a few days ago I was annoyed again that the option still does not exist. I had several pictures, taken from a rocking vehicle, where I had to adjust the horizon and where the center of the picture was not the best crop.
Sometimes I filled the black triangles with the clone or repair tool to keep more of the remaining image. Especially restoring sky or grass is easy. So it should be an option to limit the crop area.
Yeah but you even have to play tricks to do that (like exporting and reimporting. Thereās another feature request to enable cloning and healing outside the frame edge. I voted for that one too). I agree thatās a valid use case and theyād why Iām suggesting it be an option. But should be off by default.
On my system, it is already possible to do this, and very easy. If I have a rotated or keystoned (perspective-corrected) image, and use the crop tool, by default it is set to āAuto based on keystoning/horizonā, and the crop boundary is automatically constrained to the image area. If I change that to āManualā I can position the crop wherever I choose, either smaller (inside) or larger (outside) the image boundary. I often do this before export to PS, and fill in any missing area by cloning, content-aware fill, by warping, or a further perspective crop. I find this so useful that I do it on probably 25% of my images, even if itās only a small sliver.
It is difficult to understand what additional functionality you need. This is so much more flexible than for example Adobe Camera Raw.
I believe youāve misunderstood the feature request. The current feature request is to add an option to constrain manual cropping so that the corners and edges donāt extend beyond the image boundaries. When you auto-crop based on keystoning, you depend on the program to define the size and aspect ratio of the crop area. If you want to manually adjust this (I usually do), but still want to keep the crop within the image boundaries (I usually do), itās a chore, because you then have to zoom in at the corners to see if youāve accidentally included the black region outside the image. Imagine being able to resize and reshape the crop at will, looking for the desired ratio and image area, and PhotoLab simply stops you from moving the edge or corner of a crop window when a corner hits a black boundary. Thatās a great labor-saver and seems conceptually simple to implement. Itās also more precise than an all-manual approach.
Yes. Basically I want an option that when checked it becomes impossible to choose a crop box that includes anything outside the picture frame (black)
For TIFF-Files, Nik Perspective Efex has a solution, that should suit the different demands.
I donāt have Nik. 
Disappointed this very simple improvement didnāt make it to PL5.
Some things are this program are so great. And some little tiny things make it so difficult to use.
I hope it can be added in a minor update to PL5.
Unfortunately, this is still not available in PhotoLab 6ā¦
ā¦and apparently also not in PL7. 
Six years of waiting for a really simple, missing basic core function that should have been implemented right from the start (instead of requiring a feature request).
The feature list mentions āAccess the maximum available image area when using the Crop toolā introduced with PL6. What the heck does that mean?
Unfortunately, whatever it means is not what we would like it to mean.
How I wish that DxO would attend to the existing feature set before getting carried away by adding new functions. This constrain crop to the image area request is probably getting buried under the excitement of the possibilities of adding AI etc. As are old requests for much needed improvements to curve tool, grids, keyboard shortcuts and so on. Absolutely no response on the shortcomings of the new local adjustments either.
I wonder if any of these usability issues have been raised with DxO via official bug reporting rather than just being shared here.
really annoying. I skipped the update to PL6 and hesitate updating to PL7
Feature requests here are all looked at by DxOās developers. Bug reports also reach the developers but go through tech support first. Both also get brought up during beta testing. But DxO has a track record of promising and not delivering, and the more common response seems to be silence or to say that a requested feature is being considered.
Indeed but I canāt see it happening. I have no knowledge of how DxO is financed but I will be surprised if itās not carrying a sizeable amount of debt. Servicing that debt, especially after the recent rises in interest rates, needs growth in the customer base. Attending to the existing feature set doesnāt attract new customers the way adding new functions and announcing them with great fanfare does.
So disappointing. Iāve come not to expect any useful improvements to be frank. PL7 really provides ZERO useful improvements for me.
This one is SO SIMPLE. A check box next to the aspect ratio called ārestrict frame to image areaā which keeps the box insideā¦
Why is it still not there after so many years?
There is really no excuse.
The problem is they also have to keep the customers they have, and get them to pay for upgradesā¦
I am skipping PL7. Maybe PL8 will provide some useful upgrades for me. Or maybe I will be using a different tool by October 2024. Weāll see.
They definitely know how frustrated we are about the unfinished condition of so many features. They read the forums here and have feedback from many surveys, from support.dxo.com, and from their testing teams. Yet the experience we have is abandonment. For now, I have no reason to leave DxO behind and switch to a competitorās platform. But there are also many reasons why I donāt want to upgrade. New features do not equate to improvements. In fact, some aspects of the user experience have regressed.
Such statements make me think my speculation that adding new features trumps improving existing ones is valid, for now anyway but for how much longer? If a long standing user like @Egregius is saying:
the tipping point may not be that far away.
I agree. Deepprime is what brought me to DXO. But I can export DNGs and edit in any other tool and get the noise reduction benefits. At the time, there were a few other things DXO had that made my editing fasterā¦. But those capabilities all exist in the other tools now, and they are pulling ahead. The main tool that keeps me now is volume deformation correctionā¦. If Lightroom or capture one develop such capability, the switch becomes quite easy for meā¦
Anyway for now I keep using DXO6 and viewpoint 3ā¦