I’m a recent user of DXO PhotoLab 4, coming from Lightroom.
Something that bothers me a lot is the copy/paste settings functionnality, and I think just a little bit of tweaking would make it wonderful to me O:)
When doing Ctrl+Alt+V, in the paste dialog you can select the settings you want to copy. By default, the settings applied are selected. Many times, I uncheck things I don’t want to paste like crop, all of the detail section, etc. And ervytime I hit Ctrl+Alt+V again, the selection is back again : this is very very frustating !
I read in other threads the idea is to create presets, but that defenitively don’t work in my case : in a group of photos, I usually paste settings from one image to 5 to 10 images top, and these settings can only apply in this situation (place, lighting conditions, …).
So I would propose something that could be easy and really perfect for me, and I think everyone coming from Lightroom :
display the settings that were copied in bold
remember the selection I made last time, until I hit Ctrl+Shift+C
paste same selection using Ctrl+Shift+Alt+V : same as opening paste settings dialog and hitting immediately the paste button
That would definitively solve my problem !
Here is a use case example below :
// A serie
first photo, I do my stuff, then hit Ctrl+Shift+C as the next photos are really similar
on the first paste settings dialog opening, every bold settings are selected, I can uncheck the one I don’t want, as of today. So I uncheck some of them, hit apply
on the next photo, as I know I need the same settings, I just have to press Ctrl+Shift+Alt+V
next photo : same, Ctrl+Shift+Alt+V
on the next photo, I need to paste one more setting, so I hit Ctrl+Alt+V again to get the paste dialog. I see the selection made on the 2nd photo, so some settings unchecked. I check back the setting I want, hit paste button
on the next photo again I need to remove this extra setting, so I hit Ctrl+Alt+V, uncheck, paste
// B serie
next photo, a total new settings required, I do everything either starting with a preset or all by hand
next photo, same situation, so I do Ctrl+Shift+C on previous photo, get back to my photo, hit Ctrl+Alt+V : all of the applied settings are bold and selected again (the saved selection from the A serie was reset as we did Ctrl+Shift+C again)
FYI Capture One’s solution is very elegant in that you make those selections at “copy” time. So you select which adjustments you want to put on the clipboard. Then you can just paste away all you want. It’s sort of like making a temporary preset on the clipboard.
Actually I can see the benefit of your suggestion, but just as simple is to restrict the “crop” edit from copying to the clipboard in the first place. This should also be easy to implement (using the same dialog box as paste.).
FYI Capture One’s solution is very elegant in that you make those selections at “copy” time.
This is how Lightroom works also, but I prefer DXO approch on this !
With what I propose, you can either check or uncheck settings to paste each time you need it, so you don’t need to copy whenever you want a new settings to be pasted. In other word, everything is copied, and you can either paste all or a defined selection without having to switch from one image to another.
When the selection is done on copying on the original image i0, if you’re picking settings sA and not sB, you can paste sA on your image i1. On image i2 if you want to paste both sA and sB then you’ll need to get back to the original image i0, copy again, select sA and sB, get to i2, paste.
I prefer copying only once on i0 (the existing Ctrl+Shift+C on DXO PhotoLab), then on i1 I can paste sA only, and when on i2 I won’t have to change image, just Ctrl+Shift+Alt+V and select sA + sB.
I really don’t like having to switch from one image to another just to copy settings again
but just as simple is to restrict the “crop” edit from copying to the clipboard in the first place
I agree that there are settings I won’t ever copy from one image to another. Crop is part of this actually.
But this is another enhancement request I think ?
There is an existing thread proposing to unselect crop by default, I voted for it
In the meantime, as a workaround, you could do the following;
Immediately after your initial paste action (Ctrl+Alt+V), repeat your copy action (Ctrl+Shift+C) on one of the images to which you previously pasted … then your “paste buffer” will contain your new status.
Your input seems to cover such “problem”, for a faster workflow.
I think that the proposed solution could work like this:
• you choose “Copy Correction Settings” on image A
• you select image B (or more images) and choose “Paste Selected Corrections”
• from the proposed list (which shows all corrections applied to image A) you uncheck the crop for instance
• you hit “Paste”
• now you select image C and bring up the “Paste Selected Corrections” window again
• this time, the “crop” is already unchecked (because you unchecked the last time with image B)
From now on, each time you bring up the “Paste Selected Corrections” your previous choices are remembered (unless you hit “reset” in the window of course).
Let’s say that now you want to copy the corrections from another image (image D).
In this case, because the source image is different (previously it was image A), all corrections made in the source image are selected by default.
One last thing: let’s say that you are still at point #1 (PhotoLab remembers that you unchecked the “crop” correction), and that for any reason, you select again image A and decide to copy its corrections, then you chose image E and bring up the “Paste Selected Corrections” window. In this case (because you decided to copy again the corrections from image A), the window is reset to default (all corrections applied to image A are selected by default, even the crop).
Could this solution solve your issue and provide a better user experience?
Thanks for this proposition, it’s a good move in the right direction !
It has the drawback to add a step in the workflow when you just want to paste the same selection (on image C in your use case) : Ctrl+Shit+V then validate the paste dialog.
If this paste dialog validation can be done simply by pressing enter, this would be fine by me !
Yes, that was included in my proposition in the first post : I proposed Ctrl+Shit+Alt+V to paste same settings as last time
As StevenL didn’t picked that, it might not be easy to add.
Improving step by step is a good thing, SteveL first proposition will definitively improve the experience !
Keeping the selection “on the copy side” has the big advantage of allowing to do one copy and pasting multiple times in a row without having a dialog opening each time…
I find it hard to believe that remembering the last used settings was not part of the “paste selected corrections” feature from day one. It makes the user experience kinda terrible frankly as it makes for endless clicking of checkboxes every time I use it, when 99.9% of the time I’m wanting to paste the same set of corrections. It should remember the last used setting by default, because the “reset” button is only one click away if you need it.
I seriously can’t even think of a single reason I’d want the checkboxes to reset each and every time, which means right now it’s exactly the opposite of how it should work. But if some people actually like it that way, then simply add a checkbox that says “remember previous selections”… everyone’s happy.
