In Adobe Camera Raw, the “synchronize” option lets you apply RAW corrections to a set of images. Before you do, ACR presents you with a large set of options for selecting which things are synchronized. In PL2, it looks like it’s all or nothing.
Actually, a separate thread points out that (on Windows) you can either copy everything or copy only local adjustments. What one usually wants to do is copy everything or copy global corrections. My request extends that to refine which global corrections.
As a work-around that I haven’t tried, I believe one can create a preset of the corrections that one might want to share and then apply it to whatever images one might want to share the corrections with. This might work, but it seems clumsy.
It’s not clumsy, it’s super efficient. You can create a preset almost instantly from any image. The preset can then be edited to include or not include certain aspects and then reused. Every event can get its own folders and presets. After a few weeks of work, you’ll have amazing presets which will accelerate every session. Clicking those endless Adobe boxes one by one is what is inefficient.
I understand your question though – when I first started using PhotoLab, the different workflow confused me as well.
When copying over settings from another image, it’s very easy to go through the target image deleting or changing the setting post copy. Remember palettes in PhotoLab are very easy to turn on/off or reset. There’s really no need for the clumsy interstitial screen of Lightroom.
I agree that Adobe has some ease of use features that I would like to see implemented in PhotoLab. However, I happily gave up those features for the faster, easier, and better results I get in Photolab Elite.
For me the most annoying part of Lightroom was the time consuming import, and the fact that all the image files, once imported, needed to be managed inside Lightroom. When I have new images to edit I am so much happier that I no longer have to manage them within the Lightroom import catalog structure. That more than makes up for the lack of a few other convenient features.
You are used to the Adobe method. Try to work with your software and not against it. Really learn the presets library system of PhotoLab before you judge it. Adobe’s approach is great if you will only work with Lightroom for a month – rank amateur. But if you work with the software regularly, DxO’s approach is much faster and more powerful.
You are joking. I might have a dozen images where I want to use a common set of some of the settings. Your approach would require a ton of really boring, imprecise work.
Sigi’s virtual copy method is way better, but it’s still a clumsy work-around. Even my proposal for using a preset is better. Your approach works fine if you have just two images and you only do this once.
Anyway, this post is not about presets; it’s about improving copying corrections. Right now, PL2 copies everything or only local adjustments. On a Mac, it apparently also has an option to copy only global adjustments (sadly, cropping is considered a global adjustment). Rather than increasing the number of options, what I’d suggest is something like this:
Leave the copy/paste corrections as is.
Add a new item for selectively pasting corrections. This would bring up a dialog that would allow settings to be enabled/disabled individually or as a block (e.g. Light, Color, Details, etc.).
The next time you bring up the dialog, it would remember your last selection.
You could still use presets when they make sense. You could avoid the dialog if you didn’t care for it.
I’m getting the sense that some people argue against some features because they want other features to get more priority. Elsewhere, I read that PL2 has just 2 software developers, one for Windows and one for Macs. If this is true, I can understand the desperation, but really, just don’t vote for my feature. I’m sure the developers will do appropriate triage anyway, regardless of votes.
At this point, I’d be happy if I could avoid copying local adjustments and cropping.
Are you serious, Alec? If I had said “I prefer tea to coffee”, would you have told me to “learn not to struggle against” the coffee machine? Ha ha ha…
I have known these two softwares for many years. If I say that — on this particular point of applying a selection of corrections — I prefer the Adobe method, it is because I PREFER it: I find it more obvious, more logical, in short more efficient. Period.
I’m with Scribe. I have never used Lightroom, by the way, but have used Adobe Camera Raw for years. I have a lot of experience with a number of systems with presets–ACR, ON1 and even the Nik Collection. I know they are popular with people, but I don’t care for them. For my mode of photography, every photo I work on gets individual treatment. I occasionally take a small set of shots where I want to share the settings between them. If I saved it as a preset, it would just be clutter. Sigi’s suggestion for creating a virtual copy may be a better work-around.
Interesting to hear other’s people’s perspective. I build my presets and usually create a folder with presets for a particular event. Eventually I can throw out those old presets but they neither take up space nor attention.
If I haven’t built a custom preset for a particular project, I definitely apply a default preset to every image which gets work started on a positive direction. Almost everything is disabled there apart from Color Rendering, Lens Sharpening (often disabled as I shoot vintage lenses very often) and auto-horizon and auto-crop. PhotoLab is too invasive with their default/standard set. Now that I understand PhotoLab fairly deeply I prefer not to turn on the auto-corrections unless I know I want them. Occasionally I’ll dabble in Smart Lighting or Clear View in very light doses. Even noise reduction, I apply only at the end (for performance reasons), not by default and with a light touch (about 12 usually).
One method which I follow which many of you already do is arrange all the palettes I actually use in one group Essential Tools. I put them in the order I like to apply them. Which means if I copy over settings disabling, changing or zeroing those which don’t apply is very quick work. I find the Lightroom system of carefully having to decide which you want to keep and which you don’t want to keep before applying quite clumsy.
I do not like the dozens of checkboxes in Adobe. It feels like washing laundry or doing accounting. I’ve felt this way, long before I ran into PhotoLab. Iridient Developer is similar to Lightroom but the list is smaller and easier to manage.
One issue with both Adobe Lightroom and Iridient Developer is that the list doesn’t show which of these settings/adjustments is in use. In this kind of interface, only the adjustments actively in use should even be offered as an option. The rest is just noise requiring decisions to be taken where there are none (i.e.the adjustments offered aren’t in use).
I can’t address Lightroom or Iridient, but in Adobe Camera Raw, images are synchronized. A change to one image affects the enabled settings of all other images as you make the changes. You would normally select the adjustments to apply before you actually apply them, therefore the concept of “adjustments actively in use” makes no sense.
The “laundry list” is pretty easy for me to use as the default items selected (in ACR for CS6, anyway) are almost always the set I want. Occasionally, I need to do something different (like only synchronize the sharpening and noise reductions) and the dialog is structured to make it easy to turn off everything else.
While I’d love to see image synchronization implemented in PL2, I’d be happy if I could do a selective paste. Adding this wouldn’t interfere with anyone’s existing workflows.In the context of pasting, showing just the enabled settings would make sense.
The feature I asked for is a selective copy/paste. I suggested a work-around using presets. Sigi offered a better work-around using a temporary virtual copy. Piole didn’t offer a work-around, but pointed out a feature in PL2 that goes part way in matching Adobe Camera Raw’s synchronization feature (the missing part is still the selective copy/paste). While not actually addressing my request, Piole did respond to something I mentioned in passing. Both these people offered useful feedback and I appreciate their comments.
If there is a way to perform selective copy/paste (or even if there is an even better work-around), I’d be happy to learn about it. But as far as I can tell, the feature does not exist in PL2, except as clumsy work-arounds. Until I learn otherwise, my request stands—I am not wedded to the Adobe approach, if there is something equivalent or better.
I’m sure that there’s just another post requesting the selective copy for settings.
And i’m also sure it’s a very usefull tools. Using the virtual copy method is a workaround but not the solution.
this is a similar request : “Copy/paste adjustments without Local adjustments”
and i think in both case that the solution is to create a kind of “special copy” or “special paste” request popup to select exactly “what do you really want to copy/paste”.
Thanks for pointing this out, but that request is not the same as mine.
I understand that copy/paste without local adjustments is already available fpr PL2 on Macs. If they use the same solution for Windows, they would address the request in the other post but not mine.
I could live with just avoiding local adjustments if cropping were considered a local adjustment. This would still be a poor substitute for what I’m requesting (and cropping is global).
I’d be happy to have the DxO staff close this topic with a comment that they plan to implement my version of the feature.
I had no idea that copy/paste without local adjustments didn’t exist on Windows. Total gamechanger. Windows users really need to be able to copy and paste setting without local adjustments.
As a Mac user who uses this feature, I’d sorely like horizon, perspective and cropping excluded from global copy and paste. I shoot action off a tripod much of the time and the camera is always in motion. I really don’t want cropping or rotation carried over when I’m trying to paste exposure settings. Real nuisance to have to reset them.
Hence I follow my presets system as much as possible where I can exclude perspective and crop type palettes by default.
As far as i thought it does exist DxO V2, only it’s copy all/both and past one or the other:
But with testing:
option one:
copy paste all local and settings. (upoint, “repair bandage” settings.)
copy paste local adjustments (all which are in that menu)
copy paste repair bandage.
Easiest way is a checkbox list in copy or paste dialoge window before apply.
In paste dialoge is better because then you can make several versions out of one copy.
Other way is creating a temperaly “preset” like i earlier spoke of.
Clone storage 01, save present checked in box settings and local adjustments.
@uncoy i understand you make folders with project depending presets which you can delete or not after use?
Like(example) image 001: develop til some level, create a preset called “base level 01” and then a “highkey 01” and a “low key 01” and use those in that project and maybe use them in others if possible?
How do you manage/ organise those?
(i stil want to make some “low contrast” “High contrast” and 'Low Key" and “High Key” partial presets but most of my images are dealt with one by one, so it’s not a priority. )
The (Partial) Preset system is a nice way to build your own taste of quick repairs. Better then the good old copy paste system when dealing with large amounts of images.
Still the present copy paste feature is limping imo.
Edit: when creating a partial preset you have to create first a full and then discard tools in the blue checkbox line and undo the other things as repair bandage and or local adjustment in the EDIT-mode and save this as you final “personal partitional preset.”
I would have this choise rather at the beginning(before the safe).
Yes, and we all have different needs, thus my request for the “laundry-list” dialog that you seem to dislike. On Adobe Camera Raw, the default is to synchronize everything except cropping (there’s no geometry in my CS6 version, and “horizon” is considered part of cropping), spot removal (which is not considered a local adjustment) and local adjustments. There’s a drop-down to select common subsets and you can define one custom set.
For most uses, the typical response to the synchronize dialog is to hit OK. I’ve occasionally had a need to synchronize some other settings, so it’s nice to have when you need it.
I suspect that DxO is just planning to migrate the Mac feature to Windows; I hope they do more.
