Feature request : smart editing with automatic picture measurement process

Hello,

I suggested this years ago, but since DPL has advanced now on DAM and cataloguing I thought It would be nice to suggest again.

Something that is dreadfull for every photographer is editing. This time consuming process, is often what keeps hundreds of good pictures to sleep eternally on hard-drives. This is the case with, for example a long trip, and I usually take several thousands of pictures on a trip : 20 days in French Polynesia => 6000 pics, 25 days in southeast asia 10000 pictures… and so on.

This phenomenon will explode even more with hybrid camera such as the R5 or Z7, or Panasonic S1/5…which are capable of high speed shooting sequences…at 20 pictures per second, for…several seconds…you do the math.

With this number I usually keep between 1/10 and 1/3 of the pictures. So I have to make an intense selection (several rounds of selection).

There is no perfect tool for editing, especially when you shoot 100% raw. I am allergic to Lightroom ergonomics, and previously I was doing my editing with faststone image viewer, which is a great free tool able to open quickly even my largest raw files coming from my medium format. I do my “hard selection” (keep or ditch) with it, and then archive my files with a year/day folder architecture, renaming all my files with 2020_12_14_XXXXXX, the Xs being a unique number of the picture. I was coming from EOS utility back in the days and I found it clever. The problem came when I start using Pentax and other brands…no automatic renaming anymore. But these tools are not rendering the colors very faithfully , and not handling profiles…it’s a quick and dirty selection. The only option so far is to open DPL or photoshop…not suitable for large editing.

I need something in-between.

Long story short : I will be ready to pay for a new tool, that could be an addition to the DPL suite. This tool would have to be able to :

  • open seamlessly and VERY quickly any raw files for immediate review of a large set of picture
  • be able to use DxO data science to measure the picture quality, especially true in a large burst sequence where a lot of image are sometime very close…which one is the one with the better dynamic range, accutance, room for advanced editing…future proof in short. Give any picture a technical grade. The photographer can then, for artistic purposes, decide “ok this picture is the sharpest…but the best picture is this other one”, but for other application, automatically detect which picture have the best DR/ sharpness/accutance…is helpful.
  • be able to automatically rename and archive a large set of picture after the “tough” selection, to any naming and archiving pattern (and why not enter picture database mirroring for example, when you have a NAS, or several…)
  • be able to support several round of editing/image selection (not only one star grading, and then one green/red signaling… )
  • Why not a neural Deep Learning training that goes along the user ?
  • And of course the option “export the selection to…DPL/Nik…”

The icing on the cake would be to be able to do my editing from my tablet (or windows laptop) without having to load the picture on it. Connect to the Station where I store my pics, or, even better, connect with my NAS where I would have uploaded the picture for selection.

What do you all think? What tools do you use for the first step of your process : reviewing your raw files?

1 Like

I think you should put this in its appropriate category. “Feature request”, “what feature do you need”.

My recommendation would be to get a proper DAM softwae. I use Photo Supreme and I am very happy with it but there is other good DAM software out there. I do the importing, culling, renaming within the DAM.

Many people here on this forum use for culling Fast Raw Viewer

The company behind Excire Foto and Excire search is working on an AI based image culling tool, but without a timeframe of release.
But they are working on AI based keywording and search solutions full time.
You can check with a trial or watching some of their videos what they are able to.
There is an “Aesthetic demo” on their homepage. It is trying to score photos about “how good they are”.

Although it would be nice to have something like this in Photolab, I don’t think DxO should spend time on features like this.

For culling your files I think as others have suggested that you look at FastRawViewer

It is inexpensive and is one of the few (only) file viewers that can show you the raw histogram and show true under/over exposure. I am sure that you will appreciate the value of the raw histogram. Viewing of files is many times faster than DXO and that alone should rule out DXO.

I use Faststone as my “general” file viewer and agree it is great. If you appreciate it why not consider giving a donation to the author?