[thewildrover]

Hi Nik,

My thought is that the scaling of the sliders is opposite to what is really needed with some of the sliders.

The ‘gear-down’ function is, I think, unique to Raw Power, so difficult to compare, but perhaps that look at Photos as an example.

In Photos, the normal scale gives a short range of adjustment (-1.0 to 0.0 to 1.0 with 0.01 increments), so a certain amount of movement gives a modest amount of change to the image. If you need a more aggressive change to the image, then you can hold down Option to increase the scale to -2.0 to 0.0 to 2.0 in 0.01 increments, so the same about of movement on the slider gives double the effect. But it means the default is the more controllable scale.

There is a similar function in Pixelmator Photo too, which works similarly to the one in Photos.

In Raw Power this seems to be a different philosophy, so you have to ‘gear down’ to get the greater control over the amount of adjustment.

It just seems very tricky, especially on an iPad, to get fine enough control without using ‘gear down’. This is most noticeable in the Saturation and Vibrancy slider, where I find it’s most common to be trying be using the 0.0x levels on the scale if I don’t use ‘gear down’ I’m fiddling about back and forth trying to find the right spot.

Hope that helps.

Andy

[thewildrover]

Hi Nik,

I too have mentioned this in the past, especially when using the Pencil to move the sliders. It can be tricky to make the movement for the ‘gear down’ action.

My issue is that with some of the sliders, the Colour (Color!) ones for Saturation and Vibrancy in particular, can be too aggressive. I find that they have a lot of unused movement, as for most images I’m ending up with a less than 0.1 increment is needed. It can be fiddly to get into the ideal levels.

I don’t think the size of the sliders needs adjusting though, they’re fine for size. How about a different approach to the two step gearing applied (Photos increases the level with the Option key, and there’s also an prefs panel option in Pixelmator to change the scaling on the sliders – but these are the opposite to Raw Power, and perhaps make more sense for normal use). Certainly on the iPad version, the scales could be the opposite way round.

Just some thoughts there.

Cheers

[thewildrover]

Hi Nik

Thanks for the reply.

Levels should not be crashing; it sounds like something specific to certain images. If you can upload a sample image that crashes, I can look into a fix. Please email support@gentlemencoders.com and I will send you the URL (I don’t want to publish the URL here on a public-facing website).

This is the same thing happening as last time I reported it in a previous article I posted. I’ll try and find an image that it happens with.

Editing slows down – I’m not sure what you are seeing, so it’s hard for me to determine what the issue is. I have not experience something similar; slider lag usually indicates the GPU is being overdriven, but I would think your machine would be plenty capable enough.

What I’m doing is opening an Album from Photos, and editing an image, then moving onto the next by clicking on the thumbnail strip. I’m working through the album like this for perhaps 12-15 images, without any issues at all, all sliders are operating smoothly and instantly. Then all of a sudden, the sliders move with a lot of lag, I drag one, and then it’ll move after a second or two. This happens with any of the normal sliders, such as Exposure, Saturation, Sharpening, and so on. But the Levels tools works without any lag at all when this happens. Quite strange.

RAW Brick. The sliders provides are determined by Apple based on the format of the file. Depending on the version of DNG you used, you will get different sliders. The preset could have a bug based on that series of steps.

Ok, I kind of expected that might be the case there (apart from the NR bug).

Yes, the crop and straighten tool needs refinement. I’m not happy with it either 🙁

You can get the right result eventually, if you keep trying.

Cheers

Andy

[thewildrover]

I know this won’t help as such, more of a comment rather than help, but I always had terrible trouble using Referenced files with photos. Indeed, it’s a well discussed thing on various forums.

Since moving mine to an entirely iCloud based system, and using a fully (optimised) managed library, it’s been very stable and rarely has bother with third party extensions like Raw Power.

It might depend on your setup, I had even worse trouble using an external HDD as storage too, but again, since putting it onto my internal SSD, and optimising to iCloud, it’s been fine.

FWIW, I think the Photos library can be a bit fragile, all sorts of anomalies can upset things, could just be a file type it doesn’t like, or just one file that may be slightly corrupt, a dodgy USB cable, or hub, or drive enclosure, anything like that.

[thewildrover]

I’d just like to add a vote for a graduated filter, one of those where you get a line across the image to adjust exposure for sky and land, for example. My preference is for landscapes, so that would be a welcome addition.

Cheers

Andy

[thewildrover]

Yes, I had considered that, but in either case, I find it hard to make a precision adjustment anyway. Even on a 12.9″ iPad Pro, the box is quite small, and the movements required on the graph are also small and tricky, even using a Pencil 2.

I appreciate this is all limited by the size of the screen, and some compromise between the size of the image and the size of the sidebar needing to fit into the space.

Cheers

[thewildrover]

To be more accurate, it’s actually the adjustment sliders that are slowing down, they start to experience lag, which gradually gets worse with each image (once the effect starts), until it becomes almost unusable, until the point the lag starts, the adjusters operate perfectly well. Simply closing the app doesn’t do anything, but a Force Quit resets it, and I can continue editing a similar amount of images before it starts again.

[thewildrover]

Hi Nik,

Thank you so much for the update. The Levels issues do seem to be, both the weird black setting, and the crash if attempting to adjust using Auto Enhance.

I have just tried a batch Auto Enhance, and initially did 57 images without a problem, and then 53 images, which crashed RP. I did a Force Quit and tried again, and it was fine that time.

FWIW, I have also noticed that RP does slow down a lot after editing 20 or so images, when I find that Force Quitting and relaunching sets it back to normal speed for a while. This is quite a regular pattern. However, it’s not a deal breaker, and RP is superb at what it does in general.

I’m just posting here in case any others might have the same issue.

(2020 iPad Pro 12.9″ 512GB)

Cheers

Andy

[thewildrover]

Thanks, yes, all working fine now.

[thewildrover]

Thanks Nik, that’s excellent news. I don’t mind waiting for the release though.

Best regards

Andy.

[thewildrover]

I forgot to add the original Raw, which I’ve now done.

Cheers

Andy

[thewildrover]

Hi Nik,

Thank you for spotting this, apologies for not using the correct support channel.

I’ve uploaded a set of images showing the processes I’ve used in an image that gets the wacky settings in levels, also showing some screenshots of the original, and other editing methods. On the auto enhanced image using levels, if I try to adjust the levels manually, Raw Power just crashes. All other methods work fine.

Cheers,

Andy.

[thewildrover]

Hi Nik,

Just another update, with regard to specifically the crash when using Levels in Auto Enhance, it does seem to be just the Levels module that’s causing this. I’ve done some trials using Curves instead, and I get no silly all dark settings appearing in the curves module, and I get no crashes if I try to amend the settings in the curves module.

I don’t get any crashes if I edit manually and use the Levels module.

Cheers

Andy.

[thewildrover]

Thanks Nik, I have the same problem here on my iPad too. Glad to see you’re sorting it.

Cheers

Andy

[thewildrover]

Hi TN Args,

Thanks for confirming my issue too.

I’m still seeing this issue, but have ended up not using Auto Enhance much at all – almost never on a Raw images, and sometimes on JPEGs if they’re from an iPhone.

I have found that it doesn’t matter if I use Batch to apply Auto Enhance to a selection of images, or if I apply it individually using the button at the top of the adjustments panel.

I must admit I haven’t checked to see if this is the same when I turn off Levels in the preferences, and use Curves instead. For my own preference I use Levels, as I find I just get along with it better (and I prefer starting with the ‘Luminance’ setting). But when I have recently tried it, it does often go to that ‘crazy’ setting with all the points shoved over the the left side – that seems to happen on poorly exposed images, and then crashes as soon as I try to correct it. It doesn’t need to have done the crazy thing though, any time I adjust the Levels after Auto Enhance, it will crash.

But for now, this problem has actually made me work better manually, and I’ve found a good workflow that works for me without needing Auto Enhance.

Regards.

• This reply was modified 2 years, 12 months ago by thewildrover.

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