DxO Photolab 7 - 2 tips, 1 caveat, and 1 question for the Photolab community

Hi again everyone. Hope you are well. Just sharing a few small bits I picked up from commenters and putting a question out there to the Photolab community.
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#dxo #photolab

[@bennojones4575]

Just finished my 13th month of 52Frames. While I'm not always as motivated as I might wish, my photography has grown in areas I don't normally go, and my processing skills have vastly improved (also thanks to PhotoLab).

[@dxflow3271]

That is awesome!

[@picklebird1261]

Good tips. I had rarely used the Smart Lighting to adjust a bright area in a photo that didn't have a face. Also most of my photos are of wildlife and PL never recognizes their faces.

[@dxflow3271]

Yeah... I don't use it heaps as a rule, but yes you can actually drop it anywhere and see the result. Most often a more natural result to my eye.

[@michaelwplant]

I like that tip on the using of Smart Lighting and Spot Weighted on sky to control the cloud highlights.

[@dxflow3271]

It is a good one isn't it. I will be trying it out more in the coming months for sure. ;)

[@alankefauver6187]

Yes I have noticed the diff in the highlights slider. Seems to overlap with the mid slider.

[@dxflow3271]

Yes, I thought so too. I feel like it is now a little easier to use... like the selective tone used to take a little more knack to keep natural looking and with contrast... but seems easier to me now.

[@alangauld6079]

I don't have PL7 but on PL5(Windows) and PL6(MacOS) I don't see any highlight protection such as you demonstrated. Everything just moves up the histogram scale linearly. The smart lighting trick is awesome, for some reason I thought the "no faces detected" warning meant I couldn't use centre weighted on landscapes! It really works well for lifting the shadows too. A whole new tool to play with... :-)

[@dxflow3271]

Thanks for sharing that. Very interesting.

[@christianback4256]

You express the suspicion that Exposure and Selective Tone are working differently now with a weaker move towards white or black. Does this mean that a previously processed RAW (e.g in Photolab 4) with an original DOP file would give a different output JPEG if you open it with PhotoLab 7 without changing the edit?

[@dxflow3271]

Great question. I hadn't thought of that. I am not one to revisit old edits... or if I revisit an old image I usually start from scratch as my taste has changed over time... but that could be an issue for some if in fact that was a change under the hood. Unless there is a mechanism to check if there is a DOP file from an earlier version and then do a different behaviour. Curious.

[@christianback4256]

@@dxflow3271 I checked on photos of 2015 processed with an earlier version of PhotoLab, with the DOP sidecar files untouched and original processed JPEGs. I do not see much of a difference in the histogram when I reprocess these files with PhotoLab 7 using the original DOP file.

[@dxflow3271]

@@christianback4256 Nice. Thanks for sharing that. It is good to know.

[@mihu86]

If you open a .dop file, you can see it is a nice (JSON-like) textual format. Version is recorded for all photos. This is similar e.g. in Darktable (which records all changes with versions in an XMP sidecar, and where even tool versions are recorded for each change). As a general software engineering practice, these software should look at these versions and make any changes to your photo accordingly to ensure backwards compatibility. I don't have previous versions of DxO, but I assume the new version converts old .dop files to the new format when opening them (which may result in different values for certain sliders). It is not straightforward for sure, but if they do this properly, that is definitely a plus.

[@dxflow3271]

@@mihu86 great input. Thanks for that. Very interesting

[@oktait]

did not happen to you to pull your old DxO version and test, instead of guessing ? that simple

[@dxflow3271]

yeah... it would be, but I never keep the old versions installed... and I kind of wondered if others have ever had the same feeling... or if anyone had ever seen it mentioned. Maybe some day if I suddenly find myself bored... I might go in and download one of the legacy installers and see.