Affinity Photo 2: more precise controls for percentage slider values

[Jarek Dudziński]

The controls of percentage sliders are only 'snapping' to full percent values (0, 1, 2 ...) - for example controls for Blackpoint (Exposure) or Contrast (Enhance) in Tone Mapping Persona. As there is very visible difference even between 1% change - we need some more precise controls for those. Maybe instead of using percentage - just float values?

Edited March 13, 2024 by Jarek Dudziński

[Komatös]

@Jarek Dudziński

The most precise input method is to enter the values using the keyboard. The second most precise option is to adjust the values using the mouse scroll wheel. This allows the values to be changed in the set decimal place range.

The mouse scroll wheel method will probably not work on an iPad. 
 

[fde101]

It actually stores and uses non-integer values behind the scenes, but rounds them for display.

Some values allow the rounding to be adjusted in Preferences/Settings, but I don't see one for percentage values (which would be nice to have added).  I believe that may have been requested before.

[sansnom]

Very just !…
I still have the same question regarding this type of interface. I'm not sure which is the most practical.
For my part, I think that moving your mouse sideways, from left to right and vice versa, requires more effort and concentration than vertically, from top to bottom and vice versa.
I also wonder if adding two small buttons [+] and [–] next to the sliders would help. Or a popup that would occasionally appear on the canvas.

For the slider controlling the thickness of the lines for example, it seems that the progression is logarithmic (I could be wrong, correct me if I say something stupid). Starting from the left, at zero, it takes diabolical precision to go from one pixel of cursor movement from 0.05 to 0.1. On the other end, 1 pixel of cursor movement takes you from 95 to 100!… I think it should be the other way around and on the left, with 3 or 4 pixels of mouse movement to go from 0.05 to 0.1.

Ditto, concerning mouse scrolling: difficult to use it to enter a value, a simple rotation makes you jump several values!…
As it was written here, you can go through the entry field for a value, but when you know it!… If you have to look for it visually, it's not that practical.
Finally, I find it quite uncomfortable when editing an object to constantly have (with rare exceptions like Levels or Curves...) its wireframe (blue) and its control handles displayed!...

[fde101]

13 minutes ago, sansnom said:

For my part, I think that moving your mouse sideways, from left to right and vice versa, requires more effort and concentration than vertically, from top to bottom and vice versa.

Not sure that I agree on that one, but regardless, there is usually more space to make a set of sliders wider than taller, and a longer slider allows for more precision.

That said, a slider will never offer the same level of precision for a wide range of values that you can obtain with controls that allow for direct or relative entry as they are always constrained by the pixel resolution sitting underneath them (most GUIs do not allow for sub-pixel mouse tracking so if the slider is 150 pixels in length, for example, the slider can only input 150 distinct values).

 

EDIT: if you were able to dedicate a display to the controls, you might have a case for a more mixer-like interface with a bunch of vertical sliders spread across the screen and controlling various parameters.  In practice many of us are on single screens and the time taken to move the mouse from one screen to another (to make a selection on the image then go across to manipulate the values) would probably slow things down, and using that type of interface on a screen shared with the image would result in too little horizontal space for the image itself.  A touchscreen could eliminate the mouse movement issue, and one interesting possibility might be an iPad-based remote app (or Android tablet for that matter) to control the parameters of the image displayed on the computer, but for the interface on the computer itself, I'm not sure if a statistically significant percentage of users would find that type of interface to be a net gain.

[Rick-C-137]

Sorry for this bump, new user here. But yes. First off; it would be great if all such controls can be controlled with our mousewheel instead of having to click and drag always. Second; it would be great if we can simply set up a modifier key that gives us a finer resolution control over such parameters when held down (also, with support of mousewheel control).

[fde101]

2 hours ago, Rick-C-137 said:

it would be great if all such controls can be controlled with our mousewheel

The Affinity apps originally supported this in practically all of the entry controls for numeric values, but Serif intentionally disabled it at one point because people who were using the scroll wheel to... err... scroll... were accidentally changing values as the fields passed under the mouse pointer during that scrolling action.

Back when they made that change there was a lot of discussion about this and many of us suggested alternative ways to handle this without losing that functionality entirely, but Serif opted for simply disabling that functionality instead.

[Rick-C-137]

I see. Thank you for providing that info. Did not know that. I guess it would be possible for them to have it enabled only when a 'pop-out' window is used for any given adjustment?