both PhotoMechanic and any other DAM using XMP.
Many of our popular converter software like Photolab also prefers to just exposing the older IPTC-tags in their interfaces despite the traffic is based on XMP where ITPC is just a namespace among several others like Dublin Core, Photoshop, EXIF or namespace that people defines in all DAM-systems that are able to do so.
As I have said earlier thee keywords mostly are useless on the Internet because they use just ordinary words common in the general buzz of the net. Title, Headline, Description/Caption, Comment , Licensing - Copyright data and “Event and Location data” are far more important for many users since there you can add data that really makes a difference when people are searching. I often use to “fork” the same data intentionally to several elements because some software like Windows doesn´t read Description or Caption but Headline instead of some reason.
Here is my present general Metadata Template I use today. I have several more I use in order to do partial updates efficiently. You can even check in the use of variables used to pupulate the Title, Headline and Description automatically with some of the data from the “Event and Location” data set. This metadata makes people on the net constantly visit even my older photo stories blogs. I doubt that would have happened without it.
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Mike is using PhotoMechanic like me and if he have turned on “Synchronisation” in Photolab his metadata like mine will be synchronized totally automatic and it is “rock solid” today and never is causing me any problems.
I NEVER USE PHOTOLAB TO ADD METADATA
I am just using Photolab to see if I might have missed to add metadata to some pictures in Photolab and to check if all my virtual copies also have correct metadata and that is why I always start with culling and metadata maintenance first in PM. You have to have the metadata in place in the sidecars before you start to create virtual copies otherwise they will never get that data in an effective way.
Adding mailaddresses and telephonenumbers today is nothing to what
Facebook and Insta is doing and nothing that isn´t exposed anyway through address search services these days. Why I am not using this data anymore is because I have no intention to make any money on my pictures That is why I have added the Creative Commons licensing code BY-SA which means the only thing I´m asking for is that they are expected to add me as a photographer and SA means “Shared Alike”.
CC BY-SA 4.0 Deed | Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International | Creative Commons
Just search with my name on Bing for example and you will se a lot of my blog-stories and some pictures from them - Sten-Åke Sändh
I’ll stick with this simplification, from Wikipedia. We probably all have our individual ideas.
Entertainment to me is a “form of activity that holds the attention and interest of an audience or gives pleasure and delight”. Joanna is at the top of my list, because I find everything she writes to be informative. Some people here are too opinionated for me to take them seriously. I don’t doubt that Mark’s opinion here is very different from mine.
When/if DxO actually starts the DxO Cafe, I expect it to be enjoyable reading whatever is being discussed, because we have such a great and diverse collection of users here. IMHO.
What you do here is trying to get tour post always up in the list of posts.
This is why you never start an other post.
They when we see how many people see your post it seems to be huge.
let’s do a little calculation to see the number of views compared to the number of posts, by looking at the latest topics in progress :
[compare photo] : 20 responses - 304 view : 305/20 = 15.25
[Looking for a Lightroom alternative] : 42 responses - 652 views : 652/43 = 15.16
[Export options have disappeared] : 1 response - 70 views : 70/2 = 35
[Photolab changing the timestamp of my photos…] : 13 responses - 953 views : 953/14 = 68.07
[U Point request in the point not in the menu] : 8 responses - 113 views : 113/9 = 12.55
[DNG files export - … compression] : 4 responses - 55 views : 55/5 = 11
[New Licensing PhotoLab 7.7?] : 144 responses - 3000 views : 3000/145 = 20.68
[PL5 - wrong TimeZone on export?] : 38 responses - 3100 views : 3100/39 = 79.48
[Current Versions, Graphics Drivers …] : 0 responses - 220 views : 220/1 = 220
Just check more topics yourself and you’ll see.
[Part 2 - Off-Topic - advice, experiences, and examples for images being processed in DxO Photolab]** 1800 responses - 14500 views : 14500/1801= 8.05
WHAT DOES THIS MEAN ?
Your topic is the least viewed of all the forum topics and it seems to be present only because you move it up the list by posting without ceasing new message !!!
You’re a social network savvy cheater.
So if DxO wants to do its DxO coffee because they think your topic is interesting, this prove only one thing : they are completely disconnected from their users.
And YOU mustn’t think your topic is of a big interest.
No, there are few topics with more views than Mike’s.
Also I can’t see any reason you added +1 to some numbers, but not to others. You added the thread opener, at least sometimes. But his interest is a given. It’s the interest of the viewers we’re looking for, right?
That makes the two digits after the separator bit fake. You’re not cheater, are you? 
304/20 = 15.2
652/42 = 15.52
and 200/0 = 0, not 1!
But as it’s only a ratio number – who cares? 
Also, your calculation is misleading to a wrong conclusion: It’s the number of views between one post or the rate of views per post in a thread. It’s nothing but posting frequency in relation to view quantity.
The more views and the less replies, the less interesting a thread is. To express the rate of interest, you need to divide posts/views.
Let’s see
1801/14500 = 0.124 [Mike’s mammoth post]
3000/33500 = 0.089 [Mike’s old mammoth post]
144/3100 = 0.046 [New Licensing PhotoLab 7.7?]
136/8000 = 0.017 [Deep Prime vs Topaz Photo AI]
699/59000 = 0.0118 [DxO Software - New Cameras & Lenses support (16 April 2024 update)]
These numbers clearly show Mike’s posts might be leading Top 10 – no miracle, it’s nothing else than entertainment. Getting higher rates would be only possible by less views, so a post with 5 views and one post = 0.2. It’s impossible to get more posts than views.
I agree with your general message, I just don’t think he’s a cheater on purpose, just a person desperately in need of recognition, no matter what. Jumping from one subject to another and incapable to deal, no longer interested once he delivered his sermon with the replies.
No, you are both wrong. Anything divided by zero equals infinity:
Depending on the programming language, division by zero either raises an error or returns the NaN (not a number) constant. Some languages provide routines for detecting such division and allowing the programmer to provide non-crashing code to handle it.
