Unconstrained ratio in Crop mode

DxO PhotoLab Feature requests
1

The crop tool always defaults to the same “proportional” setting.
When I crop, I rarely care to maintain the proportions of the initial image, and it is always a bit frustrating to start cropping, realize it follows a “locked ratio”, switch the setting in the menu and work on the cropping again.

It would be much better if it was possible to either change the default somewhere or let PL remember the previous thing one did as a default (This is not a major request, but it would feel a lot less like PL gets in the way of a straightforward operation).

2

Easy solution - crate a preset with “Unconstrained” and use it as your default in preferences. Takes about 30sec to do that and you are sorted.

2 Likes
3

…this works but with some issues: some of the tools reset the ratio to proportional. I even edited the factory presets within the app, nevertheless, the ratio changes occasionally…

4

The proportional crop at 3:2 or whatever used to drive me mad as well, Xavier.

Works for me too. My default preset has auto Horizon (sometimes gets it wrong, but most of the time gets it right) and auto crop with unconstrained.

What you get out of this default preset (which for completeness also includes preferred colour profile, white balance as shot and my preferred lens sharpness and fine contrast settings) in terms of cropping is a levelled image with all the black borders but nothing else cut away and a crop tool which lets you do whatever you want.

Very fast and efficient.

5

Alec - you stole my set-up:))) Exactly the setup what I have

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6

Even easier: Hold down the Ctrl-key (probably Cmd-key on a Mac ?) while moving any of the crop handles - and mode will switch automatically to “Unconstrained”.

John M

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7

These Australians always come up with crazy ideas:)

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8

The solution proposed by John would be perfect, but I just tried with Ctrl, Option, and Command keys on my Mac and neither worded.

9

@Xavier,
you should try Shift key. It works on my Mac Mojave and DPL v3.

3 Likes
10

Indeed, it works! Many thanks, I had not thought about trying it.

Then, I would prefer to rephrase my feature suggestion in the first post to just making this shortcut a bit more visible, as it is super useful.

Thanks @ all!

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11

A new cheatsheet of keyboard shortcuts for both Mac and Windows users (the shortcuts are different for both, hence DxO doesn’t disclose them, not a service to either Mac or Windows users) would be a great help. Thank heavens for the other users who have sussed out this advanced functionality and share the wealth.

Here’s what I could find for the Mac edition of PhotoLab 2. They seem to all be working in PhotoLab 3 as well. I’ve added the French word for which the shortcut seems to have originally been created. Most keyboard shortcuts are excessively anglocentric. It’s a pleasure to find an application where the keyboard shortcuts were carefully and thoughtfully honed for another language.

There are very useful keyboard shortcuts which remain undocumented.

I’ll try to grab some more:

Undocumented Main Tools

  • R - crop (récadrer)
  • W - white balance picker (that’s a new one)
  • Y - red eye (yeux: eyes)
  • D - show the image without corrections (deactiver)
  • X - unknown
  • N - repair image (nettoyer - clean)
  • M - hand tool (main - hand) very useful to disable white balance as second press does not disable tools, always one has to be turned on

Documented in Menus

Display Tools

  • C - split preview (very useful)
  • I - gives information on tool in use in top right corner of image
  • G - grid

Palette Navigation

  • F - quick navigation to FilmPack
  • H - quick navigation to Histogram
  • L - quick navigation to Essential tools
  • K - quick navigation to Light group
  • V - quick navigation to Viewpoint
  • T - move/zoom (not sure how this works)

Library Tools

  • 1,2,3,4,5 to rate images

I don’t know which if any of these will work in Windows.

12

Some of them are documented here:

https://help-photolab3.dxo.com/en/keyboard-shortcuts

There are more that I find useful which you don’t mention (not sure what the scope of your list is), e. g. 7/8/9 for Pick, Reject, Untag or Cmd+0/Cmd+1 for zoom to fit/100%.

And on the Mac there is often the possibility to create/change a keyboard shortcut in the system preferences.

2 Likes
13

That’s one of the pages I looked at Christian. That’s why I divided the tools into Undocumented and Documented. Thanks for the additional shortcuts.

The scope of this list are primary single press tools which are undocumented. Originally I was trying to track down keyboard shortcuts for the top toolbar crop, repair and hand tools. While doing so, I went through the full keyboard on Mac. Notice there is a keyboard shortcut on my list which seems to exist but I don’t know what it does: X.

14

X flags the image with a red traffic light. You can see it if you set DPL to show flags on thumbnails and it works in Library and customize mode. X is also used in Lightroom for a similar purpose (reject).

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15

Thanks Platypus. I should have figured that one out. At last my collection of PhotoLab Mac single keypress commands is complete.

16

…just remember that 7/8/9 will probably easier to use than X - unless you know the 7 and 8 equivalents :wink:

Anyway, I think that it would be nice of DxO to document all the shortcuts that do something instead of leaving things out that customers might stumble against in use…

2 Likes
17

Super useful! I did not know most of these. Indeed, I like the idea of an official up-to-date cheatset.