This reminds me of the very nice Light EQ in ACDSee raw converter – there are three modes there (Basic, Standard, and Advanced), which should make everybody happy when it comes to usability.
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Just one thing: The greenish tint of hair and cable are probably caused by longitudinal CA which is not that easy to correct…
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Good point, Mark. There’s no reason for people’s old corrections to be made obsolete. In this case, I was suggesting that the data itself would be stored in a more complex way behind the easy veneer. Images from before the upgrade to Selective Tone sliders would be converted by the old algorithm when updated.
Most of your points are not improvements, m9k, but differences. Quite frankly for most of them I far prefer PhotoLab’s way of handling these adjustments. The last thing the world needs is another Lightroom clone (there’s already Lightroom). Example:
PhotoLab very sensible separates straighten and crop. I loathe the way it’s done in Lightroom. The best preset for Horizon and Crop (and it’s in my standard Zero Corrections + Leica M8/M10 colour preset) is auto crop on, unconstrained. Nothing on Horizon. If I do decide to straighten the image, then as soon as I have, there’s an autocrop with all the black space moved away but no constraint on aspect ratio so adjusting the crop is instant.
Much faster and more accurate than Lightroom and no freezing up of the computer as it tries to move around all those grid lines and the whole image while cropping it.
Copy correction settings: if you browse around here, there’s some long threads devoted to the subject. It’s really easy to get a subset in PhotoLab. Just turn off the panels you won’t want copied over and turn them back on again. It’s just as easy to do that as be confronted with that discouraging Lightroom 50 checkmark interstitial screen.
Again, I’d suggest quite separately from the PhotoLab issue that you learn to work with software and not against it.
You kind of like PhotoLab after just a couple of weeks and after coming in prejudiced against it. I can’t stand Lightroom and I worked with it as a main digital darkroom for almost two years and was expert in it. When you learn the software, then there will be time to criticise it and make feature requests.
Right now you could start by asking the community if there’s a better way as you haven’t found it, didn’t want to work through Pascal’s free and excellent tutorials or fully read the manual (also downloadable as a PDF, hélas the PDF is automatically generated and not very well formatted, current one attached here).
DxO-PhotoLab-manual-2019-04.pdf (22.9 MB)
That’s what I believe LIghtroom’s process versions do. They allows compatibility in newer versions of Lightroom for images originally edited in older versions.
Mark
Lightroom is doing something different. They are calling it process versions and forcing the photographer to convert between them and accept updates. What I’m talking about would be invisible and would be accurate. Switching between Adobe process versions can radically alter how an image looks. If PhotoLab adds more complex Selective Tone Sliders but adds the right math in the background, when you open your image in a more recent version of PhotoLab, the tone sliders would be automatically converted and the sliders themselves would move the new position before opening. And the image would look exactly the same.
I.e. the slider buttons may not be in the same position but would represent the same result.
Those numbers could change to -20 Highlights, 9 Midtones, 24 Shadows, -6 Blacks in a new system which restricts the range of each slider. Or those numbers would stay the same as the range restriction would be set in the background to the same as the original process.
In this scenario the photographer would be free to change those range restrictions and choose a default set of range restrictions. I’d suggest some intelligent presets: PhotoLab 2, Lightroom 6, CaptureOne which mirror the Selective Tone Sliders, along with an option for a custom set. I don’t think photographers should be encouraged to have more than one custom set as really a photographer should get to know his or her Selective Tone sliders as knowing them is more important than what they are.
Since I know the PhotoLab 2 tone sliders I had no problem at all correcting an image almost completely with selective tone sliders, using fairly extreme values and mixing the crossover parts of the palette carefully (highlights and midtones, midtones and shadows, shadows and black).
@uncoy and @mwsilvers
Exactly Alec and Mark
I find it very frustrating by this endless comparison.
Dxo is not a Adobe product.
Lr is not a single approach for photo traetment.
Of course yes, DxO converts values from old algorithm when updated!
Like Alec said, try to “learn to work with software and not against it.”
Pascal
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Old demand for the first.
In progress for the other.
DxO has communicated on that.
I wrote a tutorial with tricks and tips intended for the experienced user of another development software.
Have you taken a look ?
http://dxo.tuto.free.fr/Efficacite/Efficiency.html#C08_Le_traitement_par_lots
And last
I’ve used other softwares who always set apart these functionalities.
And this is the good method. I don’t undrstand this mix.
I never use the cursor for Horizontal control.
@uncoy
In my personal preset, Cropping is always disabled to appreciate the effect of Horizon or Auto Perspective 
Pascal
2 Likes
Alec;
I agree with you. There is no point crying around here how things are done in DxO and what I would like to have or what I would like to change.
So lets say DxO is just one of the products on the market. Here is the option to try it for a month and if it meets my needs I’ll buy it and if not I’ll move to something else or stay with what I have at the moment.
In general I like DxO and I could live with it but certain things work better in other software and this is just my personal opinion. Is this strong enough reason to uncheck DxO from my software list?
Lets wait and see.
It doesn’t matter m9k. It was a pleasure to help you.
Pascal
I don’t mean to sound harsh. First step with software is to understand it. Ask questions, don’t criticize. Next step is to criticise but with precision and detailed notes and reasoning.
You are jumping ahead of yourself. Fortunately there are excellent longtime guides like Pascal to help us learn PhotoLab well and keep track of what features are being improved. The whole local adjustments system is relatively recent and many more cameras are being added so there’s definitely progress being made.
Keep asking questions! I’ve learned a few new techniques myself on this thread.
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I agree. Although there are times I would prefer it if some of PhotoLab’s tools worked a bit differently then they do, I still find them, as a whole, much more satisfying to use then any of their competitors. However, I do understand the frustration of some people who come to PhotoLab looking for a Lightroom alternative, for whatever reasons, and find they can no longer work the same way they had previously to get similar results,
Mark
3 Likes
Hello,
Yep, I can close this one and you can put your votes on the initial one.
Regards,
Svetlana G.