My first converted images are muddy and soft

DxO PhotoLab
42

Thanks.

Yes. I was far too contrasty.

Like the green on the hills.

Focus. Not a clue but it was a grab shot and that lens should be pretty shart throughout all that range in view.

Tony

43

Having nearly lost a days work through not understanding the danger of that Apply Preset button I need to read about sidecars before I go near them.

T

44

Use Virtual Copy for experimenting… :slight_smile:
then you can apply any preset on the VC to see what it does without trashing your original…

45

Yes, that would do it !

By clicking “Apply Preset” you are doing exactly that - - and, if all your images are selected then it will be applied to all your images - which is what you experienced.

You could use this preset in either (or both) of these two ways;

  • You could make it your default preset to be applied to all NEW images (any that DxO has not yet “registered”) … You do this via Menu: Edit/Preferences/For RAW images … and replace the DxO Standard.
  • You could save the preset as just another Preset, to be used at will.This can probably be done via the PRESET EDITOR - but I simply save the file to C:\Users<UserName>\AppData\Local\DxO\DxO PhotoLab 3\Presets.

John M

46

Sidecars are your friends, Tony.

It was the “Apply to ALL” step that caused your predicament - not that you were using sidecars. They store all the corrections you have made to an image - in a file with the same name as the source image, but with different file-extensions - in the same folder in which the source image resides.

DxO also stores this info in its Database - but, for me, that’s a “black box” over which I have no control. I prefer to delete the Database on a regular basis (as I don’t use the DAM features of PL, which is the only aspect of data not stored in the sidecars) - and PL rebuilds the Database for me, from the sidecars, on an as-needed basis (that is, only for the images in the folder in which I am currently working).

John M

47

Thanks John,

I was lucky that my realtime backup system cocooned the DOPs I was over writing in error. I am not sure it would have been resilient enough to protect me doing it in error again.

I read about sidecars later yesterday. I see they are what I have learnt to call DOPs. I see what is happening. DAM I will not use DxO for. I use a system I started in 2003 - probably five incarnations of RAW converter ago!

Tony

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