PL 4 stuck after start while importing database and parameter

Ok, I solved the problem, but not really. Temporarily removed the database of PL 3.3 and the already existing one of PL 4. Now PL 4 starts without any problem.
So the problem seems to be the database created by PL 4 that it converted from PL 3.3.

The same happend with win7.x when v3 came out.
Not running the install.
This v4 has got a major under the hood reprogramming to let DeepPrime do it’s thing.
So win10 needs to be up to date too.

It’s something about support and garanties i think.
It’s build, scripted, wrote for a certain OS and uses in Deepprime modes alot of “new”
Of this OS.

Sometimes a application runs but dodgy when it’s recromented for a newer OS and you use it in a older one.

About the stop of OS update, yes it’s in my eye’s a oblication of the manufacturer to keep your hardware running safe and up to date. It’s a commercial forced way to buy new hardware. Vs a commercial nightmare for software builders to retrobuild backwards compatible application versions or have multi OS versions tangled together
like in the 32 64b win version earlier . It’s even in the folder visible:
Program files and program files (x86)
Revering to this?

Jykes!

Put the database from PL 4 back to the corresponding folder, “DxO Photloab v4” in ~/Library/.
PL 4 starts to create a file named, “DOPDatabaseV4.dopdata_output”. Before it was more than 1GB. Now it stucks at a size of 212MB. So for me this file seems to be the trouble maker.

P.S.
Deleted the first database built by PL 4. Put the database of PL 3.3 back and started PL 4. Works now. But PL 4 also does not create anymore a converted database from PL 3.3.

Now you can place the v3 version of the database back (edit: In the dxoplv3 folder) without any problem.
If you don’t used the database for keyword entry and such it’s better to use :delete and recreate database in v4. It gets all edit data from the dopfiles back. So you get a new fresh database.

In preference you can uncheck “update dopfile writing” and use only database and reading dop file.
So you can browse and test v4 wile keeping the dopfiles in v3 level.
on a later moment you can manual force to create dopfile from database and activate the automatic updating dopfiles.

This is a very helpful advice for me because I have never dealt with this topic before. Will try it now like that.

Alec,

Support for High Sierra was discussed at length before PL4 was released. DXO’s position is that they are only willing to support a limited number of OS versions. As new ones are added, presumably old ones will drop off. I’m just reporting their position, not defending it, but it is unlikely DXO will backtrack and support PL4 on High Sierra

Mark

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There’s usually no good excuse for cutting off OS versions except that the developers are lazy to run the older X Tools to build on the older OS. DxO really isn’t in a position to be cutting off its users. I’ve bought the upgrade to 4 now, but without support for High Sierra, I may refund that upgrade. It would make me sad to do so as I support the mission at DxO intensely but it really pains me that DxO would arbitrarily cut off their customers.

This kind of arbitrary behaviour motivates me to look more closely at open source applications (not just for photo software). This upgraditis has made IT a net productivity loss over the last dozen years after being a huge part of productivity improvements in the previous twenty years.

@OXiDant Your response makes little sense. It sound more like the twisted apologetics a religious scholar contorts him or herself into to justify the contradictions of their beliefs. What the OS developers are doing is security theatre, not real security (if you followed the OS X security issues, you’d realise that the only person locked out of his or her computer now due to all the extra security theatre is the user, not the malware developer).

Well my opinion is lost in translation i think.
I agree with your complain that this kind of force to buy new stuff isn’t fair.
If it was me i would keep my win10 version for ever but each update they do will bring me one step closer to the end of life of win10.
The fact that in this case DxO did a cut off in which OS will be supported is made by them even doh the macBetatesters argued about that decision. So it must be a large change and costly change to include Siera.

That’s more what i said.
When OS’s are changed defelopers has to go with that change and when you write a totaly new part of software you have include every OS which is out there for 10 years down?

Reason’s why OS is changed is mostly forced by hardware that’s released by the request for faster, slimmer, better pc’s mac,s and smartphone’s by us customers.

Not the bassing of criminals on your virtual doors is the reason for new versions OS.
Those can be writen in the present OS.

And yes like covid economical cost are backfired due taxes in the future by goverments it’s end up on our doorstep.

Only thing you can do against it is not buying and that’s not working for taxes by goverment unfortnunaly. :disappointed_relieved:

No developers don’t have to go with that change. They can continue to support OS which are in use, rather than that recommended by the corrupt manufacturers who are forcing endless “upgrades” on the public just to generate churn. And of course I don’t mean infinite support. Occasionally there are major revisions to the OS which improve the ability of software developers to add new tools. As Photolab is cross-platform, I don’t think there were changes which required orphaning High Sierra or even Sierra users. In particular, all MBP 2011 which is very popular with photographers can no longer run Photolab at all.

Generally five years of support for any application would be perfect. In that case, OS X 10.11, El Capitan would have been the best crossover point as it was introduced in September 2015 and was rather a stable and troublefree OS (Mountain Lion OS X 10.8 and Snow Leopard OS X 10.6 were the previous good ones; High Sierra is the last headache free OS X version, after that Apple starts to lock down the OS to make it less convenient for users and more convenient for them).

As Photolab 3 only went as far back as 10.13 High Sierra I wouldn’t expect DxO to go further back in a future release. The GPU processing DxO are doing would preclude going too far back.

I didn’t join the beta program as I read the terms. You promise to effectively say nothing about Photolab ever again. It meant giving up one’s independence. Clearly I should have, as my voice was needed there to make the case for High Sierra support.

Early impressions of Photolab 4 (on the one computer I have which can run it) are positive. DeepPrime is slightly different than Prime (not sure if it’s better or worse: you be the judge on this ISO 16000 photograph) but at least four times faster to render. These are both set at Luminance 12 (default is 40) and Chroma at 100 (default).


Standard Prime on ISO 16000 D850 image


DeepPrime on same ISO 16000 D850 image

Here’s the original RAW image in case anyone wants to experiment with a difficult ISO 16000 file under artificial light.

I’m missing two-screen layout at this point and an easy way to bring up my Essential Tools palette (I have to use the workspaces menu to bring them back). Essential Tools should really be the first of the six tool boxes at the top of the right hand set of palettes.

We don’t know if it is arbitrarily. But I don’t like forced obsolescence, and agree with the spirit of everything you say.

I think it is a matter of resources and where developers want to spend them, pure and simple.

The problem is testing. The more versions you have to support, the more testing you have to do, the more virtual machines you have to maintain, the more dependencies you have to manage, and the more exceptions there will be. And DxO is a small shop with limited resources so it absolutely makes sense to cut off older versions (where the cut-off point is a matter for discussion but for that you more information).

And then there is a matter of clarity… it seems like DxO has a clearly formulated policy that they support the latest 3 OS releases and we can all decide if that is acceptable.

Often there are still ways around this… changing a flag in a configuration file. Not sure if that works for PhotoLab 4 on Mac? But you would still run unsupported software once you run into problems, which for me is undesirable.

However, based on the current macOS market share I do see your point since High Sierra still sees significant use (over 1 in 10 Mac users):

.

I would like to see Long Term Support versions for more software, that might not change much over the years but do get patches for lens and camera support and better algorithms. I also find it a pity that we don’t have more creative software running on Linux. I tried some open-source software over the years but never fully enjoy it.

BTW, Windows looks like this (Windows 7 is also still quite substantial):

I guess you would still need to look at the market share for actual PhotoLab users before you can make a solid judgment about these matters.

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Hello,

DxO is a relatively small company with limited resources. Generally speaking, supporting more OS versions means more testing work and more complex code to write (because OS updates provide newer technologies that simplify our work, or fix bugs which doesn’t force us to write workarounds). So we have to make a choice between the amount of features you’ll be able to get, and the supported OS. We cannot just provide as many features AND support older macOS versions.

To give a more concrete example, DeepPRIME on macOS uses a technology called Core ML. This is what runs our DeepPRIME algorithms either on GPU or on CPU. Machine Learning is a rapidly evolving area, as such Core ML already existed in macOS 10.13 but was a lot more limited than it is in macOS 10.14. As of today, DeepPRIME cannot work on macOS 10.13 without writing workarounds for these limitations. And we come back to the choice between OS support and features.

I understand that this is frustrating and that major OS updates come with downsides like sometimes forcing you to update hardware or with software features that you don’t want. In an ideal world we would have unlimited resources and would write all the technologies ourselves which would make us independent from OS updates, but that’s not how it is. I just wanted to make clear that DxO doesn’t drop older OS versions just for stupid reasons.

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Since PL 4 is now working fine for me, I also can say it runs so far smooth on my iMac. See the specs above. It feels even more faster. But that’s maybe also because its using a fresh database :wink:

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I just ran into this same issue w/ PL4 Upgrade. I have a 6 core I7 w/ 32GB of ram on a 2018 MBP, and let it run for over an hour and PL4 just sat there stuck. Yes I have a lot of photos, etc but isn’t photolab for professionals? Gave up and had to blow away all my PL3 and PL4 settings and start from scratch. Guess I won’t be wasting money and upgrading ever again.

I too feel that cutting off operating system support for older versions is a big mistake, although understandable in some ways when the versions being dropped are those that still support 32bit.

However, now we should all be on 64bit OSs, I would be severely annoyed if Apple decreed we needed a new machine every three years to support this or that “advance” in the OS. That then starts to add around €800 per year of costs, on top of software upgrades, which for some may be unsupportable.

I guess for some it needs to be both. I know, from time to time, I would like things like the ability to flip an image or to merge images as in a panorama or multi-exposure shots, although the need for multi-exposure to get rid of noise should be less now we have DeepPRIME

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To be honest, @gregor this is not at all what DxO should be telling its users. 2020’s Apple are corporate rats engaged in share buyback to pump up their options, while doing the maximum amount of damage to the environment. Butterfly keyboards break with a single crumb: outside of Apple care you may as well throw away your computer. Only the top and bottom of an Apple laptop are now replaceable (gifted third parties can work around this somewhat with scavenged parts), making a battery or a keyboard replacement an €1100 fix.

Apple is doing untold damage to the environment and robbing their users with their repair and upgrade unfriendly policies. It’s all for the sake of executives’ share options. I really don’t think DxO should be adding and abetting such a destructive mission.


@Lucas Thanks for your detailed reply.

I just wanted to make clear that DxO doesn’t drop older OS versions just for stupid reasons…DeepPRIME on macOS uses a technology called Core ML. This is what runs our DeepPRIME algorithms either on GPU or on CPU. Machine Learning is a rapidly evolving area, as such Core ML already existed in macOS 10.13 but was a lot more limited than it is in macOS 10.14. As of today, DeepPRIME cannot work on macOS 10.13 without writing workarounds for these limitations.

I really appreciate you taking the time to explain the specific issue. In this case, if DeepPrime can’t run on High Sierra without a lot of trouble, it would be fine to have DeepPrime disabled/invisible on High Sierra. You’d say DeepPrime is the core feature of Photolab 4. Sort of. The core feature of Photolab 4 is Photolab 4 itself. By allowing Photolab 4 to run on High Sierra but with Prime instead of DeepPrime, you’d allow full cross-compatibility for users like me who have their two of their main computers stuck on High Sierra due to Apple policies but do have access to a machine with Mojave.

FYI, my MacPro 5,1 is EOL’d at 10.14, Mojave. I will not be replacing it for another three to five years. There are lots of us out there. I highly suggest DxO maintain Mojave support as long as possible.

This computer is 12 x 3.1 GHz (was 3.33 GHz but runs quieter at 3.1), Radeon VII with 3 x 4 TB SSD, 2 x 2 TB SSD, ultra fast ACHI 1 TB drive, 1 x 10 TB spinning drive. And that’s counting only internal drives and I still have three slots open. Apple’s only comparable computer in terms of flexibility and expandability would cost me about €15000 in a similar configuration.

In any case, a new build which would run on High Sierra but without DeepPrime would be much appreciated by many in the photographic community. I don’t even mind if that build is not officially supported.

I’m sorry but I have to disagree strongly on this point.

Some would call it progress, and you’re free to run Windows if you choose. It’s certainly a much cheaper proposition these days, though I would find it a chore personally.

The “advances in the OS” that you speak of are not the same as in the Windows world (in fact, are there any major advances in Windows lately?) Apple produce “the whole widget” which means they build their hardware to support the software, so yes, some new features will require new hardware in some instances.

I appreciate you going to the trouble to source a link for your point of view, Zkarj.

Let me present the counter-case in more detail. All the propaganda and marketing material in the world does not undo what Apple is doing: building unrepairable devices.

Apple’s intense legislative opposition to Right to Repair is one of the primary reasons the legislation has not passed yet, despite being introduced in over 20 U.S. states this year. Last year, Apple’s lobbyists in the California statehouse went so far as disassembling an iPhone for legislators, telling them the device could catch on fire if customers tried to fix them.

Until 2012, Apple computers were relatively easy to repair even if they often included proprietary parts. Since 2012, every effort has been made to make a laptop which breaks industrial garbage. There are lots of ways to do this: using proprietary connectors, soldering parts on, gluing parts together, refusing to sell any spare parts. Apple does all of them and actively fights against the right to repair. This is the result of ewaste. It is a major, extremely wealthy corporation actively pursuing evil.

It’s an extremely shallow retort to tell me that if I disagree with Apple’s current methods I should give up twenty five years of expertise in Apple products and at least a ten thousand euro investment in third party software. If I had to do it all over again, I certainly wouldn’t look at Windows. I’d start with Linux. But that’s not my position. It would take at least two or three years of intensive work to change horses. I have to run my business, care for my family and create my art now, with the tools I’ve mastered.

Despite Apple crippling laptops and computers after 2011, I’ve managed to use Apple computers and behave in an ecologically responsible way, upgrading those 2011 MBP to make them competitive with most MacBooks Apple sells now. For desktop, I’ve bought Mac Pro 4,1 and carefully upgraded those. All of these MBP and Mac Pros have had SSD, memory, screens, keyboards and processors either repaired upgraded. Even motherboards have been swapped. I’ve forced Apple to honour their class action obligations for out of warranty repair, keeping these computers out of the digital scap heap. I’ve equipped my colleagues (staff) with the same computers and made sure their Macs got the same attention.

Apple’s disregard for the environment has cost them a pretty penny with me. Until Apple started to build devices which couldn’t be repaired, I bought a new MBP every 1.5 years (finding a good home for the retired device of course) and many new Macs at work as well. But crime evidently pays as Apple is the wealthiest corporation in the world, partly through their intense program to obsolete (software) and cripple (hardware) older hardware.

I’m astonished you choose to applaud and defend this reprehensible behaviour. Do you not live on the same planet with the same oceans and the same air as the rest of humankind? Do you not care what kind of environment our children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren will inherit?

But Alec, as you know, of course, if they distribute a build for High Sierra they would have to officially support it. They can’t sell a product and not provide support. Furthermore they would have to update and test that build with future point upgrades and bug fixes to keep it current, not to mention what might be required for it to work with a PL5 upgrade. That means they would be coding, testing and supporting a second Mac version on an ongoing basis regardless of how similar the two versions are. It is a rabbit hole they are unlikely to go down. They will either support High Sierra or they won’t. I don’t think there is any viable middle ground. Perhaps I’m missing something in my logic.

Mark

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That is a counter case to one aspect of environmental sustainability.

It misses every other thing Apple are doing to preserve the environment. Which is why I still disagree with your statement.

I contend that their net effect on the environment is one of the lowest of any modern organisation and certainly of any that are anywhere near the size of Apple.

The example of an iPhone that “could catch fire” if customers “tried to fix them” is interesting considering Apple themselves have built a robot that disassembles 15 different iPhone models, at 200 per hour, in order to recycle their components.

You can hate on Apple all you like (and there are many good reasons to) but directing your anger into claiming Apple is anti-environment is off the mark. I think the actual problem you have is that you cannot repair them as you would wish. I have no argument with that, just the claim that I quoted.

You are buying the corporate propaganda. It’s a real problem with Apple users, there’s almost a religious attachment. Or perhaps a better analogy would be Communist Party members in the Soviet Union: they went around denying reality as it didn’t correspond with what they’d been told. The math is really simple: it’s difficult to repair Apple devices so they live much shorter lifespans than they should. That math works in favour of Apple Inc in the short term (more devices sold) but against the world in the medium and long term. I’d argue it works against Apple Inc in the medium term as it creates a poor user experience and alienates long term users (like myself). So far Apple Inc has succeeded in fending off that backlash, thanks to their PR efforts.

Sam Goldheart of ifixit who follows Apple behaviour on environmental issues as closely as anyone on the planet conceded at the end of July this year that over the last six months Apple’s behaviour is improving, albeit very slowly. Some positive movement is infinitely preferable to negative movement. The butterfly keyboard after six years of sending MBP and MacBooks to an early grave has almost been retired (I think it’s still included on one current model).

Please go and read the articles carefully to which I linked and try to think deeply on the issue. Knee-jerk responses and phrases like “Hate on” should have no place in this conversation. It’s a very shallow way to treat deep issues like sustainability and the environment.