In “Levels Adjustment“ use radio buttons instead of drop down for channels

[AffinityRonald]

When manually adjusting the tonal values of some thousand pictures I am grateful for every single mouseclick I can avoid.

In the levels adjustment dialog I frequently switch between the red, green und blue channel. To do so, I need to open the drop-down-menu, move to the correct entry and click again. This works in about 90% of my attempts.

If the dialog would use horizontal radio buttons, a single click would suffice:

( ) Master ( ) Red ( ) Green ( ) Blue ( ) Alpha

or, if there is not enough space:

( ) Master ( ) R ( ) G ( ) B ( ) ⍺

I would very much appreciate that!

[loukash]

2 hours ago, AffinityRonald said:

if there is not enough space

… it would get pretty crowded in the CMYK mode.

2 hours ago, AffinityRonald said:

I am grateful for every single mouseclick I can avoid.

On Mac, you can fully navigate the floating adjustment windows via keyboard, as long as the global system settings option "Change the way Tab moves focus" is enabled and active. To open the channel popup menu when tabbed to it, press cmd-up/down arrow.

[Aurea Ratio]

On 2/6/2024 at 6:43 PM, AffinityRonald said:

When manually adjusting the tonal values of some thousand pictures I am grateful for every single mouseclick I can avoid.

In the levels adjustment dialog I frequently switch between the red, green und blue channel. To do so, I need to open the drop-down-menu, move to the correct entry and click again. This works in about 90% of my attempts.

If the dialog would use horizontal radio buttons, a single click would suffice:

( ) Master ( ) Red ( ) Green ( ) Blue ( ) Alpha

or, if there is not enough space:

( ) Master ( ) R ( ) G ( ) B ( ) ⍺

I would very much appreciate that!

Interesting take on that. :-) Quick access would indeed be nice. Another concept would have to consider other color models like CMYK and LAB. I would prefer a more visual approach like colored circles on a row. Can be done discreetly.

In Adobe Photoshop you can select channel with Option + 3,4,5 for the R or G or B channel and 2 for RGB. That I use quite a lot. Unfortunately I haven't found similar, direct shortcuts in Affinity. 

[AffinityRonald]

@Aurea RatioThat's an interesting idea. Keyboard shortcuts would be great.

@loukash Even in CMYK mode fitting all channels with full text would work. I have created a mock-up screenshot to demonstrate.

Thank you for the tip regarding the system wide option for changing the tab focus behaviour. However, this feels not like an optimal solution as

a) changing the behaviour for all apps and dialogs just to improve one dialog feels like serious overkill,

b) with the changed behaviour, I can now operate the drop-down-list via keyboard, but will skip the regular input boxes (maybe there is a modifier for that, haven't checked), and

c) instead of two mouse clicks and some aiming it would require many more keypresses. It really feels more like a “what to do, if I can't use the mouse at all” instead of an optimisation for efficiency.

[fde101]

In the interim, if you have Keyboard Maestro or other similar macro utility, you could try something like this to assign a keyboard shortcut to one of the channels:

 

Note that the "Image" for the first one is the "RGB" popup menu and for the second is the "Master" from the menu next to it; for both items I right-clicked on the image well and enabled "Wait For Image".

You would substitute the channel of interest for the second image, and could thus assign another of these for each one.

Not as fast or seamless as a native solution, but it may or may not be an improvement in the interim if you have such a utility available.

[loukash]

8 hours ago, fde101 said:

if you have Keyboard Maestro or other similar macro utility, you could try something like this to assign a keyboard shortcut to one of the channels

Yeah, KM is great. I'm using KM macros to control e.g. the Swatches panel via keyboard shortcuts, like deleting a swatch or making a swatch global. 

8 hours ago, fde101 said:

the "Image"

Interesting! In all those years I haven't even explored this KM option yet.