PL5.3.0 Re-instating the previous Features of PL5 with AS(OFF)

[BHAYT (Bryan [WIN10, PL7, VP4, FP7, G9 & EM1 Mkii, RTX 3060])]

The release of PL5.3.0 changes the default actions of PL5 when AS(OFF) has been “selected” or rather AS(ON) has not been selected in the ‘Edit’/'Preferences screen,

So we have the following when “discovering” a “new” image file, i.e. an image not already in the database (for that image in the particular directory) with respect to the metadata

1. Before PL5.3.0 on discovery with AS(OFF) - ‘Read from image’ to take image metadata into PL5

2. With PL5.3.0 on discovery with AS(OFF) - “Read metadata from DOP” will now be executed.

This is not a subtle change and PL5 is effectively reverting to pre-PL5 behaviour because some users want to be able to just save DOPs to carry images to another system etc.

Personally I don’t like the idea of deprecating a features without apparently providing an ability to choose between the old and the new. Much of the hiatus over the original change was caused by a lack of timely documentation and users “losing” , ‘Rating’ (‘Rank’) and ‘Rotation’ (or orientation) data which they had expected to be preserved via the DOP!

"Restoring" the original PL5 behaviour with AS(OFF):-

1. Copy the PL5 DOP and the image to its new location, typically and entire directory.

2. “Discover” the image in PL5, when PL5 will insert the metadata stored in the DOP into the newly created database entry.

3. Select all images for which the metadata is to be aligned with the image metadata (instead of the PL5 DOP metadata), i.e. the original PL5 behaviour and perform a ‘Files’/‘Metadata’/‘Read from image’ command.

4. Please note that if the DOP is a pre-PL5 DOP then at Step 2, PL5.3.0 will perform the original PL5 process. i.e. the ‘Rating’ and ‘Rotation’ will be taken from the DOP and the rest of the metadata will be taken from the image

Possible issue with ‘Rotation’:-

There appears to be a potential issue with ‘Rotation’ if that has also been set in the image metadata by another piece of software and in the DOP by PL5.

When testing I had a double rotation performed.

It appears that PL5.3.0 is performing the ‘Rotation’ from the DOP and then discovering and applying the ‘Rotation’ from the image (I would have expected the image metadata, which includes ‘Rotation’ to have been ignored completely by the new PL5.3.0 process? @sgospodarenko

Recovering a Lost Database:-

One advantage to the new process is that it is now possible to recover a “lost” PL5 database.

1. Open the new database and “set” AS(OFF), i.e. unset AS(ON) if normally used.

2. Navigate to any and all directories that require recovery, a slightly tedious process but … @Musashi

3. When all directories required to be recovered have been “located” then set the AS(.) setting as required. Leaving it set to AS(OFF) will result in the DOP being used when available or the metadata being read from the image if there is no DOP present (to “block” the import of metadata from the image)

[Joanna (Joanna Carter)]

Out of curiosity sparked by your message, I cleared out all databases from PL4 and PL5, as well as removing all DOP and XMP files from my test directory.

Then, I used my app to apply a 90°CW rotation and a 3 star rating to a RAW image, which get written to the XMP sidecar.

Upon opening the test folder in PL4, the thumbnail showed as rotated for a few seconds and then changed to “normal” (horizontal). The star rating was read correctly.

If I close and reopen PL4, the rotation remains “wrong” when compared to the XMP file but, because I made no changes to the image, a DOP file was not created and the XMP file is not changed.

If I close PL4, delete the database and restart PL4, the same thing happens, where the thumbnail shows the correct rotation for a few seconds, then updates to horizontal.

If I write the DOP manually, it fails to record either the rotation or the star rating as were recorded in the XMP file…

			Rank = 0,
			Rotation = 0,

If I then close and reopen PL4, the thumbnail still shows as horizontal and the star rating still shows 3 (from the XMP file) even though the DOP contains a rank of 0.

In the database, the rank is recorded as null and the rotation is recorded as 0.

So, I get the feeling that, no matter whether we use pre-PL5.3 or PL5.3, expecting it to make sense of PL4 DOPs is doomed to fail.

---

Recap so far…

The XMP file contains…

 <rdf:Description rdf:about=''
  xmlns:tiff='http://ns.adobe.com/tiff/1.0/'>
  <tiff:Orientation>6</tiff:Orientation>
 </rdf:Description>

 <rdf:Description rdf:about=''
  xmlns:xmp='http://ns.adobe.com/xap/1.0/'>
  <xmp:Rating>3</xmp:Rating>
 </rdf:Description>

The DOP file contains…

			Rank = 0,
			Rotation = 0,

---

Opening the same file in PL5.3 now correctly shows the thumbnail as rotated but the rating as 0

If I manually read the metadata, then sanity is restored and both the orientation and star rating are read correctly from the XMP sidecar

It would seem that it is still possible to get one’s knickers in a right royal knot when reading PL4 DOP files in PL5

[BHAYT (Bryan [WIN10, PL7, VP4, FP7, G9 & EM1 Mkii, RTX 3060])]

@Joanna Need to make the most of the sun without “cooking”, some exterior paintwork to prepare for painting etc… Plus the ‘Sticky Previews’ software I use to amalgamate real time images from multiple applications is not working (after a Windows update last night!?).

1. Created a new directory of clean images, 4 JPG and 4 RAW

2. Set ‘Rating’ rising and falling and rotated every other image 90 CW (to the right).

3. Opened in PL4 and all showing as expected. PIE has an error and the ‘Rotation’ (‘Orientation’) is not showing in the summary column but the previews are rotated and the ‘Orientation’ is showing correctly on a per image basis! Not a good start today!

4. Changed the images I had not previously ‘Rotated’ to 90 ccw (Left) and set ‘Rating’ of those images to 5 star with PL4

5. Checked DOPs and only those images edited had been created so copied as Baseline and forced all DOPs to be exported and created a second Baseline copy!

6. Closed PL4 and opened PL5.3.0 and navigated to the directory!

7. Wait for it… The ‘Rating’ and ‘Rotation’ shown in PL5 is as expected!

8. Added keywords to the original rotated images in another package.

9. PL5 does not show the ‘S’ icon for the changed images even after ‘F5’, PL5.3.0 appears to have rendered this feature redundant @sgospodarenko - the DOPs are all still showing as PL4.3.6 but the data has already been discovered by PL5.3.0!

10. Flushed all PL5 DOPs to disk and repeated the keyword add tests by adding an additional keyword to each of the 4 images. Still nothing detected - @sgospodarenko boy this is one well and truly screwed up product. Zoner tracked all the changes in real-time.

11. Copied the images to a new directory for “discovery” by PL5.3.0, as you do.

12. All images showing as they were but no keywords being read by PL5 whatsoever. In my previous test at this point the rotated images had a double rotation but those tests did not follow the route that these tests did!

EDIT:- The above at 11 is my fault for not following my own procedure which is the reason for this topic (old habits die hard) which has really been the reason for my reaction to this “kludge”.

12. Execute the ‘Read from image’ command and the PL4 rotations are lost because they were never flushed back to the image but the keywords have now been read!

13. Add more keywords to see if the ‘S’ works, no reaction from PL5 but Zoner found them O.K., the PL5 detection mechanism/Conflict Resolution appears not to be working or that is another “feature” of the change!?

If DxO continue to improve the product much further metadata won’t work at all. PS I could have done something stupid but I don’t think so, I did in part - I forgot my own advice at step 11!