What's the best thing about PL5?

DxO PhotoLab
143

I am working on a MacBook Pro and first saw this when I was running Catalina. I upgraded to Monterey in the hope that this went away, but it did not, so it is a continuing problem on my system. I submitted a support ticket for it about a week ago but never got any response saying that development had or had not verified it so perhaps what I need to do is make a screen video of the problem and post it or submit it. For me this is not an isolated issue, but happens every time.

My assumption that it is a bug comes from two things - first, this is identical to functionality I have been seeing with new releases since back in the Optics Pro days and, second, switching folders corrects the problem, indicating that it is an issue with re-reading the folder. When I first posted this issue (The Bug Is Back) others told me that they had the same problem and my settings indicate that PL should display both raw and RBG images. Otherwise I suppose that switching folders would not solve the problem.

I will record a video of this issue with both PL4 and PL5 to show that it works in 4 but not in 5 on my system, stick them in dropbox and post links. If there is a simple solution to it and someone can tell me what I can do in settings to fix it I would be much obliged. In the previous cases when I saw this and reported it the problem only showed up on Mac systems. Windows systems seemed OK as far as I could tell from the people posting.

144

OK. That was interesting.

First, here is the screen recording. When you run it you can see that I started with 4 images for the HDR processing. When I ran the Nik plugin it processed all 4 images and I got 4 tiffs, but only one of them showed up in the filmstrip. Sometimes I get one, sometimes I get none. When I saved the HDR it did not show up in the filmstrip. I then switched folders and you could now see all of the images.

What made this interesting is that I tried this twice. I sometimes have a lot of images to process so I keep them on an external ssd connected via a usb connection, and that is what you see in the screen video. Out of curiosity I tried this on the main disk and the problem did not show up, so it apparently is related to the images being on an external disk. I have been keeping the images on a usb drive for what seems like forever and that is how I used them with PL4 when this problem did not appear. In fact it is how I have been keeping my images since the Optics Pro days.

One other thing that I should mention is that my Nik Collection is version 2. I should download the update and see if the problem still occurs but I assume it would since I see the exact same thing when I send an image to Photoshop.

145

I do, but it is set to show both raw and rgb files.

146

@StevenL on Win it’s ok, please redirect it to Mac team as I see the user works with Mac.

Regards,
Svetlana G.

147

PhotoLab 5 ?
I must admit that even before its launch at the end of October, I intended to buy it, even without knowing what’s new.
I don’t use Fuji, but the fact that PL5 now allows working with Fuji RAW is surely a good thing for those who are interested.
The (new) Control Line in the local settings is interesting, but I haven’t had time to dig deeper yet. The explanations given by StevenL will help a lot.
Unlike others, I like the improvements in the management of keywords and IPTC topics.
On this subject, I find that in the menu File/Metadata/Read - Write is far from clear and understandable. Why not put Import/Export as it appears at runtime? And, please, put keyboard shortcuts to these commands.
Still in this section, would it not be possible to have a database for, for example, locations, cities, etc. (as for keywords).
André

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Import / Export is rather reserved for files.
Reading / writing seems to me well chosen, but that’s my opinion.
Does the press on F5 (Refresh Image Browser) do at the same time a sync of metadata? with the option of doing it or not of course.

149

From a different perspective; I like the way the Selective Tone sliders work - - they “take care” of tones close to the actual tone being adjusted in an intelligent manner.

This one, tho, I definitely agree with … It’s been a long-standing request to provide better control over the degree of sharpening applied during the export-to-disk process.

John M

150

Yet, in use (read/write), there is a message that says that the “import/export” of the metadata of x files has been done. So why not display instead of reading “export” and write “import” (or the opposite since it is not clear).

151

Be sure, they are not shown, because the original file was tagged. The Tiff will not have the tag.
Thats what sometimes happens to me. But meanwhile I know the trick :wink:

Ohne Titel 2

1 Like
152

It must be sad to live in your shallow, mercenary world where people only every do anything for money.

Steve Jobs (Apple founder, ex-billionaire):

You should never start a company with the goal of getting rich. Your goal should be making something you believe in and making a company that will last.

Ray Dalio (Bridgwater founder, billionaire):

While making money was good, having meaningful work and meaningful relationships was far better. To me, meaningful work is being on a mission I become engrossed in, and meaningful relationships are those I have with people I care deeply about and who care deeply about me.

Think about it: It’s senseless to have making money as your goal as money has no intrinsic value—its value comes from what it can buy, and it can’t buy everything. It’s smarter to start with what you really want, which are your real goals, and then work back to what you need to attain them.

I founded and run a company. Our goals:

  1. improve the lives of our customers
  2. ensure the well-being of our team
  3. provide tools which protect independent publishing and guarantee freedom of expression

Only after all three of those goals are met comes making money.

I hope there is someone left at DxO.com who is still an idealist and a visionary. The flop of the DxO One (brilliant idea, I own one, but the One was too heavy to sit comfortably on the camera and not damage the lightning port. It should have piggybacked on the camera battery and been ultra-light: hindsight is 20/20 of course) took a lot of the wind out of sails and probably the soul at DxO.

After such difficult events, the last sounds DxO need to hear are smug libertarian US toads croaking their selfishness every dusk and dawn.

153

My shallow world as you call it is the real one. If you believe some of that rubbish then of course it is up to you. Yes, invariably the customer comes first but only insofar as you have to have something that will attract customers in the first place. So you find something you can sell and then sell it - of course if you cannot sell and make enough money to live there is a problem and no doubt the business will collapse. At the end of the day the business relies on making money to survive and to ensure the welfare of it’s team and continuity of product for its customers. Tag lines are just that and no more. They are easy to quote when you have a successful business.

Incidentally where did I say “people only ever do anything for money”. I was talking of a for profit business. There are also not for profit businesses and of course people who do things charitably, as do I.

Nothing I said was, or was intended to be, derogatory to DxO. They are a small company that has come through a rough patch. They are a for profit business and their decisions will always be driven by that, understandably.

154

Tag lines are just that and no more. They are easy to quote when you have a successful business…[DxO] are a small company that has come through a rough patch. They are a for profit business and their decisions will always be driven by that, understandably.

That’s the whole point, you are wrong about the world and about me and probably about DxO. Selfish rationalists are so myopic they can’t see beyond the end of their own noses. It’s unlikely that whoever founded DxO founded did so because his primary goal was to make money.

Even when confronted with direct quotations from Steve Jobs (a tech founder) and Ray Dalio (a financial company founder), you still insist that the only motivation for business is money.

The amusing part of all this is that you will perish in the same spiritual desert in which you lived. The one who will pay for your shallow empty outlook on life is you.

155

After having used DPL 5 for a while, I welcome the following additions in view of my proper interest:

  • Control lines
  • Entry into more proper metadata handling

I take Fuji support as a sign for a very welcome wider view on things, something I felt was missing earlier.

1 Like
156

Blimey, you really are weird. I cannot believe you are taken in by that “holier than though tripe”. Direct quotations from successful businesses do not a case make. The question is what would they have done had the business model not worked! I am a rationalist but not selfish (far from it). Actually what I am is an unselfish realist who is now off to meet some business pals who live in the real world.

And I never said the only motivation is money. What I said was profit is essential in a for profit company.

157

That’s a more reasonable perspective. It’s a big improvement over the US/UK everyone-does-everything-for-money-and-all-women-are-harlots viewpoint so popular among would-be MBA’s and millionaires which seemed to be where we started:

I have yet to find a for profit company that is there for any other reason than to make money.

You asked:

The question is what would they have done had the business model not worked!

Something else. If such people end up working primarily for money, they would see it as a huge defeat and failure in life, regardless of how much money they made later. There are successful people who just do it for the money though. From the start, Larry Ellison was just a selfish prick, out to screw his customers for everything Oracle could get. Ellison had his weaknesses though: 1. women and 2. sailing. Both cost him billions in the end.

Here’s a typical exchange between a shallow materialist and a creative visionary:

A few weeks later Jobs and his family went to Hawaii for Christmas vacation. Larry Ellison was also there, as he had been the year before. “You know, Larry, I think I’ve found a way for me to get back into Apple and get control of it without you having to buy it,” Jobs said as they walked along the shore.

Ellison recalled, “He explained his strategy, which was getting Apple to buy NeXT, then he would go on the board and be one step away from being CEO.” Ellison thought that Jobs was missing a key point. “But Steve, there’s one thing I don’t understand,” he said. “If we don’t buy the company, how can we make any money?” It was a reminder of how different their desires were. Jobs put his hand on Ellison’s left shoulder, pulled him so close that their noses almost touched, and said, “Larry, this is why it’s really important that I’m your friend. You don’t need any more money.” Ellison recalled that his own answer was almost a whine: “Well, I may not need the money, but why should some fund manager at Fidelity get the money? Why should someone else get it? Why shouldn’t it be us?”

“I think if I went back to Apple, and I didn’t own any of Apple, and you didn’t own any of Apple, I’d have the moral high ground,” Jobs replied. “Steve, that’s really expensive real estate, this moral high ground,” said Ellison.

Ellison is a “realist” like you and the business pals you are intent on joining right now. In relative terms, Steve Jobs was an idealistic dreamer. But I don’t think anyone would argue that the impact of Steve Jobs’ work on the world and even business is a magnitude greater than all of Larry Ellison’s dubious projects, sneaky schemes, overpriced sailboats, predatory ex-wives and whole life stuffed into one sordid gold-embroidered bag of greed.

Back on topic, the best thing about PhotoLab 5 would be if it ran on OS X Mojave and didn’t force productive creators and photographers to waste time on updating to less reliable and troublesome OS iterations Catalina, Big Sur or Monterey.

158

I’ve often disagreed with @uncoy but on profit versus vision I agree completely.

To quote current Apple CEO Tim Cook, in response to a financial analyst asking Apple to disclose the costs of their energy sustainability programs and make a commitment to doing only those things that were profitable…

Apple’s accessibility track record is, among major tech companies, peerless.

159

The two are ingredients of a business. You need the vision to create the business. Moving on, a successful/profitable business should ideally use its reach to help the community in which it operates. But when money gets tight it is not unusual for those initiatives to be scaled back (unless they are a road to increasing sales). It is great that Apple do some good stuff but they are a hugely profitable company, some would say ridiculously so.

160

Well I recently paid the Adobe Tax for a year of Lightroom Classic (and Photoshop but I won’t even bother installing that). The reason? There are some old RAW files from an early camera that PhotoLab simply does not support. Plus, I was curious as to the current state of Lightroom.

From the moderate amount of tinkering I have done over a couple of hours in total, I am rather unimpressed. I was not expecting much in the noise reduction or sharpness areas but tonight I finally tried out the new “sky select” and “subject select” and… well they’re not very good. Maybe better for landscape or portrait shooters (in the literal sense, not the orientation sense), but the few photos I tried which had very obvious delineation (to my eye) it failed quite badly on. Including a shot of a helicopter against a clear blue sky where the sky selection and the subject selection were not the inverse of one another! As for the shot of the blue aircraft which yet has very clear delineation from the sky (and skies do not have hard edges within them) well that was a total fail.

I converted those two images to TIFF files and tried out a Control Line mask on each. The helicopter one was simple, and the blue aircraft took a handful of negative Control Points but it only took me a couple of minutes to prove both were competently affecting only the sky, which I changed to pink to be sure.

2 Likes
161

Strange that for I have found the new masking in Lr very good. It does not always get it 100% first time but the adjustments are easy enough with the related tools. Do agree that all this “subject aware” stuff does seem gimmicky and I cannot see how it can ever be 100% reliable. Selecting the subject first, even roughly, must be the best approach surely!

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I don’t expect it to work 100% of the time, but I thought I was starting off with something easy for it.