Effects - enter radius in % instead of px

[Julian23]

1) I like the results possible with the effects tools, such as shade and glow. But the radius is always entered as pixels which is not always practicable. The slider is also restricted to 100px - larger values have to entered manually.

 

I would prefer to enter such values as %. Maybe this logic can be connected to the property "Scale with object".

If the scaling is active, the radius is displayed and entered as %, otherwise as fixed value.

 

The edit field for "radius" also only seem to accept px as unit, not cm, in or pt and no formulas, such as w/10.

 

2) Sometimes it makes sense to only show the effect selected for an object, not its actual contents. Would be possible to add a "only show effect" choice, to just show the shade and hide the object?

 

 

Thanks for consideration.

[Julian23]

I am surprised that there is so little interest in this. Having to measure the width of a shade, glow etc  in a program like AD which works with variable dpi settings, in pixels seems a bit "odd" to me.

[Julian23]

In 1.4 I still see the track bar to select the effect radius - I can only select 0-100 px (Pixels, really? I am working on a paper based format in a high resolution)

[evtonic3]

In any effect radius, the slider does indeed only allow to go up to 100 px but if that isn't enough you can enter it manually for values higher than that.

[Julian23]

Yes, thanks, I know. But does this behavior make much sense? First, 100px is really not much and second there should be an option to specify a value in a way which is independent of the output resolution - some will want to use Designer to actually design printed material. 

With line width there is also the restriction to 100 - but at least here we have 100pt not px.

 

I think those trackbars in the GUI are not implemented very well. If I override the "100" with a larger value any click on the trackbar will take it back to the range 0-100. With the correct behavior, the trackbar would use the new maximum value and would control that.

 

It would be also pretty easy to implement - just let the trackbar control the % and use a variable, self learning maximum value which is multiplied with that % value. The maximum value could be always 100, unless the user types in a larger value and hits enter. Then the larger value is the new maximum. 

[MEB]

Hi Julian23,

The issue is that then a small movement to the sliders will lead to big jumps in the values since their width is limited. You can also drag the mouse over the label's name in some panels to change input values (Transform panel for example).

[Julian23]

Hi Julian23,

The issue is that then a small movement to the sliders will lead to big jumps in the values since their width is limited. You can also drag the mouse over the label's name in some panels to change input values (Transform panel for example).

I understand, that can be confusing.

You could however make the slider controlled by mouse move instead of  mouse drag. 

Once the user clicks in the slider handle the value changes with the mouse - mouse to the right, increase slowly, mouse to the left decrease. Move mouse further, the value changes faster.

 

If you do not want to confuse people and make it optional, put this feature on the right mouse button. The problem is: it is not very inspiring to have to type in any value larger than 100 and type again to change just a tad.

 

With the effect radius values the other problem is: They use pixels, which are device dependent. The value should be independent of the resolution of the document. If I set up a document at 72dpi, I get a completely different results than if I have 300dpi. It should be easy to change the value to point (pt) to make it resolution independent.