Keep advanced history permanently (PL 4)

DxO PhotoLab Feature requests
81

[quote=“Joanna, post:74, topic:15566, full:true”]

I still use film on occasion and still have most of my Nikon film equipment. Best part is - I use m4/3 and, with adapters, I can use my old 1070’s vintage lenses.

Far from it. Us oldies need to be there for each other when we do fall off our chairs, through laughing or otherwise.

You see, for me, the basic premise of photography remains the same, regardless of the tools we use.

First, you record a scene on a photo-sensitive medium…

If it’s a negative, it needs to be developed, but the result is far from a finished image.

If it’s a RAW file, it needs to be developed, but the result is still often far from a finished image.[/quote]

Once you have a developed negative, you then need to print it and this is where the hard work starts…

  1. print a test strip to determine the best starting exposure
  2. work out a printing plan to determine which parts of the image will need dodging or burning and which multigrade filter to use
  3. make an initial print, which you may end up throwing and revising your printing plan.
  4. once you get a satisfactory print, archive the printing plan for that negative so that you won’t have to repeat 1, 2 and 3 every time you want another print.

Once you have developed your RAW file (opened it in PL)…

  1. make as many adjustments as you need to achieve the result you anticipated
  2. print the resulting file, knowing that the DOP file contains your “printing plan”, which can be used next time.
  3. the next time you want to print the same file, you can either go with the original version or you can make a virtual copy and do anything from starting from scratch to just tweaking something here or there.

Using your scenario: you are making a series of prints for a display. This is going to take several days of darkroom time. You have your printing plan as a guide, however, you are required to use different papers. By looking at the plan, you can see what steps you chose for each type of paper. Everything works out fine. Ok, so far, but this is where the problem starts. On Windows, we cannot “archive the printing plan” in the same way that a Mac user can. We lose the “why we took that step”.

Either way, darkroom or PL, I have never needed a sequential list of operations, because it is the final print that counts and not the order in which I made the adjustments.

As long as I have the printing plan or DOP file, I can always make a copy and then fiddle with it because, usually, the order is mainly irrelevant.

We windows users are asking for the ability to keep the printing plan - just as the Mac user has.

82

Kodak sold a scale that replaced test strips and allowed you to perform the exposure test on a single sheet of paper. I forget what it was called but it had graduated shaded areas that you used to determine exposure time.

I still have mine somewhere.

83

Good morning @BHAYT ,

You can tag them by yourself in the posts which need their attention, please.

Thank you
Regards,
Svetlana G.

84

@sgospodarenko. And can we have advanced history saved between sessions as at the moment it is not even a history, let alone advanced history. It would also be one less difference between the Mac and Windows.

85

Good morning!

It’s a question mostly to @Musashi .

Regards,
Svetlana G.

86

Thank you Svetlana. In that case.@Musashi. can we have advanced history saved between sessions as at the moment it is not even a history, let alone advanced history. It would also be one less difference between the Mac and Windows.

87

Hello @Prem

That’s definitely something we want to implement. It won’t be for PL6 unfortunately but we are working on this for a next version. We’ll keep you informed.

best regards

88

With an option to not save it I hope

89

Thank you @Musashi. I will look forward to it when it is done. @John7. Hopefully that will be done in preferences.

90

… or better (?) to be deleted at wish.

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91

It does not surprise anyone that we still have to wait for a v7.x to have this function ???
A function that should have been available as on Mac as soon as the history had been implemented.

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92

@Franky. I have to agree with you 100%. It would be very nice to have it in version 6. There is plenty of time for a good programmer to be able to do it.

2 Likes
93

DxO are supposed to be working on reducing differences between Windows and Mac but with each new version of PL they introduce more changes than they fix!

Surely a strategy going forward would be to introduce exactly the same new features to both Windows and Mac then fix existing differences. This would eventually remove any differences.

The history feature is just such a case in PL5.

1 Like
94

We were told it was a priority to reduce the difference between them, rather like a Boris’s Johnson pledge and as such you shouldn’t be surprised to see them growing

95

@John7 I was going to write a response along the lines of

“you should be ashamed of yourself bringing politics into the forum and as for impugning that model of integrity, statesmanship, sartorial elegance, wit, erudite one liners, I could go one but I am close to being …”

but decided not to!

96

Good, that you didn’t !

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97

@Wolfgang I know, it would have been unforgivable!

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98

let i state i skimmed more then read all of it.
my take about advanged history and most desired use of it is:

  1. it has to be usable as “fail safe”. when i am lost in a photo and i didn’t know i go in a quest of “how the F… do i gona solve this one?” and wander off too much from the reasonable good development state it is bin in.
    (read i made it worse) then i can scroll back and click on the place i didn’t know was better until i screwed up. (Which we can IF we don’t close the application in between.)
  2. A form of safepoints: moments in my development i see as markerpoint, important place to use to restart. (repair/cloning activity’s for instant which can be time consuming.)
    ad this moment we can use: Virtual copy’s as safepoints: create a safepoint by creating a VC. and you can make more then one and more then one states of the master image.
    BUT you can’t write a comment along with it as (clone/reapair done)
    Or we use partial preset: i made a “temporaly preset folder” which i use as a kind of “savepoint storage”
    1 make preset of present settings
    2 open editor: turn off things which doesn’t matter or needed. save
    3 rename made preset as " basic repair" or any name you know what it means.
    if you have more then one similair kinds of images you can speed up the proces by stamping the partial preset on all desired rawfiles just by selecting the preset. (no copy/paste from a image you have to find everytime.)
    4 when you done delete the preset or if it’s usable for other images later replace it to a folder of your personal made presets.
    (this workaround works.)

So what i seak in a permanent AH, (stored when closing application), is :
quicksave button in the AH window which provoke a text window to write a comment as reminder what it is.(no accidental deletion of important developmentstate in the history by changing a slider when you scrolled back and forgot about the place you was in the history time line.)
Virtual Copy renaming possibility: like “_highlight and color tryout”
(my main use of VC is walking different path’s and fool around in settings to see if i find what i am looking for without knowning in front what i am looking for.)
B&W, high key or HDR-look or softer toning or cropped in, other ratio. i use the VC’s to mock about and run free without the risk of ruining a good starting place.

So most of the programming is already in DxOPL, it only needs to be “buttonnised”.

I would like a “stickynote” option in the image row. Yes i know i can use IPTC fields for that. But i like to keep those notes OUT of my xmp’s

Just a floating field when you hover over the image:(made a silly stickynote example)

example of stickynote
example of stickynote1826×1347 218 KB

in my mind “advanged history” has to be in service to my memory, helping me to find important things i need to remember to do better or different. (make things easier and less repeating things due loss of moments of development.
i don’t sit every day behind my pc working on photo’s so every time i start up some thing i could forget after few days where i left. stickynote’s function would help to remember again.

Most time’s i am doing things other then sitting upstairs behind this screens.
and i often loose track of my own idea’s of change of xmp data or adding GPS or make some B&W’s or rerun old rawfiles again trough a new dxopl version to benefit from new features. which incline to seak my point i left off and think off what i was doing at that moment. small management toolset to help in this would be great.

my two cents of the feature request

99

You mean like a git tag! (The software programmers will get it.)

Actually I do like this idea. FYI I don’t use virtual copies for such things as I have too many images typically and it would get too messy to have a bunch of virtual copies.

By the way I sometimes “back up” my edits by zipping up all the DOP files in my working directory. Then if I ever screw something up big time I can restore the backup. (I have a batch file that I drag a folder to and it packs just the sidecars.)

100

i create trail and error VC and when i find a good editing for a problem or idea i just copy (selective) paste from VC to the master and delete the original guinea pig (VC) other wise me too got to many samples of the same rawfile.