UI fine tuning for sliders

[David]

Hi,

getting started with Raw Power, may I propose a couple of minor points to fine-tune how the sliders work:

1. I often enter numerical values manually (e.g. to quickly set exposure to 1 or .5). When hitting enter the value is applied. It would be very helpful is the value I just enter would remain selected afterwards, enabling me to directly type in another value if I don’t like the result (this is how it works in Aperture). Right now, the value is not selected, requiring me to select switch to the mouse to select it or to delete it via backspace before entering a new value.

2. I found that double clicking the slider itself resets it (however making the slider jump to the point where you double clicked it before jumping to the neutral position). How about adding reset to double clicking the caption also? This is what I first tried and would find more intuitive.

3. How about adding small < and > buttons to the sliders to adjust the value step by step? I find this a lot more convenient that dragging the slider with the mouse.

Thank you very much,
David

[Nik Bhatt]

Hi,

Thanks for your suggestions and observations.

1. Changing Enter to keep the data entry field selected – I will look into it
2. Double-clicking the caption – I’ll look into that too
3. Arrows next to the sliders – my initial impression is that the UI would look very noisy and complicated, so I’m not inclined to make that change.

[David]

Hi Nik,

Thank you very much!

Another option for 3. would be to have the slider move by a certain value if I click right or left from the current position (similar to how a window scroll bar behaves). Currently, it jumps to the exact position where I click.

David

[Nik Bhatt]

Thanks for the suggestion about clicking on the end points to get it to move a fixed distance. I’ll have to think about it (it’s certainly useful, but it violates how sliders are supposed to work).

[Nik Bhatt]

I looked into this some more. I modified the code so that the Enter key also selects the text so that you can type over it without having to do anything with your mouse. That will be 3.1.

I should mention that the shipping app has a behavior that is probably useful to you. You can use the up and down arrow keys to manipulate the value. For example, you type 1.0 for exposure and hit Enter. You can then use the up and down arrows to bump the number some (and option-arrow and shift-arrow will manipulate the values by smaller or larger amounts).

[thewildrover]

Interesting stuff. I was going to post a related query regarding the sliders, but this seems similar in context perhaps.

Having done quite a few edits now, I have been finding that some sliders seem to be a bit aggressive (perhaps too sensitive might be a better description).

Most are fine, and operate in an expected fashion. But some, particularly saturation and vibrancy, seem to need very fine control to get a sensible amount of effect applied – I’m often ending up at 0.08 or something similar. I wonder if they might need a reverse modifier to switch between slow/fast application of the effect.

I’ve also noticed that they can suffer with lag after editing about 20-30 images. Is this expected? A result of clogging up caches perhaps? If I force quit and relaunch it’s fine again for another 20-30 images. Again this seems to affect some sliders more than others.

Cheers.

[Nik Bhatt]

In RAW Power for iOS, there is a way to slow down the sliders but not on the Mac (it’s more difficult to do something like this on Mac just because of how sliders are implemented by Apple on the two platforms).

Until I figure a straightforward way to do that, you can use the data entry interface. To do that, double-click on the value (on the right of the slider). You can either enter a value or you can use the up / down arrow keys with various modifiers (shift / option, etc.) to nudge the values. Option-arrow changes the values very slowly.

I would not expect a lag after 20-30 images, but perhaps there is an overuse of memory. I will have to look into it. Please do this:
Open Activity Monitor
Find RAW Power
Click on the Memory tab at the top of the window
What is RAW Power showing for memory use when you are seeing performance issues? Also, how much memory (RAM) do you have?

–Nik

[thewildrover]

Oh, so stupid of me, I hadn’t spotted I’d replied in the MacOS group, doh. So sorry… this is actually when using iPadOS on an iPad Pro (2020 12.9” model).

I have found the way to slow down the sliders on iPadOS, but it seems fiddly to use with a Pencil, and shouldn’t that be used for fine control, rather than a workaround?

Cheers.

[Nik Bhatt]

I can see why it might be fiddly to use the “gear down” mode with a pencil (dragging down and then dragging left and right). But I am unclear about what you mean by fine control vs. a workaround. How (specifically) would you like it to work with a pencil?

[thewildrover]

It’s not so much the Pencil operation per se’, it’s the operation of a few of the sliders. Particularly Saturation and Vibrancy, the amount of effect applied does not very progressive, so only a very small amount of movement results in too much effect being applied. Actually, now I’ve just gone off and retested, it seems to the the ‘Basics’ panel that suffers with this most, all the rest are really nice and progressive, but the sliders in the ‘Basics’ panel do seem to apply effect quite aggressively. It means that it’s very difficult to get an accurate adjustment point if you only need to add a subtle effect.

All I meant was that this can be eased by using the slowdown technique, but shouldn’t be something I need to use for every adjustment on those sliders. The comment I was making is that the slowdown technique does seem fiddly to use when using a Pencil, as you say, the slide down then across, but I don’t mind that if I didn’t need to use it as much on those sliders. I think that’s maybe part of the nature of the Pencil operation, and me getting more practice using it to some extent.

If I may, sorry, while we’re talking about the Pencil, I also find the centre ‘decent’ position, that has a pause when you go near it, is also quite tricky when using the Pencil, it is too willing to grab the slider spot, and is then fiddly to get moving again (again, eased by using the slowdown technique).

Apart from that, this is an excellent photo app, and I thank you for the great work you’ve done to produce it.

Regards

Andy.

[Nik Bhatt]

Yes, I’ve noticed the same thing about the detent. The next version (3.1) has a better approach to managing the detent / haptic for the center point of sliders.

[davidmacvicar]

I agree here about the ‘notches’ that were present in Aperture. They are a much better implementation of adjustments than the current method of numerical entry, or by picking up a slider and moving it around (I am talking about Mac OS version of Raw Power).

I don’t know about other users, but I generally hit my exposures properly and if anything I only need to do a slight bump up or down and the notches/arrows for +/- on the slider are so quick!

[Nik Bhatt]

The Aperture “infinite slider” (that’s the name for the numeric field with the two arrows) is an interesting custom control.

If you want to nudge the slider value in RAW Power, you can double click on the numeric field. Then use the up/down arrow keys with modifiers. You can try different combinations of Arrow, Option + Arrow and Shift+Option+Arrow.

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