Changing my default setting for cropping to "unrestrained"

Something I was looking for too. When you didn’t change it, it’s the default. But what if you changed it? I haven’t figured out yet which one is used.

George

George,
On a Mac you can look it up and change the default preset in preferences, on windows I do not know but I guess it is similar.

Well, eh you can’t know except remembering
DxO doesn’t highlight the active one. (i find that also slightly anoying a “highlight in blue in the preset editor of the active/last chosen on this image” preset would be a great info.)

You can make a feature request for this and if more people want this they will take it in the list of things they look in to.

I mean after I changed it manual. How do I know which one has been used. So how does Mike know the “Mikes General preset unconstrainedcrop” has been used.

George

He does not need to remember anything. If he sets “Mikes General preset unconstrained” as his default preset in preferences it is applied automatically to all his new files.
If he want to check if it is “really” applied he can always click on his crop tool. If it says “unconstrained” it is active, if it is not set on “unconstrained” he has applied another preset during the course of his editing.

What he could also do easily is to go into each preset, change to unconstrained and then save it again. So all his presets are then always the way he wants it. This would take I guess 3 min once.

I reopen the image a year later and I want to know how I archived that result. How do I know what was the start point I used. If the cropsettings/monocolor or whatever real vissible property of that setting was part of the preset, than I could determine it. But I never will be sure.

George

I see your point, but the moment you change just one single slider - in any preset you applied - the name of the preset you started off does not really matter anymore - it is not the settings of the preset anymore and hence no more valid. A preset is just a starting point, a proposal defined by the engineers of DXO or whoever, nothing more, nothing less. It does not really matter where you started. If you know roughly what each preset does it helps to get maybe quicker to the desired end result.

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Hey @platypus, (as an experienced PL user on Mac) could you please provide some guidance here …

In the Windows version one needs only to hold down the Ctrl-key while grasping any of the Crop-controls - and PL will switch to Unconstrained automatically.

Is there an equivalent on the Mac version of PL - - assuming so, which key does one hold down ?

John M

Hello John,
I just tested it on mac, Mojave. Interestingly it works with:

Shift+ctrl
Shift+alt
Shift+cmd

All combinations switch crop to unconstrained

Sigi

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Why doesn’t it work on mine pc? PL3, win10.

George

Actually, just using Shift is enough, without any other key.

The peculiar thing is that moving a handle with shift for the first time toggles between either unconstrained or the new proportion created by an unconstrained move and the other state.

The problem is, unless you take time to experiment, this is not easily discoverable and, because there is a button to activate cropping on the top of the editing window, some people may never realise there is actually a palette item with further settings like auto-crop.

Hah, just tried it, and yes, shift alone is good enough.

Peter, so what you are saying, is that if I have PL3 open for several days, and I want to know which PRESET I am using, there is no way to tell? If you were to visit me, could you find out which PRESET is active on my computer? And if you were to view an image I worked on a year ago, is there any way to tell which PRESET it was created with?

This isn’t my current issue, but it’s a lot more basic. I must be missing something.

If I re-open an image I started to edit a week, month, or year ago, will PL3 on my computer open the image in whatever PRESET is selected on my computer, or will the image open with the PRESET that was used way back when, the last time I worked on the image?

Mikemyers,

all your edits are saved in a database automatically. So if you open your computer in 5 months all your edits are there. you can set DXO in a way that all the edits are also saved in sidecar files. As said above read the manual and the link above and it is all explained there.

Brilliant! Based on what you just posted, and what I think I now understand, I can start PL3 on my computer, open an image I have not yet worked on, using the DxO STANDARD preset, then change my crop setting to UNCONSTRAINED, and save my PRESET with a name DxO STANDARD MIKE, and make that into my default preset from then on. From what you guys have said, my computer default will now be to to use this newer PRESET, so cropping will be set to UNCONSTRAINED.

…by the way, I have been making the “mistake” of always selecting the CROP tool at the top of my screen. Maybe I should use the menu system instead?

Thank you to whoever said it - apparently as soon as I change any slider in my menu settings, I am no longer using the PRESET that I started out with. I guess that’s obvious to me now, but I hadn’t thought of it that way.

This also might be the reason why when I click on PRESETS at the top right, nothing is highlighted, because if I’ve already made any changes to the sliders, I’m no longer using the PRESET that I started out with, unless I again click on the name of that PRESET, which presumably will change all my sliders to what they should be for the PRESET that I click on.

Sorry, I’m just slow here. So many things I was thinking before are incorrect. I did try to find the article on presets, but I haven’t yet found the right article for PL3 presets. The last article I found was for the DxO Optics program, as I recall - didn’t pay much attention, as it wasn’t what I was searching for…

mikemyers - happy for you it made “click” in your head:)))
Now when you learn more about presets you will learn that there are full presets and partial presets but that is for another day.

Please note about the sidecar files. A database gets relatively easy corrupted and then your edits would be gone. This is the advantage of using sidecar files on top of a database. If something goes wrong with the database, you just delete it and you have still all your edits because you have the sidecar files.

Sigi

Sigi, can you please tell me exactly what you click on, while holding the shift key on your Mac?
What is a “handle”?

Yes, I have been using the button up on the top of the screen. Maybe this is hiding what you are explaining I need to do?

Hello MIke,

  • I select the crop tool at the top of the screen
  • you see a frame around your picture
  • I click the shift key
  • with the mousepointer go to one of the 4 corners and click on the frame in the corner - this is the “handle”
  • the tool should now jump to “unconstrained” in the left botton corner you should be able to read this.

Use notepad in dop file open with notepad (one’s)


But inside DxOPL no there isnt a way to see that.

please use dopfiles and the Database as extra.

Edit:
strange i tested it by changing preset but the initial preset is stil in dop file.
even forced export to replace dop file doesn’t change the preference default.
a bit unexpected behaviour.
can’t find the last chosen preset back. :thinking: :astonished:

@mikemyers
At the moment you use the mouse pointer to draw the rectangle. It took me a while too.

George