Good morning,
I’m on Windows 10 64bit, DPL 3.3 and yesterday I worked on some old photos. The last step I’ve done was selecting about 40 photos and assigned a self defined preset. All was ok, I’ve closed DPL and shut down my PC. This morning opening DPL I’ve got this screen with “this folder does not contain any image”. Just a look with explorer shows that all images are still there.
Choosing another Folder in DPL shows all images.
Update:Have found other 2 folders DPL shows no images
There was no update or installation of anything between yesterday and today. I don’t work with *.dop files
I only work on my files when i need a special look for some little projects. i don’t have the need to preserve settings. If i need to work on the same photo again then i start from the beginning.
But i would like to see all my photos accessing a folder with DPL .
Thanks. I’ve often seen the DOP files and assumed they were something necessary for the internal workings of Photolab. I’ve now opened one in Notepad and see it contains a whole series of (to me) incomprehensible parameters and keywords. I really hope I won’t ever need to understand that lot!
As far as I can tell there are no DOP files in the folder 2020_09_14
Interested to know how you restore the database. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a database associated with PhotoLab. Should I have backed it up first, or is there some kind of cleansing tool?
I have never understand why we have a database and/or dop files.
Im am not a developer nor a prof. photographer…but I know little bit about data consistency, and why to have some settings in the database and some or the same in dop files
I use DXO to develop my Raw Files, export it into seperate folder, use it for a work or project and leave the output files where the are, and this is not in my work picture folder.
PhotoLab works by recording all changes to an image in an accompanying DOP sidecar file. Delete the DOP file and all your changes are lost. What you see in the DOP file is a list of those changes. And, no, you are not meant to understand it, or even look into it
That is, as long as you have ticked the two boxes in the preferences to activate the management of DOP files.
By using DOP files, you can then move files and their sidecars to any folder you like, as long as they stay together.
Unless you want to use the (limited) DAM or projects, you don’t really need the database. Personally, I work with DOP files rather than the database because, despite best efforts, it is not unknown, rarely, for the database to corrupt.
Even tho you don’t use sidecar/.dop files - you are still using the PL database; there is no option that allows you to use PL without its database
Which suggests that the database was damaged/corrupted in some way … and a possible cause was the “self defined preset” that you assigned. You might try it again, to see if it actually is the cause.
Are you sure about that, Rob - - This will be so only if you have turned OFF the default option to use sidecar/.dop files in the Preferences settings … Is that what you have done ?
That’s not quite correct, Joanna. Whether or not one is using sidecar/dop files, all corrections are still written to the PL database. In fact, the sidecar/.dop files can be (re)created from the database - via menu option; File => Sidecars => Export
Yes - this is a feature of PL that I value very highly.
And this is a major violation of The Good Software Design Rule™. You should only ever define one “source of truth” and having both a database and a sidecar is 100% too many sources of truth away from that
If you really want a database as well, then, to my mind, DPL needs at least three.
Projects
DAM
Other system stuff
This way, if one corrupts, you don’t lose everything else.
I suspect (without knowing for sure) that this situation came about in the evolution of PhotoLab (from its forebears). Sidecars probably came first, and then the database was introduced - but sidecars were kept.
Personally, since I do not use any of PL’s DAM features - and because I prefer the flexibility and simplicity of sidecar files (plus the safety of not keeping “all my eggs in the one basket/database”) - I do not need to depend on its database: Therefore, I have enclosed PL in a “wrapper” that first deletes the current database (and the cache), before it invokes the PhotoLab application.
You can consider a sidecar as a “source of truth” because it always takes priority: either it overrides the correction settings in the database, either PhotoLab creates virtual copies when it detects conflicts between its database and the sidecar.
In this case you suffer from low performance each time your open a folder: PhotoLab executes its full cycle to read images from the folder, parse their EXIF and XMP metadata, and add everything to the database. Next time when this folder is open in PhotoLab, it repeats this work only if it detects that there are new changes since its last visit and only for those images which were really changed.
Yes, I understand the implications - thanks, Alex … This works fine with my workflow, tho - as I work with no more than 10s of images at a time, in a dedicated Work-in-Progress folder - after which I move all components of the images (RAW + Sidecar + Exported RGB) to a separate storage location … and then repeat with the next batch.
For me, the way that PL works with sidecar files is a key feature - and, actually, one of the reasons I was originally attracted to it … as I’m wary of dependency on a “black box” database.
It was also one of the reasons I made the move, not only from PS but also from Apple’s Photos app. With Photos, I kinda felt “detached” from my original files, having to rely on “exporting” them if I needed them, thus doubling up on storage.
With PS, you end up having both the original RAW file, plus a TIFF (or other format) file for each image that you have processed.
Something that constantly surprises me is how many people process their images in DPL and then store an exported copy on disk as well as the original. I can regenerate a processed TIFF file in a matter of minutes and only then need to keep the original file plus its, relatively, minuscule DOP file.
If you need several versions of a given file, sidecar files are amazing. You just keep the original image file and the changes for all versions in one small DOP file, choose which version you want, generate the TIFF, use it, then scrap it. What’s more, I can take all my images along with their DOP files and put them on anyone’s computer, without having to worry about exporting, etc.
As for the perceived performance hit on opening folders, all I can say is that some people take far too many photos, most of which they will never use. I come from the old school of film, where a wedding would be a a few rolls of 120 film with 12 shots per roll - you’d be hard pressed to shoot more than a hundred pictures. Nowadays, it’s a case of “if it moves (or not), shoot it” and worry about culling later. Most modern digital-shooters would never have been able to afford the film if they acted like that
I just did a little experiment. Using Windows facilities I copied all 32 raw files (ORFs) to another folder, then deleted them. Then I coped them back. Still nothing showing in Photolab. So I deleted them all again and deleted the folder. The I recreated the folder and copied them back. Now Photolab shows them. Curious or what?
I’m really not sure I should be spending my time investigating this problem though. I’m trying to be a user, not a developer / debugger.
Have you elected to use DOP files in the preferences? If not, this sounds like database corruption where it’s lost track of the files. I stick with just DOP files and can move them about at will without any problems like that. I can even remove them from disk, using Finder, and DPL will notice they are gone and when they come back and adjust the filmstrip accordingly.
If I remember rightly, every file has an identifier and removing then reinstalling them might mean they get a different identifier on the way back. But I’m not sure about that.
I didn’t touch the preferences, but it does use DOP files. It may be that in that particular folder I hadn’t done any DXO editing.
(I don’t know what Finder is)
I’ve just tried with a more complex folder. Using Windows file manager, copy all contents elsewhere, delete all files and the folder, recreate the folder, copy contents back. Sadly this time it doesn’t fix it; I still get “0 image” and the dreaded red circle with a white X. The more complex folder includes many DOPs.
Do you have a folder with images and their sidecars that isn’t loaded and contains as little images as possible? If yes, could you please zip all sidecar files from this folder and share them with me?
Also I would like to have your PhotoLab logs. You can find them in your system \Documents folder.
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