How to handle "vitual copies" from Photolab in IMatch?

[hans-guenter.fuss@web.de]

Does anybody know if it is possible to handle virtual copies from Photolab (DxO) in IMatch? Photolab creates virtual copies by describing and storing changes in a sidecar *.dop. There is no additional image, just information in the dop file. I guess IMatch can handle this somehow, because sometimes I'm getting modified images as thumbs. I can imagine, IMatch is handling this as stack. But I've no idea how this works and how to configure. Many thanks in advance, regards HGF

[Mario]

Virtual copies in Photolab or Lightroom only exist as a sequence of proprietary settings in the catalog/database or a .dob file. dob files are option, as far as I know.
Only the original software knows how to apply these settings to the original in order to produce "variants" or virtual copies. These are basically processing instructions for the processing and render engine in your image editor or RAW processor.

IMatch has no access to this information.

You can make the .dob file a buddy file of the original image so it will be moved, copied, renamed and deleted with the original file. To see your virtual copies in IMatch, you must export them as physical images to your drive. IMatch can then index and manage them.

[hans-guenter.fuss@web.de]

Understood, thank you, Mario.

[jch2103]

I'm also a DxO PhotoLab user. As Mario says, you can set .dop files to be buddy files so they can be kept with the original (raw) files. That works very well.

But as Mario also says, PhotoLab virtual copies are actually just text instructions to PhotoLab, so aren't actually images of any sort and so aren't visible to IMatch. 

[Lord_Helmchen]

When you create JPEG files of the versions, you can see them in IMatch.

[Mario]

This is correct. You have to export/save the virtual copies in order to see them in IMatch. Use a good naming convention and enable IMatch's file relations to keep the original/master and the versions linked.