Hello,
I have PL2, PL3, PL4, PL5 that I’m not using anymore. I would like to make a bit of room on my hard drive and get rid of those version.
I am on MacOS.
How do I uninstall those AND IN THE SAME TIME keeping the database? ( the main idea is to keep all the modifications applied to old images).
Is there a way to export the database? Even maybe to Ingest the database to the new version? (I am not super sure how DxO works, so excuse me if my questions are not relevant).
You just need the dops
Hello Alex,
the moment you install i.e version 5 the database from version 4 will get updated - so you have all your changes preserved anyway and you have the dop.files if you use those. So no worries
ON a Mac you can just drag and drop the app into the bin. On Windows I can not help but there might be an uninstaller.
You can get rid of most of the space taken - by just trashing the PhotoLab applications.
For a thorough cleanup, I mostly use EasyFind or Find Any File to search for “photolab” first and then for “com.dxo”. I then check the list of found items carefully and delete only the “right” things. A proper backup helps…just in case you trash some essential files! Again: be careful!
Example FAF search results
(macadmin is my user account name, yours is probably different)
FAF is easy to use, EasyFind is a bit more complicated, but allows more refined searches. If you’re comfortable with using the terminal and know the “find” command, you can do without additional apps. Spotlight does not necessarily show all items because it’s restricted for security/reliability reasons.
Thank you all of you!
As @Pathal wrote, the database can be backed up and restored using the respective menu commands. I’ve successfully restored e.g. a DPL4 database in DPL5 by pointing the dialog to the DPL4 database. Close the source app before doing this to prevent issues.
You can also zip the database backups for archiving and to save more space.
@Sigi
Not sure that I 100% understood what you said.
Do you mean that newest version transfert and updated the database from the oldest version ?
Then that would mean that the database would keep growing every year?
I when exporting each database from each version, I don’t see that.
DOP files contain a subset of what is stored in the database. Differences have been reduced with newer versions of DPL, but the database is the reference nevertheless.
Back up the databases and zip them and/or get a bigger drive. 
Addendum: My screenshot above does not show the database and cache files because I’ve deleted them for testing. DPL6’s database is around 70MB with my 26 k images. Its backup compresses nicely, which saves lots of space. Cache files will be rebuilt on demand, there is no need to archive those buggers.
I’ve lost track of the differences between what’s stored in the database vs sidecars … What are the remaining one’s Mr. P ?
John
Me too, but in general, there are/were differences regarding metadata and image orientation.
Usually, a new major version of DPL imports the previous database, but if we use older DPLs in parallel with a new version, the databases drift apart which leads to gaps that might not easily be fillable, if at all.
This is where it is wrong. The Dop file should contain only the image edits and nothing else. The XMP file should only contain the meta data edits. Only then when the image is opened should the database read the two files and update itself. This should in theory. Note:- in theory, should result no corruption to the database.
See comments above. This would result in both databases keeping up to date.
