The photo browser would have to be much faster to make image comparison useful. I loved Aperture too (more than any other photo tool before or since), but Photolab just doesn’t have the quick preview routine built-in which Apple built into Aperture. Until lightning fast preview is built into Photolab, any feature which involves browsing and comparing images is more or less pointless as it will all be too slow.
What most of us are doing is using IrfanView, FastRawViewer, Apollo or Photo Mechanic to handle culling and sorting. Before we even open up Photolab, we have only selects in the folder going into Photolab (occasionally with smaller edit sets I leave the other photos there but filter on 5 star or 4+5 star immediately.
If you put the Histogram palette on the left hand side menu at the top, it’s there all the time. I find it very useful over there. I’ve put a Curves palette right underneath the histogram so I can change curves and watch the histogram change.
Oh yeah, I moved the histogram to the left side, but I’d rather have it constantly above the tools on the right. The histogram in the curve window has the advantage that the correction in individual channels is simpler and more precise than when checking the channels of the main histogram. By the way, does anyone know if you can paint a straight line with a brush as in Ps, i.e. using the Shift shortcut?
I don’t find I need the histogram for every change and I like the Photolab interface. Admittedly it would be nice to have histogram and curves together with a single controller changing both visible histogram channel and adjusted colour channel. I would use the RGB curves more often in that case for adjustment. There are many other tools to use to get to the same final result, like White Balance + Tone palette.
Still, at some point, users are just looking for problems for problems sake. The apps actually perform well and are flexible and easy to customise. I’m not just speaking about Photolab but software and users in general.
As I said, some users are just looking for problems for problems sake. The histogram can be kept on the screen at all times already.
Personally I would hate to see sticky items in the interface which don’t scroll. That would needlessly and unpleasantly complicate the interface and take what is elegant (current Photolab interface) and make it geeky and fiddly. I.e. take away all the beauty of the Photolab workflow which is about half the appeal of the software (the other half being the superior results possible with high ISO images compared to the competition).
On the other hand, combining curves and their controls with the existing histogram (i.e. switching visible colour channel in the histogram when switching colour channel in the curves tool) would be nifty if done well.
I clicked on the wrong thing in PL5 an instantly, I thought oops! But the image was gone. I tried control-z which means “un-do” in some software. No luck
If this already exists, can someone please explain how to do it. If not, it’s a suggestion for people who “click” where they oughtn’t. The older I get, the more this happens…
(Specifically, I was adding start to five out of 100 photos, and one time I clicked on an existing star, so the image vanished, back to where the other 95 images were stored, and it took a while to figure out which image I had done this to. An “un-do” for the last operation would be helpful for silly people like me whose fingers are faster than their brains at times…)
What feature do I need?
Far better support for DNG’s in particular the DNG produced by Vuscan software that is a very widely used scanner software and the one recommended by Nikon for their Coolscan slide and film scanners.
Also support for DNG’s produced by Lightroom.
A quick look around the forum shows many threads and more people talking about the lack of decent DNG support by DxO. So I am not alone wanting this.
DxO needs to provide similar AI based masking tools to Adobe LRC/PS – the old way of painting on a basic mask is a total waste of time.
AND - DxO needs to provide a similar skin tool as is found in Capture One.
In other words – please look at the best timesaving, but professional level, tools that are already available in competing products and have been very well received by professional users and build these into PL.
Please add the ‘manufacturer profile’ to lens correction just like Capture One does, this function is particularly important and indispensable for FujiFilm users. Since most FujiFilm cameras use APS-C CMOS, their photos have a lot more noise that can be improved by DxO. However, FujiFilm uses also use Film-Simulation and Presets inside the camera, these settings’ effects can only show in the JPG file. Although the DxO PhotoLab can apply Film-Simulation now, but the settings such as ‘Color Chrome Effect’ can not be found and applied in the raw file.
So the only way to merge those Presets and DxO Denoise Algorithm is to convert the exported and denoised JPG file of PhotoLab and the JPG file from the Fuji Camera into LUV color space and apply the L-channel of the denoised file to the JPG file from the camera. I have written a program and proved it worked.
But the problem is the JPG from Fuji Camera is corrected and this function can not be disabled. So if not use the same correction information from the manufacturer (which is in the RAF file), the merged result will have serious errors. I believe that DxO has a better correction, but for Fuji users, we really like those presets and most of us do not want (or can’t or don’t have enough time) to reproduce it in PhotoLab, so PLEASE add this ‘manufacturer profile’ function.
The one thing that IMO would make a useful additional feature (might be already requested?)
In the Tone Curve controls ~ a picker to select a point on the image that would place a fix on the curve line. This function ideally needs to allow for picking multiple points on the image so that when adjusting the curve, specific slight changes can be made to the Tone Curve based on those chosen points in the image.
TIA
PS for more control ~ right clicking on a point allows to its deletion/reset, if required rather than resetting the whole curve
While powerful, the granularity feels a bit more like a feature from rawtherapee. There’s a detailed conversation about how to “improve tone curve” where you might like to contribute in more depth.
