Ex-Lightroom user loving DxO PL BUT the healing tool is driving me crazy

Yep, I hear you. That’s why I didn’t even think about asking when it’s planned for. But, at least, it is nice to know they are presumably working on it. I’m going to put it out of my mind until it’s actually available.

Mark

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I’ve done it several times - exporting from PhotoLab to TIFF and then using the clone stamp in GIMP or something else to fill in the black areas. It works just fine as a means of painting in missing scenery. The appearance of replication is minimized by varying the brush and overlapping chunks cloned from different places. Takes a while when the scenery is complex - but it’s very effective.

The OP (Paul) indicated he doesn’t want to use LR.

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I have lightroom 6 (the last version you could buy outright). I recently bought a new camera that wasn’t supported in that old version. I then faceed a choice of either going down the Lightroom subscription service with Lightroom Classic or looking elsewhere. I tried DxO and loved it so much I decided to switch from Adobe/Lightroom over to DxO. So my old cameras will still work in Lightrooom 6 but my new one won’t. I prefer DxO now anyway and I’m in the process of redoing all my precious family photos from scratch in DxO. I don’t want to have to use Lightroom anymore.

I don’t want to have to use more than 1 program to edit and then finish off my editing. Why? Let’s say I edit a Raw in DxO but then have to finish off the healing in Lightroom or Gimp etc sometimes, but then in the future I need a new crop of a photo for printing for that photo, I’d then have to go back to DxO change the crop ratio, export, then do all the healing all over again, and trying to remember what extra healing needed doing in that photo (if at all). It’s too much of a inconvenience, and not really practical.

DxO is almost perfect to me. It just needs that essential cloning tool, or a healing tool that isn’t totally automatic.

That’s a good point. Personally speaking though I would prefer to do everything I need in one program like how I did in Lightroom. For me DxO would be perfect for my needs if it had the extra functionality of a clone tool or semi automatic healing tool. I only really edit in a way to make a photo look normal in the best way possible. I don’t really go in for all the effects, bells & whistles etc like many do. I suppose everybody has their own style and needs and lots of others would need to use more than 1 program.

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I have exactle the same proble too often. Healing is good for spots, stains or removing flying birds (yes, I do that sometimes), but in may case more often than not, the tool is not valid. It’s quite hard to remove cables, for example. The tool tends to taka ANOTHER cable paralel to the one you want to remove and paste it in

Let’s hope that cloning tool comes soon.

BR

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I did some testing for other things then isolated objects and the healingtool can be surpricingly accurate when you use the “paint a mask” methode.
But yes a movable source area for choosing our own doner spot is a well wanted feature.

Best is three type one.

  • present healing tool.
  • a clone tool which can be clone a spotting circle or a painted mask.
  • and a mirror flip of a painted mask ( can be just a checkbox for invert/ flip)
    Repairing a situation which has windows and other repetable structures but in mirror wize look is almost imposible with a normal clone tool.
    So ideal will be a paintable mask with erazor tool to fine tune the mask lineout and a movable source patch to line up the flipped patch image.
    And of course the feathering and opacity sliders to blend in manual if needed.
    :heart_eyes:

They are working on improvements as we speak so fingers crossed how much we get.

Hi. What is the “paint a mask method” for healing?

I think he means clicking and holding the mouse button down while dragging the mouse pointer and painting an object to be removed in one smooth move rather than multiple clicks and releases over the object to be removed. If he means something else than I’m in the dark.

Mark

2 Likes

exactly, “painting” a object you want to lose “blue”.
At this moment it is when you release the mouse button it immediately start to “heal” but i hope that when we can use the clone function a extra option is possible. Namely fine tune the blued area before it starts with a flip function to mirror the source.

My ideal thought about this cloning feature would be the power of the healing tool to recreate pixels by looking around the blued section and fill in as good as possible with a prewatch function to control the section of the patch and the source patch and the possibility to line up and clean up by moving the source area and using a erazor tool for fine tune the shape of the blue mask area of both area’s.
a flip for mirror checkbox as cherry on the icing. (the opacity and feathering is more for exposure contrast control of the patched area).

I really think this can be used as endless repair toolkit and you can deal with almost anything you have on a image which you need to magic away.

I have the same problem. Healing sometimes fine, but sometimes (especially when close to a contrasting piece of image) selects source badly.

A clone tool sounds like the solution … BUT … one thing I like about DxO compared to the competition is its simplicity. I really don’t like the idea of a proliferation of tools which do almost the same thing. I’d much rather have a single tool which has a tick box or similar to choose between “DxO selects source” or “user selects source”. The words “clone” and “heal” do not make this distinction clear to normal folk; only to people already indoctrinated in this bizarre vocab by use of other PP software.

(While I’m on the subject of confusing vocab, why ever do post processing software vendors use the word “shadows” to mean “fairly dark areas”? It’s very confusing. I started out with high hopes that a slider might be able to identify the shadows and remove them, but all it does is select all areas of a certain level of darkness (whether this is caused by obstructions to sun rays or by colour of surface) and treat them alike. )

Well it doesn’t look as if the hint of an updated healing tool came to anything. Why am I not surprised as we keep having this on improvements that never get into new builds! Valuable new cameras and lenses and good old miner bug fixes .

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Well i can only assume that the coding is complex and taking time. I really hope that’s the case and that we do get an updated healing tool that’s semi automatic instead of fully automatic because i love using DxO right up to the point where i have to use the healing tool and during use i question whether I’ve made the right choice with the editor. In my opinion PL despite all its brilliance is badly let down by its healing tool.

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It was never promised, or even suggested, that it would be in this release. We were only told that we may be getting it sooner than we expected. Like you I was hoping it would be in this release, but more likely it will be in version 3 when it comes out towards the end of the year.
Mark.

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Deviating a bit but can I ask if images edited in previous versions of DxO PL open up & in the same edited way in new versions (in this case v2 vs v3 when it comes out)?

Yes, they will open in new versions with the same edits from previous versions.

Mark

2 Likes

Hi @PSB/Paul and @mwsilvers/Mark,

There have been some examples, in the past, where subsequent versions have not opened in the same state as they were in the previous version - - One such example is discussed here.

However, this example is not typical - and I know (from other examples) that the DxO developers do aim to ensure that new versions are backwards compatible.

Regards, John M

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Regrettably there have have been a number of improvements, turn of this year for example, that vanished in technical problems. Apart from bug fixes and a number of new cameras/lenses there has been very little since PL was first released nearly 2 years ago. For me the only improvement has been the problem of some dop’s not being removed. After years of support claiming it was a windows problem they did finally find the PL (and older) bug/s that were causing it and they are being all removed now.
Yes these imprisonments may reappear in V3 but if so many of us will not be stupid next time round and hang on until the future discounts! Until then clean removal of dop’s is the only thing I have benefited from since PL was first produced!

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I’ve just updated to the latest version. Now DxO PL won’t even start. I’ll start a new post :frowning:

Regards,
Svetlana G.