Allow copying *selected* corrections

This requested feature is a must have and has my vote.

In fact, this is THE most important thing that could make me switch entirely to photolab. A selective copy/paste should be doable without creating a preset, and without selecting all the pictures that I want to modify first.

It’s very simple in C1 and LR (a list of checkboxes), not that much in PL… In C1, it’s VERY fast, because it can automatically check the boxes of the parameters that I have modified compared to the base rendition of the software. I can work on only one picture, then copy paste in a heart beat what I’ve done to as many pictures as I want… So much time saved.

1 Like

If this feature is added (interstitial with checkboxes to paste adjustments) then surely with the C1 modification and not in its nightmare Lightroom version (everything checked, no indication of what is actually enabled within the set).

2 Likes

I’m having trouble imagining a use case in which I care about which corrections are enabled. To me, it would imply that I had no idea what I was trying to accomplish by pasting a set of corrections. If I’m trying to create a consistent set of corrections among a set of images, then those are the corrections I want to make. It doesn’t matter to me if a correction is disabled; if it is, it means that I want it disabled in all the images in the set. It doesn’t matter if it is enabled, as it may not be a setting that I want to copy.

Perhaps you could give an example where one would care about the currently enabled corrections?

As I’m not a Lightroom user and Adobe Camera RAW does not a separate copy/paste (you can perform a copy/paste equivalent using “synchronize”), I looked for the dialog that horrifies you so much. The dialog allows selecting subsets of the settings using a drop-down. One of the drop-down options is “modified”. This sounds like what you want.

PL2 could certainly include PL2 a “currently enabled corrections” option in the copy/paste dialog. This would be the least interesting option to me, so it would also be nice if they could have a preference setting for the default set selected the first time the dialog appears. The second through nth time the dialog appears, I would prefer that it remember the last selection.

I don’t believe the dialog’s default is to have everything checked. I believe it skips local adjustments and geometry, but a real Lightroom user would have to verify this.

2 Likes

This sounds just contrarian. I don’t want to have to think about what I’ve done with the image whose settings I’m borrowing. By only showing boxes which have changes, I’ll only have to deal with five to seven boxes (usually) and not 56 or 78 or however many show up in Lightroom. It’s a hell of a lot of boxes.

For the copy above, the only adjustment I made to the image was the basic exposure slider (a smidgen to enable copy settings). Why on god’s green earth should I have to puzzle through all those other settings (which never came anywhere near this photo)? Just stupidity, typical Adobe stupidity. Why use a hammer to repair your wall when you can use a sledgehammer or better yet a jackhammer?

First, it looks like you have an older copy of Lightroom. The current version appears to support what you want (as I mentioned).

You don’t have to think about what you’ve done to an image. You do need to think about what you want to accomplish by pasting the copied settings into a set of images.

If you intend to create a consistent set of images, then you’ll usually want to copy everything except geometry, cropping and local adjustments. This is the default for the LR dialog, so there’s little to ponder. It doesn’t matter if you just changed the exposure or altered a number of other settings—if your the end goal is to make the images consistent, this is what the default LR setting does.

If the images vary in some way where perhaps the only reasonable thing to copy is the exposure adjustment, then you turn off everything and select just the exposure. It doesn’t matter what changes you made to the source image; you have evaluated the destination images and decided that they should only receive the exposure setting from the source. The destination images and your goals drive the selection.

You gave an artificial example, one without context. Perhaps you could provide an example in the context of a particular set of images and what you are trying to achieve with the copy. I suspect in any real-world example you could come up with, the answer will either be “use the LR default” or “there is no way around having to think about what you want to enable in the Copy dialog” (i.e. there is no way for LR or PL2 to automatically generate what you want).

Ayoul suggested that the default for the copy dialog should be to enable settings that differ from a “base rendition”. PL2 has no concept of a “base rendition” (other than, perhaps, the “No Adjustments” preset). Images receive a default preset, which can be set to any preset at all and can be changed at any time.

Let’s look at two scenarios: 1) the default copy setting is to copy everything that differs from the default preset and 2) the default copy setting is to copy everything that differs from “No Adjustments”—i.e. anything enabled.

Option 1 gets into trouble if I change the default preset in the preferences after I’ve processed a set of images. To get around this, PL2 could remember, for every image, what default preset was applied when it was first processed. Even if it did that, Option 1 has an implicit assumption that both source and destination images have the same “base rendition”. Since they may have been processed with different default presets, this assumption is incorrect.

Even if there were a base rendition and we could just copy the things that differed from the base, we still generally do not want to copy geometry, cropping or local adjustments. For the rest, there is zero difference between copying the differing settings and copying all of them—for the ones that don’t differ, copying and skipping makes zero difference.

Option 2 is not very useful when one approaches the copying task as a matter of creating a consistent look for some aspect of a set of images. For example, the DxO Standard preset is the factory default preset and it enables DxO Lighting. If I turn off DxO Lighting in my source image and I want to make all the destination images consistent in appearance, I want to copy the disabled DxO Lighting setting. I don’t want to skip it.

However, if PL2 wanted to keep everyone happy, it could provide a dialog similar to the LR one (the most recent LR CC version) with a drop-down to select: All, All except Geometry and Local Adjustment, All Enabled, and None. If they really wanted to go crazy, the could also allow defining presets, but that would add a lot of work. The four options I listed should be pretty easy to implement and cover close to 100% of all real-world use cases.

Wow. What a lot of words. I don’t enable any settings which I’m not using. My default set is nothing (well as I mentioned above, a camera colour emulation and auto cropping which isn’t used until I change horizon). Why should I want to even see those boxes?

If you want to copy on to a clean image, then just zero the target image with a preset before doing so.

How some photographers try to make the simple complicated. There’s Adobe for that, PhotoLab doesn’t have to follow in those second-rate footsteps. C1 also has a relatively awful, overly complex interface and workflow (albeit great layer and colour tools).

Good for you.

I believe that in LR, there is a short-cut that does what you want. No dialog, skips local adjustments and geometry, copies everything else.

I don’t need to copy onto a “clean” image. I know what I’m doing and can handle an advanced copy dialog without a problem. I mentioned some things based on comments by Ayoul.

However, your “zeroing” approach still doesn’t work. If I want to copy only the lighting settings but preserve everything else in the target images, zeroing the target is not going to do it. I suppose I could come up with a bunch of presets to clear various things—nah, the dialog is easier. And if I decide to copy the lighting settings, I want to copy enabled and disabled, not just the enabled.

I don’t find it complicated at all. It’s trivial to use and allows me to control things what I need when I need to. This is exactly the feature I’d like to see in PL2.

Since 95% of the time, most people want to copy everything except geometry and local adjustments, I’d have no problems with providing that as a quick option (i.e. avoid the dialog altogether). They almost got this part right on the Mac, but they copy geometry.

Good day everyone!

To please all participants in this discussion, the selective Copy/Paste feature is in our backlog and will be adressed in the near future :slight_smile:

Have a great day!

7 Likes

CaptainPO, great: just please make sure that the selective copy and paste checkboxes areis restricted to active modules in the source image and don’t include every adjustment under the sun. If the receiving file needs to be zeroed (no adjustments) before the paste, then let the photographer zero it. For all I care, you can add an option when pasting: “Zero existing adjustments before paste.”

Bonne nouvelle !

1 Like

CaptainPO, thanks for the heads up!

The feature I want is somewhat different from what user uncoy wants. I want a selective copy that copies and pastes only the items I select.

  • If I select an item in the Copy dialog and it is disabled in the source image, then I want this item to be explicitly disabled in any destination image.
  • If I do not select an item in the Copy dialog, then I want the matching setting in the destination images to be unaffected, even if it is set in the source image.

Uncoy’s claim that “zeroing” the destination images solves all problems is incorrect—I explicitly want the copy to leave certain settings alone in the destination images. These settings should neither be changed nor “zeroed”—both actions would be destructive and undesirable.

Uncoy’s desired behavior could be incorporated in my model by having a drop-down box for quickly selecting “All”, “None”, “Enabled” or “Custom”. After the first use, the drop-down default should be the same as the previous use; if “Custom” is selected, then the selected items should also be remembered.

The selective copy/paste is most useful if it includes all settings. Uncoy seems to feel that not all settings should be included, but one person’s unnecessary option will be another person’s essential feature. Removing the ability to fine tune the selection only makes the feature less useful. The way other applications address the desire for both fine-grain selection and simplicity is by creating a hierarchical selection.

In any case, copying only the enabled settings and allowing only coarse-grain control of them limits the usefulness of this feature for me.

Very glad to hear that CaptainPO !

Great, let’s build a piece of software as complex and full of arcane menus and choices and checkboxes and multiple ways of doing things that no one wants to use it. The name RawTherapee is already taken so we’ll have to come up with a new name.

Designing great software is about making good choices for the user and not about the programming team abnegating responsibility for flow and making everything available at all times. PhotoLab does have its share of Windows users, few of whom have any idea about what good software is, as almost every program on the Windows platform is a usability catastrophe without consistency or rhyme or reason between applications. On Mac, the ratio is much better at about 50/50, with Apple the most serious violator of their own Human Interface Guidelines.

No problem. We’ll drop your options in order to simplify. I have no interest in copying the currently enabled settings.

3 Likes

One more thought: it has occurred to me that there is a great similarity between a selective copy/paste and a selective (or “partial”) preset. I just found out DxO PL2 Elite supports partial presets. The interface is not very intuitive: you edit a preset in the Presets pane (usually on the left) and a set of checkboxes appear along the settings on the right. These checkboxes are not anywhere I would think of looking so they are easy to miss, they provide no hierarchy (everything individual setting has to be turned on/off one by one) and there’s no guarantee that all settings are displayed (since one can remove setting panes).

I would suggest using one interface for both selective copy/paste and for selective (“partial”) presets. The time to allow the partial preset to be defined is when the preset is created. To optimize the selection of settings, I would recommend some quick way of enabling or disabling all settings. A tree widget with checkboxes that would allow for hierarchical selections would be both efficient and flexible. It would also eliminate the clutter for those who don’t like seeing a lot of checkboxes–begin with the entire hierarchy collapsed. As with the usual tree widget, you should be able to expand/collapse all or any branch.

Great idea Freixas, with a bit of self organisation I think one can live with this and so spare DXO development capacities for the cool stuff :wink:

3 Likes