Natural sorting of presets

Hi,

The Preset folders and presets are by default named with numbers “1 - Portrait and Landscape”, “2 - Black & White”, etc.

The problem occures, that when I want to add a new folder, “10 - Custom presets”, Photolab will sort the preset based on the first number, so 10 will not appear after 9, but after 1 and before 2!

I tried to rename the preset folders to “01 - …”, but that does not solve the issue, as Photolab will create a new copy of the old preset names after each restart!

So I am suggesting, to either use a natural sorting algorithm, that will place a 10 behind a 9, or to change the naming scheme, that will name the folders and presets 01, 02, etc.

…you could name your folders 01-… etc. and always get them at the top in the preset editor tool.

Other than that: vote for your proposal.

@maderafunk, there are two locations, where you have to search for these presets:

1.) the program folder C:\Program Files\DxO\DxO PhotoLab 5\Presets
2.) your user folder C:\Users<username>\AppData\Local\DxO\DxO PhotoLab 5\Presets

Rename the preset subfolders with 1, 2, 3 and so on to 01, 02, 03 in the program folder. Then delete the same subfolders in the user folder.

The next time you will start PhotoLab it will copy the renamed folders to the user folder and they will keep their name.

After each update/upgrade PhotoLab will create the same old subfolders with 1, 2, 3, … in the program folder. So BEFORE you start PhotoLab after the update progress go to that folder and delete these double subfolders. Your renamed folders (01, 02, 03 …) will still be there. Now you can start PhotoLab and everything will be ok.

But I agree with you that it would be easier if these preset folders would have the correct name (in Windows style) from the beginning.

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NB if you do that, Windows is likely to object because it doesn’t like users messing with stuff in C:\Program Files. Even so you should be able to do the renaming.

I do that for years now. Windows asks me, if I’m an administrator. Yes, I am. :blush:

“Natural sorting” requires some rules to be defined which may surprise some people while delighting others. For this reason, and for simplicity, I think most software just does a strict alpha sort.

That said, I think it is reasonable to sort number prefixes naturally if it’s not too much effort. macOS does this for files in Finder. However, as a computer user for over 40 years it still surprises me from time to time, especially as so much software I use doesn’t do it and I don’t expect it to.

On the other hand… I would love for Export presets and Watermark presets to be sorted in any sensible order.

My (admittedly, clunky) work-around is to add an alpha-suffix to any new Preset folder I create … such as “9a - Custom presets” … instead of “10 - Custom presets”

John M