Everything I know about cropping in DxO Photolab 7. Did you know them all?

I know this isn't a flashy topic, but I think it might be useful. This is everything I know about the crop tool.
I think lots of people could find some value in this one - right from beginners to people who have been with Photolab for a while.
If you know anything that I don't - please do add it to the comments. I am always there to learn new things myself.
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00:00 Intro
01:50 Basic Crop tool use
09:57 More advanced tips

[@TomasLiutvinas]

Great video, thanks. Came here to check the rotation and at 7:50 The rotation lag seems insane. I've noticed on my machine, and was looking just to see if there is something wrong with my computer or the software, but here is also taking almost seconds to render a frame change if you want to line something up/play around with the angle its unusable.

[@dxflow3271]

Yeah. That isn't the smoothest is it? I generally use the horizon tool slider the most. I find it the easiest to fine tune.

[@klarion]

Love the image handling and demosaiking on DxO, but boy is it the opposite of quick to edit... Especially crop.

[@dxflow3271]

You know, funny enough, I was buzzing through some grad photos I did last week and had to crop about 120 images. I selected them all, and then did a basic crop (which applied to all images) - then de-selected all, and started with the first image. I could just scroll through the images and do little tweaks to each one as I went... keeping the crop too active the whole time. I have to say, it couldn't have been quicker unless I had AI doing it for me and then it probably would have taken more time because I would have to go through them all and first check and then correct any that I wasn't happy with. So I actually think with a bit of a strategic approach it is respectably fast.

[@SergNikiforovGordeev]

Thank you for the useful advice and for answering my personal question.

[@dxflow3271]

Happy to help!

[@jpmccormac]

Thanks so much for the tip on invoking the unconstrained crop with the control key. I've asked DXO to add the option of unconstrained crop as a *default preference setting* but got nowhere. 👍👍

[@dxflow3271]

Now it's as though it is the default, right. :) in a way it is. Cheers and happy editing.

[@rpigeon8]

Great video Don, thanks.

[@dxflow3271]

Glad you liked it. :)

[@johnaldred5185]

You queried why you have to click in the photo. If you click on the crop icon on the bar above the photo then click/drag within the photo you pull out the crop guides as you want them. If you just click on the photo you are selecting the whole photo. Thanks for the control key tip.

[@dxflow3271]

Of course... that makes sense to me... though now I wonder if it would be nice to always have it capable of dragging out a crop. Appreciate the insight. Cheers.

[@jpmccormac]

👍Thanks so much for the tip on invoking the unconstrained crop with the control key. I've asked DXO to add the option of unconstrained crop as a *default preference setting* but got nowhere.

[@dxflow3271]

Life changing right :)

[@klarion]

You shouldn't need to click "crop" at all in a non destructive photo editor... And crop needs a shortcut to engage and disengage crop mode at any point in the editing process... So it goes for every top bar editing mode.

[@dxflow3271]

It is curious that there is no hot key for that, huh?

[@tonyb2760]

I am skipping this years upgrade due to DXO packaging the luminosity filter in with a filmpack upgrade. That is absurd and greedy. I may never upgrade again. I am sure you and most don't care.

[@dxflow3271]

Sorry to hear that. Especially if you enjoy the software otherwise. But I get it is hard to move past that kind of feeling.

[@kaptn_kapton]

I just got into dxo and found out very fast, that without the film pack its unusable for me. At least they cost together 229 at the moment with the stoppers tutorials, which is an ok price for the what the software is. The official price of 229 + 139 is insane compared to c1 and lr

[@riotrob]

This is still so slow and clunky. With Lightroom, hit “c” for crop, and “x” to flip the crop orientation. 😕

[@dxflow3271]

No doubt there are some improvements that could be made. X to swap orientation does sound quick. But I recently did a personal deep dive because I have been doing some higher volume situations where I am delivering 200-300 images per event... So I explored other tools including looking for AI auto crop options and just cropping in other tools in general... In the end I am back to doing it in photolab. With my current approach, I was far faster in photolab (and really wasn't happy with the ai result) . But milage always varies with software doesn't it? I often say, use what you love... And love what you use. :)

[@riotrob]

@@dxflow3271 I did an event this Saturday with 400 delivered. DxO's auto-straightening worked about 80% of the time. I sent all the photos back into Lightroom (as TIFFs) for final cropping (plus exposure and white balance tweaks).