PL3 Upgrade Comments

DxO PhotoLab macOS topics
1

Comments on DxO PL3

  1. Duplicates. In Pre-PL3, duplicates were numbered 1-x for however many duplicates you created. In PL3, there is now the concept of a Master image (M) and subsequent duplicates (1-x). This changed the management of the dupes somewhat – formerly, you could delete any of the duplicates, and all the others would fall into line. Now, however, you have to be careful not to delete the master, since doing so will delete all of the images. Although there is a warning to this effect, it is less flexible than before. Consider this scenario: edit one image, create a dupe, edit the second. Decide the second version is better; delete the first. Before, this would keep only one image, the one you wanted. Now, this deletes all of them.

  2. Image Info. Hovering over an image in the browser brings up a pop-up with lots of useful info. Too much info, actually. The pop-ups are too large. Can this be turned off? Thanks for adding it though.

  3. Metadata. Thanks for the enhancements to the metadata panel. I do not use PL for metadata but rather keep my own external DAM info. Where do the keywords go? I did not see them in the sidecar and they are certainly not in the original raw. Are they in the DB? Do they get written to the .jpg on export?

  4. Cropping. Like the new crop presets (e.g. 8.5x11), and their proper ordering on the dropdown. Would be nice to have a default crop since I find myself using 16x9 quite a bit.

  5. Heal Tool. Looks nice so far, need to spend more time with. Appreciate the copy from/to ability.

  6. Color Wheel. It takes some familiarity, but it seems to be rather powerful. Thanks for this addition.

  7. Performance seems to be about the same. I upgraded from Sierra to High Sierra through this process so there are too many other variables to judge the performance.

  8. Library. While moving images from one folder to another in Library view, the app does not reliably show the image in either the source or the target directory. Scenario: Select several images to move, grab and move to another folder. PL3 may show the progress bar, but then the images are still in the source directory as shown in the Lbrary. Quitting and restarting shows them where they should be.

QUESTION –

Is it possible to create masks to same degree of maturity as exists in LR or Gimp? I would like to select an irregular region (especially a sky) and do something with it, such as fade it, blow it out, deepen a color, and so on. The region may have certain artifacts entering into it, such as a tree, someone’s hair, and so on, and I don’t want those artifacts impacted by the editing.

OPINION –

At first blush, it appears to be worth the upgrade; I appreciate the changes.

2

With regard to sky masking, just use several control points in the sky and you get a mask that is far superior to LR when you have branches etc projecting into the sky. The control point generates an auto mask based on the tonality/colour of the pixels under the control point centre. You can quickly clean up the auto selection by adding some negative control points (Alt Click) in the landscape area. Far superior to LR, used it from V1 -6 until they added luma mask. Control point does similar job.
Ian

3

Hi RB,

Apparently, some users were confused by the Pre-PL3 implementation of Virtual Copies - - they were expecting there to be a specific original/Master version … Hence this change. As you say, we now need to be a bit careful (to read the warning, and take heed).

You can achieve this by creating your own version of the auto-applied preset (to replace “DxO Standard”), and set that to default to your preference.

John M

4

Yes I didn’t really catch on to that, but I did create a 16x9 preset that does only that one thing, force a 16-by-9 crop perspective, and when applied it preserves all other edits. Works like a charm.

5

I will need to play around with this but thanks for the suggestion and guidance.