As I’ve just started using PL5 in earnest I’m starting to find “issues”. The latest one is this -
Having done a series of adjustments to certain images, closed PL and then re-opened it, all the changes I made have disappeared from the “Advanced History” panel. Only “Applied Default Preset (Pure Raw)” is visible. The adjusted images themselves are there.
Also when I mouseover the thumbnails in the Photolibrary panel at the bottom they all say “Unprocessed”.
There’s no concept of “sequential steps” in PhotoLab (as there might be in some other RAW processing apps). That is, it doesn’t matter whether you apply correction-A, followed by correction-B, followed by correction-C, etc … PL will actually apply the corrections in its own pre-determined, proprietary, order.
So, to revise any particular edit/correction - just go to that correction tool on its palette and change it as required - and/or switch it ON/OFF to see how it affects the image. PL will then proceed to apply all corrections in the same order that it did so originally.
Note: Having said that, it is best to apply “Geometry” corrections early in your workflow - as doing so later may impact some more complex corrections; such as Local Adjustments.
I remember. This was a long-standing wish of quite a few PL (Windows version) users. It’s not about the order of the edits, but also about which presets or film emulations were used, for example. You won’t necessarily see that later on in a finished image. I myself would be very happy if the extended history were still visible when opening it again.
I miss the ability to have advanced history settings saved between sessions, a feature that Mac users enjoy.
The purpose of the advanced history, or any undo feature is to go back to an earlier editing state.
The argument that any setting can be changed without the need for advanced history suggests that the results will be easy to accomplish and identical to going back to an earlier state in the editing process. That is not easily done if a number of tools and edited values have been applied in the interim…
I’m very well aware that that I can edit an image without the need of advanced history. However, unlike the advanced history, that approach can’t take me back to the exact state of the image I want to return to and can’t reset all the edits to their specific settings for that state.
Without the advanced history I have to figure all that out myself through trial and error. I often tweak an image and then realize that I want to go back to an earlier point in time and and re-edit from there. I may also want to reassess that image in a new editing session but no longer have the ability to go back to a specific earlier state since the advanced history is not saved across sessions in Windows. Certainly I can play around with tools and sliders and guess where I was but that’s not the same thing as returning to a specific earlier state.
I may apply dozens of edits and and modify their settings over time. I would have to create many virtual copies to accomplish something similar and it presumes I know the exact states that I want to go back to ahead of time. As a result, this approach won’t give me the flexibility of the single advsncef history list. Virtual copies don’t tell me what was changed from version to version. Virtual copies are a highly important feature which I use a lot, but they don’t serve the same purpose as the advanced history list.
I can understand those who only make a few edits to an image not having the need for the advanced history, but for those of us who make significant numbers of edits and modify them during an editing session, the advanced history is a very quick and easy tool to use to go back to a preferred state. Having the ability to save the history list across sessions further enhances the usability of this tool.
Most of the better post processing programs I am familiar with have something similar.
I’m not arguing against your points, Mark - but, for those reading this thread with concern about Win-PL not maintaining edit-step history between sessions, I reckon it’s important that they come away from doing so with the following understanding;
Some PL users (typically those coming to PL from some other app) have the misunderstanding that they cannot change earlier corrections unless they can return to some earlier step and re-start form there … That’s not a limitation imposed by PL - and it’s important that PL users grasp that.
On the other hand, it can be very convenient to be able to return exactly to some previous step in the correction process; as you describe in your examples.