Where Did My Edits Go?

DxO PhotoLab
1

I"m still on Photolab 5.

I was editing a bunch of images in a folder, and in the finder accidentally moved them to another folder. A few seconds later I realized my mistake, and command-Z’ed in the finder, putting all the files back.
When I went back to DxoPhotolab 5, all my edits were gone, despite the .DOP files being there.
I can’t see a way to reload the edits from the DOP files. Am I missing the menu command from this?
How can I get my edits back?

Thanks!

2

There is no menu but if you delete the database while PL is closed, it will be reconstructed from the DOP files.

3

As long both the RAW-file and its associated sidecar-file are named identically (up to the .dop extension) then your edits are not lost … but you may need to give PL a “nudge” to recover them. Try this;

  • Stop PL … it must not be running.

  • Rename the RAW-file and its associated sidecar-file - ensuring new names are identical (up to the .dop extension) – This will ensure PL sees this combo as a “new” image

  • Open PL and point it at the folder containing your {RAW+Sidecar} combo.

All good ??

John M

4

Or perhaps simpler : PL being closed, rename the folder.

1 Like
5

Thanks! That seems to have done the trick.
Is the database really that fragile?
Is this improved in version 6?

1 Like
6

You didn’t say - did you edit any images in PL6 and then try to view them in PL5?

7

@allanimal Please add the version (Win10 or Mac) (to your profile name or your post) and exact version number that you used in the post, just in case a reader doesn’t know that finder is a Mac “feature/facility” and we always need the exact version e.g. PL5.5.0 etc.

As per @Joanna’s post DOPs should never be considered as backwards compatible even between releases within a version, i.e. in tests with PL5.1.4 I used files from PL5.5.0 and the edits did not get carried across (back) and between PL6 and PL5 definitely not!

However, we might also run into Win10 versus Mac issues here so please remember that I am on Win 10.

  1. I believe the best strategy was not to reverse the name change but to discover the “old” but newly named images in DxPL. With the following settings in ‘Preferences’, whenever a new directory is discovered it will be “imported” into the DxPLdb along with edits and metadata from the DOP[AS(OFF)] or edits from the DOP and metadata from any metadata embedded or in an xmp sidecar!

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  1. Then rename the directory in DxPL providing that this feature is available in the Mac version

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which should return things back the way that they were (hopefully).

  1. I am glad that @John-M’s strategy worked and an alternative would have been to rename the entire directory before discovering it in DxPL, I believe. Once you were convinced that all had been recovered in DxPL then you could then have renamed this directory back to the “old” name.
    with the ‘Rename’ option, if available on the Mac.

  2. But given the situation you appeared to be in after re-discovery of no edits (more about that later) I presume that you have the ‘File’/‘Sidecar’/‘Import’ and /‘Export’ commands on the Mac so try the ‘Import’ to see if you can get DxPL to refresh the database with the data from the DOP, in the event that in this case DxPL is either holding onto old database entries(!?) or not automatically reading the DOPs(!?)

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@allanimal nothing in this respect appears to have changed in PL6 and I don’t believe it is a database issue!?

I actually cannot understand how you got into the predicament that you described because

  1. If the DOPs (please note that for DxPLdb is the prime source of data and the DOP is an ancillary source, DxPL should update the database before a DOP is created and subsequently written) were already in the database and DxPL was unaware of the deletion then returning to that directory after the finder “delete and restore” should have meant that the DxPLdb entries didn’t need refreshing!?

  2. Because of 1 above I do not know what you did to find yourself without the Edits?

  3. DxPL (on Win10) signals to the OS that it is interested in any changes that occur to the directory currently “in focus”. If and when the OS detects that the directory or its contents have been changed then DxPL will be “informed” and it is principally interested in detecting any 'Last modified data/time" greater (i.e. occurring after) some internally held date/time, presumably from the database entry but I am not sure and DxO have never bothered to tell me @DxO_Support-Team!

  4. For those folders that are not currently in focus then DxPL will check the timestamp when the user navigates to them in DxPL and refresh the data from any that have had an external change made or that no longer tallies with database entry timestamp. It is possible that DOPs that have earlier timestamps than the database entry might be ignored, I will try to test that!.

So for your problem to occur then DxPL would have ignored the DOPs AND also ignored the data in its own database which doesn’t make a whole lot of sense!?

To try to recreate the problem we need the exact timeline e.g.

  1. Was DxPL running or down when you made the finder changes?
  2. Was the directory in question selected in DxPL at the time the finder changes were made?
  3. What are your DOP load and store preferences?
  4. After you restored the “deleted” entries what did you do in DxPL and how did you “discover” the “lack” of edits and was this a reversion to just the original image or to an earlier set of edits?
  5. I have asked for way too much already…