Originally posted by Kiwizinho I've had a play with PhotoLab 5. Exporting with DeepPrime noise reduction is noticeably quicker, although still slow on my Windows laptop, and it supports hierarchical keywords now along with IPTC metadata fields.
It still doesn't support geotagging via map view though, which means Lightroom still has a use for me.
The noise reduction is certainly a heck of a party trick, but more important to me is the sharpness I can extract with PhotoLab. I'm going back to 10 year old photos and reprocessing them to double the original size I published in most cases and they almost all look incredible. If the noise reduction went away I would be extremely sad, but so long as that sharpness stayed I'd still be a disciple. How pleased am I with this sharpness? I've just started on another set of 167 photos which were taken in 2011 and, when complete, will bring my reprocessed total to 1,585 photos. The earliest from 2008 (bounded only by when I started shooting RAW.).
Originally posted by Kiwizinho Interesting having a play with the new features in PhotoLab 5 and the latest Lightroom Classic. The improvements to U-Point technology in PhotoLab and new masking features in Lightroom are both impressive. Lightroom's object select and sky select work really well and are pretty accurate, but are slow to make a selection, whereas U-Point refinements in PhotoLab have no impact on speed, but do add nice options to refine selection.
I always found Control Points to be a bit fiddly to do tasks I needed, but the Control Lines, particularly with the Luma/Chroma sensitivity adjustment are a game changer for me. I was on the fence about upgrading this time around but Control Lines have pushed me off, on the side of paying up.
Originally posted by Kiwizinho Something I'd describe as a bug in PhotoLab 5 is that although it can display much more metadata now, including hierarchical keywords, images imported from Lightroom have most metadata missing, including metadata that previously displayed, however at least when exported back to Lightroom it's there again. I don't know if DxO have chosen a different data structure for hierarchical keywords to Adobe that's causing keywords not to show at all, but I think it's a bug, as I can export from Lightroom to various web platforms, and the keywords are all recognised, just not the hierarchies, but PL 5 isn't showing any of them. Also I notice it's not showing geotagging data even though it's got fields to enter it. Once again, I don't think this is any proprietary behaviour by Adobe, but a bug, as any web platform can pick up this data no problem, and embedded location data can be done in camera if you've got a GPS unit, so it's a widely supported standard.
There's a LOT of discussion over in the DxO forums on this topic, including a thread I started explaining why I'm still going to be using LrC for my keywording needs. Turns out while there are "working group standards" for hierarchical keywords, the software implementations out in the world are a bit of a mess and in the short bit of testing I did with PL5, it differs from LrC in important respects with how it handles keywords. The advice someone gave, and which I intend to stick to, is only ever touch metadata (and particularly keywords) in one application.
There is also plenty of discussion on what PhotoLab should "be" with only a few active forum members favouring the "full featured" route. Indeed there is something to be said for accepting their lagging position on the DAM front and backing off even, in favour of the stuff they do best. Many users use the likes of iMatch or PhotoMechanic Plus as their DAM and only use PhotoLab like others might use PhotoShop. Personally, I wish they'd just shore up the DAM a little — get what's there already working well.
For geotagging, I long ago bought a HoudahGeo license and while it's an odd interface, it works well enough. As a result I maintain LrC on a free Adobe account with only the Library module active and that does keywording like no other.
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And welcome, Gary! Wellingtonian here.