When you process photos on a USB key or an external disk with Photolab, they remain in the database even after you have disconnected the external drive.
This is useful if you store some of your photos on external hard drives, but it’s annoying when you just process a few photos from a usb stick that you won’t use later.
Would it be possible to delete these images from the database, without erasing them from the key, external HD or SSD, after having processed them with Photolab.
One could conceive of an option of the type “disconnect” which would allow this, or a possibility of “processing without saving in the database”
Thank you.
Serge
save them with sidecar files *.dop (check preferences) and you are good to go 
At the moment, this is not possible. A few things might come in future releases, but today, you can delete the database or leave it be. Delete the database and keywords and history will be gone too. Settings are stored in the .dop sidecars, unless you’ve changed the respective setting in DPL.
Thanks for the answer, but it doesn’t work. We save the settings but that’s not what I’m trying to do.
The goal is to be able to view and process photos in Photolab without keeping track of it and that they appear with a question mark when you remove definitively the USB key.
It is impossible to delete the thumbnails with “?” …
I’ll take an example. I am part of a photo club and I often do Photolab demonstrations to other club members. If I process their photos directly from their USB key, these photos are definitely saved in my database (which I don’t want) and when I eject the USB key, I end up with the “?” thumbnails that I can’t remove afterwards! If I delete them from the database before I unplug the key, they are also deleted from the USB key (with the the other member don’t want)…
Actually, the only solution to the problem is to copy the image on my computer, process them, and export on the USB key, then erase from my computer…a bit long and complex process when there are a lot of files …
Thanks for the answer.
In the meantime, I only have the solution to copy the images to my computer and export them to the usb key after process…
It still presents a problem, it is that you have to be careful not to make the mistake of opening a directory containing photos in Photolab if you don’t want them to be saved there … I hope that it will soon be possible. Thank you.
The database does NOT store any image files, it stores informations about them only. On the other hand, the cache can grow, but we can delete the cache in DPL’s settings.
If you use DPL for things other than keywords and without history, you can delete the database at any moment - after quitting out of DPL.
In the meantime, you could copy the files into a folder that you’re sure is not yours. Put it on the Desktop and call it “DELETEAFTERUSE” or something like “UTCLIUHVVU” (I don’t suppose that one of your folders has that name ;-))
that’s what I do, but I don’t find it practical … 