Questions about PhotoLab from a trial user

Hey all, I’m currently trying out PhotoLab 3 via the trial edition. I have some questions that I didn’t see answered in the manual. And I haven’t found definitive answers on my own yet.

When browsing pictures, can I get an image count to display next to each folder?

Can I tell it to scan and display subfolders? As in, if I select August, and I have a sub folder per day, then Photo Lab would scan and display all the day folders in August when I select August.

Is there a way to remap shortcuts? For example, setting a reject flag is currently Ctrl-9. I’d like to change that to just ‘x’.

Can Photo Lab made to scan ahead in a folder more aggressively? As in, If I give it a bit, it seems to load up all the pics in the thumbnail strip, but as soon as I hit the end of that set, it slows down again as it loads the next set. I’d rather it load up everything in the folder.

(Side note, I’ve been testing via my NAS, so some speed issues are expected. But that can be worked around if the application supports it. LR5 seems to handle it well enough. That said, my next step is testing on my SATA ssd, which I expect is better supported… :wink: )

Does Photo Lab retain the information it scanned between uses? Or does it have to rescan everything every time I start it? Is that what the cache is for? I set to my SSD and increased it the max in preferences.

How do I edit metadata? All I see are inputs for Author, Copyright, and Keywords. Where do I edit things like Title, Caption, etc from EXIF and IPTC?

Is there a way to export to jpeg and set a maximum file size? Not file dimensions, or quality, but how many bytes the end result takes up.

Are there any equivalent tools to Lightroom’s smart collections?

Anyway, as you can tell, I’m looking for a lot of the metadata functionality of Lightroom. I have been using version 5.7 for years and find the metadata stuff very useful. But it doesn’t properly support cameras and lenses that have come out after it was EOL’d (of course). That includes my camera and some of my lenses. But I have no interest in buying into a monthly subscription, so finding an alternative would be really nice.

Thanks in advance!

Welcome David.

The answers are No for the 4 first one and yes for the latest questions.
I wrote a tutorial especially for your kind of profile :wink:


Pascal

Think of PhotoLab as an excellent tool for image correction and customizing.

Asset management has improved but does not, imo, yet match such functionalities as you can find in other software. The technical behavior of DPL is controlled by its developers - like in most other pieces of software.

Yes - welcome, David.

Tho I don’t do this myself, I am aware that a large number of people continue using LR for its image management features (which, I understand, one can continue doing without needing to pay an ongoing subscription fee) and use PhotoLab for it’s excellent RAW processing and image-correction features.
Win-Win.

Regards, John M

@Pieloe Thanks for the link. I’ve learned some things already. :slight_smile:

@platypus So far I have not found any tool that handles metadata as well as Lightroom. It’s more than a bit a bit frustrating. I mean, Skylum went and broke their promise to add metadata editing to Luminar. That’s a good part of why I’m looking at PhotoLab…

I really liked PL’s way of adding keywords, until @Pieloe’s link informed me they don’t save the data to the actual file. At least it does add the tags to exported jpg’s.

What tools do you think actually do a good job with metadata?

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I guess Lr is the best metadata catalog software forever.
You can use this functionality free (witout valid licence).
Pascal

Check this page and its references to other asset managers.

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Photo Supreme, iMatch, Daminion; see Recommended alternatives to lightroom for cataloging & integration with DXO.

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