DxO Render Server?

DxO PhotoLab Feature requests
1

Hey there,

I guess this is a niche question, but I’m still curious (because the solution/implementation is technically not that difficult)
As the title says, is it possible to have a differenct PC run DxO renderings/exports only?

I am trying to figure out whether to use a NUC as my main PC, though I have at least 2 3700X and all necessary hardware lying around. I want to stay portable with the option to do heavy duties “offshore”.
In the future, I can ideally imagine a dedicated program that doesn’t even require the fully fledged software (leave out editing etc.)

I guess the only option is to install DxO on the other computer too, import project and files and hit export, correct me if I’m wrong.

Lastly, is there a way to queue all exports and hit “run all” with a single click over multiple projects? I’d put the NUC in the shed and let it run overnight :smile: Or do I have to move all files into a single project and run it then?

Thank you very much,
Attenb

2

Interesting idea to separate processing from customizing. One thing to consider is this: DPL relies on a database and/or sidecar files for processing. This means that you’ll have to move both the images and the sidecar files to the second computer and its DPL, which will then add entries in its database.

Projects have some limits too: They contain links to the original image. Each image can have one sidecar file, not more. This means that if you have an image in several projects, settings can be overwritten - unless you move virtual copies (VCs) instead of the original files.

Here’s a proof of concept that I did in order to see what you can try to pursue your idea:

  1. Created 2 VCs each of two images
  2. Moved VCs Nr. 1 to “P1” and made them b/w
  3. Moved VC2 Nr. 2 to “P2” and inverted them
  4. Moved all VCs from P1 and P2 to a new project “OUT”
  5. Processed OUT

Results were as expected:

  • All projects displayed images as expected
  • The original folder displayed the original files plus the 2 VCs each
  • The output folder contained the processed files

Hope this helps and welcome to the forum!

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3

My experiments with a 12-core Mac suggest there’s no real need to have more than eight cores available for export. Even 50 MP files export quite spritely (up to two minutes per image for DxO Prime Noise, under 30 seconds per image without it). Real time processing is another issue: any images over 33 MP are very slow to update (on Mac at least).

If you’d like to work on a portable station and process on a remote station, there’s VNC and related software which let you look at the action on one computer while processing on another. Getting the colour profiles to match up might be interesting. If you want to work like this I’d suggest using sRGB on both monitors to have a hope to have colours match.

Master-servant computers is not something I’d personally like to see DxO spend its resources. Faster preview updates via GPU hardware processing would be my first performance request. Hopefully that will conquer the slow preview updates for images larger than 33 MP.

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4

Thank you for your warm welcome, DxO seems to have a very friendly and inclusive community.
I’m loving it so far.

I guess I’ll try the same and test whether you can do your step 4 onto a USB stick! I will post my findings below…

Optionally:
I use DxO as a RAW processor only, I only shoot for personal use. After a week of use, I’ve only three questions left:
How do I automatically applied all automatic brightness/tone settings?
Only difficulties I find is with my most used option from Lr, the Ctrl + U shortcut.
Selecting a picture in the gallery and clicking Ctrl + U automatically applied all automatic brightness/tone settings, I then just applied Noise Reduction to my liking and added that to all applicable photos. (Lr workflow for less important pictures: Import, Ctrl A, Ctrl U, Export)
Resize a picture during export while not keeping proportions
I want to export the pictures to true 3:2 from my A7Rii. Maybe that’s stupid but it looks good :smiley:
Lens profile correction recommended for astro-stacking?
Other programs have had issues with banding for image-stacking, does that apply to DxO too? What are your personal tools for image stacking to reduce noise? or HDR in that regard? What are your experiences with external softwares, any recommendation? Google search yielded easyHDR and SNS-HDR.

5

I don’t quite understand your question and I’ll try to give you an answer considering your statement that you use DPL as a raw developer:

You can change proportions with the “Perspective” tool. This means that you’ll have to change proportions before export and getting an exact aspect ratio might be super difficult. You might need DxO ViewPoint for changing proportions. Other than that, use the crop tool before export. You might need to drag sides or corners to get exact proportions. Check out these (and other) posts for details:

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