I import, sort and name my photos with PhotoMechanic Plus. When viewing the photos, you can already create a crop for a photo in PhotoMechanic. PhotoMechanic writes this cropping metadata to the XMP sidecar files. Lightroom reads this information and displays the crop of the file. Unfortunately, PL does not do this.
So my feature request to DXO PL would be to read more metadata in XMP sidecar files, including cropping information. This would speed up my workflow significantly.
PhotoMechanic metadata tags are not generally readable and would need specific programming. Other software like Canon’s and Nikon’s have their own tags so, with no universal standard, I would say it is unlikely that DxO will go down that road.
I’d appreciate if DPL could manage to adjust images according to respective data of basic settings stored in XMP sidecar files. As for such data stored in proprietary ways in the files, I prefer DPL’s “hands-off” approach.
Now, what’s a “basic setting”? I’d consider the following to be top contenders for that title:
exposure, contrast, rotation, crop (most “darkroom” techniques) plus the tone curve.
Note that most apps provide these sliders, but the results can still vary, depending on how images are cooked by the respective app, but that would be okay for me.
