Photolab 7 importing LUTs

DxO PhotoLab macOS topics
1

Some questions re LUT color space:

  1. is it possible to add other icc profiles to the drop down list provided
  2. I yes to 1 above I assume the profiles are stored in a folder somewgere on the mac. If so what is the location. PL7 doesn’t appear to use the Colorsync profiles folder.
  3. if none is selected what colorspace is used by default. WideGamutRGB?

Regards,
Bill

2

PhotoLab can “import” LUTs as well as .dcp and .icc profiles. I put import in “”, because DPL just remembers where you found the LUTs and profiles and stores that information rather than the imported items. This helps to prevent data duplication but makes operations more cumbersome than necessary imo.

In order to keep your flock of LUTs and profiles together, I recommend to create a folder that will hold copies of the files you need. This helps to ease operations, but will cost some drive space.

Working Colour Space: You’ll easily find that you need the DxO Wide gamut WCS for LUTs and that you need to set the WCS manually and before you can apply them.

1 Like
3

As with DCP profiles, this looks to make the functionality useless to anyone editing on both Mac and Windows. Import doesn’t seem to do anything but make the path know to PL. It still writes the absolute path of the imported LUT to dop files, and since that path isn’t the same on Mac and Windows you would have to manually edit dop files when moving between platforms. Another half-baked implementation.

Only the builtin LUTs appear usable across platforms. These are only written as a filename.

4

Any thing like this should have them importrd to a common folder. Will imiges actually open if the LUT isnt found? Imiges using DCPs originally wouldn’t open with out access to the DCP at the right location. They did finally change it so it would open using default PL settings.

5

Going from Windows to Mac, the image opens, the LUT name displays as the Windows path and is otherwise ignored. In the other direction the image doesn’t open, with the error that the LUT path can’t be read. It’s similar with DCP.

They don’t even need an Import. Just document a known location for profiles/LUTs (eg. beside the Workspaces/Presets) so we can put files there on both platforms, problem solved. It’s been 5 major releases without the problem being addressed for DCP, and now they introduce exactly the same problem for LUT.

6

This is what I do:

Bildschirmfoto 2023-10-02 um 11.32.32
Bildschirmfoto 2023-10-02 um 11.32.322654×874 191 KB

See the folders with the red dots?

For those who wonder

  • My test Mac has several volumes that boot into macOS Monterey, Ventura or Sonoma respectively. M11 is used as a shared volume. I can put different versions of PhotoLab on M11 to make them available for all other volumes. Saves some drive space and installation effort.
7

Yes, but this doesn’t work when moving between Mac and Windows unless PL has a know directory on both into which files can be copied. (That it doesn’t as far as I know.) It works fine with different versions of PL on the same OS, not when moving between Mac and Windows, the problem being that an absolute path written to a dop file isn’t portable.

8

A “custom LUT content folder path” in preferences (both on pc and mac of course) could probably solve this :

It could be used several way depending of 3 (?) user choices :

  • “disable” (actual behavior)
  • “always” (always looks for LUT in this place - for those which always group their LUT in the same place).
  • “alternate path” (When a Lut is not found at referenced path, an automatic check in this place is done and LUT loaded if it is there).

with a global option :

  • “check subdirectories” toggle button (for those who organize their LUTS in subdirectorys inside the root LUT directory.

Maybe an idea (to tweak ?) for a feature request.

9

They really don’t need any new UI to fix the problem. All they need is to add a known directory to the search path, document (or otherwise tell us) its location, and only write filenames to dop.

It’s taken them 5 years to not fix the problem in the DCP case. Anything more complicated and we may be waiting for PL 42. :slight_smile: