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Beep6581 / RawTherapee

A powerful cross-platform raw photo processing program
https://rawtherapee.com
GNU General Public License v3.0
2.67k stars 306 forks source link

A new "advanced tools" tab? #4298

Closed agriggio closed 5 years ago

agriggio commented 6 years ago

Many people who try RT for the first time often say that it seems powerful but also too complex to use / intimidating. I think there is some truth to that, but on the other hand, it is good to have powerful tools if you know how to use them. So, I was thinking, what about having a dedicated tab for "advanced" tools? For example we could rename the wavelets tab to "advanced" or "expert" tools, and move e.g. retinex and ciecam02 in there, and possibly also "channel mixer". What do you think? @Desmis, @Beep6581, how does this sound? (also the others @Hombre57 @heckflosse @Floessie of course)

Floessie commented 6 years ago

What about collapsing the "advanced" tools (what's advanced and what's basic might vary with each of us) by default (after installation)?

Desmis commented 6 years ago

Some time ago, Hombre had proposed something similar, with a choice "current", "expert", "math". (or something similar) For my part I am in favor.

But, both in the "issues" and on the forum, some opposed to saying for example that a tool is complex only if it was not understood or used enough

Beep6581 commented 6 years ago

@agriggio have you seen #2631?

Beep6581 commented 6 years ago

By the way, as Retinex only works on raw files, it should be set to insensitive when opening a non-raw file, consistently with the Raw tab.

agriggio commented 6 years ago

@Beep6581 I hadn't seen that, no. Thanks for the pointer. But I think it went nowhere, right? What I'm proposing here is much simpler than a full support for UI customization. That would be great, but who is going to do that? (hint: not me :-)

agriggio commented 6 years ago

Anyway, reading some more comments on #2631, and also to answer other questions asked above: I believe that certain tools are clearly more complex to use than others. Either because they have more parameters, or because it's easier to "shoot oneself in the feet", or because they are useful mostly in special situations. This doesn't make them bad or useless (on the contrary, they can be extremely useful in the right situations), but I think it just doesn't make sense for newcomers to consider them at the beginning. Having these more advanced tools grouped together in their own tab (not hidden!) would help, IMHO.

It's like, when you start learning English, you don't start from type 3 conditionals, don't you? And yet, nobody says they're useless... :-) That's just MHO, of course.

Beep6581 commented 6 years ago

Personally I have no interest in a customizable UI, I just wanted to point the issue out.

My position has always been that all tools are advanced until one learns how to use them - curves make a good example. However I agree that some tools like CIECAM02, Retinex, Wavelets and the seemingly-simple-but-not-quite Channel Mixer would belong well in an Advanced tab. What motivates my support for the idea is not only that, but also the "problem" that CIECAM02 and Retinex don't really belong in the Exposure tab since they have dedicated controls also for color. While they don't clearly belong in the Exposure tab, they do clearly belong in an Advanced tab.

I just wouldn't want an Advanced tab to turn into an excuse for including arcane and untestable tools.

Hombre57 commented 6 years ago

Powetools like Retinex and Wavelet are way easier to understand with a proper GUI that makes things self explanatory. We're not there yet, we have to spend some time to master these tools and then work on the GUI to make things more evident. Probably a new issue to open.

On the short term, I agree with @Beep6581 that CIECAM, Retinex and Wavelet are kind of all purpose tools that can't be part of Exposure or Color tab, but same apply to Lab and Exposure tool : they have a Saturation slider that act on color, not only exposure.

Maybe that, by the time, the label of the tab don't suite the tools anymore. What about renaming them like this, so that it shows some kind of workflow, not the nature of the tool :

General

Effects

Power Tools

Pixel Peep

Geometry

Raw

Metadata

Maybe I forgot some tools, but you get the idea.

Beep6581 commented 6 years ago

My opinion is that a change is worth it if it's clearly superior to the way things are now, making the benefit of the new arrangement outweigh the problems caused by forcing users to re-learn where to find which tool.

As I wrote here, while we could agree that one typically starts off by using the White Balance + Exposure tools, the order of things quickly becomes impossible to define. And even this example is flawed, because you might actually start off by setting the raw parameters such as demosaicing, flat-field, dark-frame, etc. A workflow-based arrangement is impossible. The order of things in the pipeline is also not stable, and while I would like to have it documented (hopefully after the pipeline unification), I don't think having the UI reflect it would necessarily be better for the user.

I agree that renaming the "Wavelet" tab to "Advanced" and moving the most sophisticated tools into it would be an improvement, and it would not cause much confusion. But rearranging all tools would only be worth it if the new arrangement was significantly superior to what we have, and I'm not aware of such an arrangement yet.

So if Retinex, CIECAM02, Wavelets and Channel Mixer(?) are in "Advanced" or "Expert", that leaves us with only one little itch to scratch... L*a*b*. I personally cannot imagine life without the Lab tools and would find it odd if they were far away from the Exposure tool. This could be solved by:

I'm leaning towards ignoring that particular itch.

agriggio commented 6 years ago

@Beep6581 :+1:, I very much agree

Desmis commented 6 years ago

In this type of debate, the cognitive logics clash.

if we group together what is the underlying logic:

These points are deeply modified by learning and training (tutorials, Rawpedia, videos, forum sharing, etc). What was difficult, complex becomes simple

The ideal would be a product with artificial intelligence such as "Deep learning" which reconfigure the architecture according to the evolution of the skills of the user.

Obviously it seems today utopian :)

In the current state of things DrSlony's proposal is reasonable.

jacques

agriggio commented 6 years ago

I just pushed a branch advanced-tools, which renames the wavelet tab to "advanced" and moves there also retinex, ciecam02 and channel mixer. Let me know how it feels -- we easily throw it away if you think it doesn't improve the situation.

Beep6581 commented 6 years ago

Feels good.

What do you think about setting the initial (fresh install) state of all tools to collapsed?

agriggio commented 6 years ago

What do you think about setting the initial (fresh install) state of all tools to collapsed?

Not sure about that. What about collapsing most of the tools, but leave the really basic ones open? E.g. exposure, wb, crop, resize.

Beep6581 commented 6 years ago

My intention is to:

agriggio commented 6 years ago

Not cater to any particular skill level, certainly not the lowest common denominator.

Why not? That's what new users are, by definition (regarding their skills in RT, of course). If you're not a new user, the default won't matter anyway, as you already have your options file in place with the state of all the tools...

Beep6581 commented 6 years ago

Ok, good point. Then it makes sense to have the four tools you listed expanded.

agriggio commented 6 years ago

Ok, I'll do that. Do we also need a new icon for the advanced tab? (I can't help here though)

Beep6581 commented 6 years ago

I can help with that. Any ideas?

agriggio commented 6 years ago

Any ideas?

how about a comlpex multiband equalizer?

Beep6581 commented 6 years ago

I was thinking of a little Albert Einstein head, but with only 22 pixels to work with we can have pacman or a simplex monoband equalizer at best ;)

Beep6581 commented 6 years ago

An abstraction of this could be nice: https://i.imgur.com/pNbKlli.jpg

agriggio commented 6 years ago

How about something like this? https://goo.gl/images/TzMNoe should fit in 22pix maybe?

Beep6581 commented 6 years ago

There's also this one: http://fontawesome.io/icon/sliders/ Those icons tend to be used for "Settings", as in "Preferences".

agriggio commented 6 years ago

@Beep6581 you're right, I forgot about preferences. Then I'm out of ideas...

Beep6581 commented 6 years ago

@agriggio odd, now when I open your link I get a completely different image than I got before... I'll take care of this. Don't wait for the icon if you want to commit, go ahead and I'll commit directly to dev.

agriggio commented 6 years ago

@Beep6581 I'd like to get further testing from other people before committing -- perhaps I forgot something...

heckflosse commented 6 years ago

@agriggio I will test after the fattal stuff...

Hombre57 commented 6 years ago

@agriggio I'll test tomorrow.

Desmis commented 6 years ago

@agriggio I'll test today

Desmis commented 6 years ago

@agriggio

All seems to work well :) I should prefered, to have the four in "expert", collapsed, to have a better visibility...But if not, no problem

Jacques

agriggio commented 6 years ago

Thanks all for testing! Indeed the tools should be collapsed by default. One more thing: what about moving also color toning there? Opinions?

Beep6581 commented 6 years ago

I have opinions :) I think CT sits very snugly in the Color tab.

agriggio commented 6 years ago

good, less work to do :wink:

Desmis commented 6 years ago

Same questions for Black and White, in "expert" or not ?

Beep6581 commented 6 years ago

I... have to take the dog for a walk ;)

Floessie commented 6 years ago

Okay, I gave it a quick look, and yes, I like it. Not so much scrolling and searching anymore. Some remarks, though:

@Beep6581

I... have to take the dog for a walk ;)

Lucky you. 😃

Best, Flössie

Desmis commented 6 years ago

I agree, for "Color management" near White Balance :)

agriggio commented 6 years ago

I don't see how channel mixer is simple, sorry... maybe I'm too simple :-)

Floessie commented 6 years ago

And I don't see how it's advanced. As @Hombre57 proposed above, it's more an "effect", a tweaking tool, and often gives a nice result when used with small numbers. I use it for fun to give an image a final color touch (more sunset-like, less greenish, colder...). There are surely more sophisticated tools to that, but tweaking with the channel mixer feels easier for me.

Desmis commented 6 years ago

The problem is always the same. it is easy if we don'used it, or summary. It's difficult if we don't understand the goal. Deap lurning of "channel mixer" is complex, more if you research special effects.

For having designed it, the Channel Mixer module of Black and White is much more complex

Hombre57 commented 6 years ago

I think we should rather think of "advanced" by reference to the tool's GUI, i.e. monolithic tools with folders and subfolders. So I wouldn't put Channel Mixer in advanced tab, it's [not more/as] complex to get a predictable result from it than from e.g. RGB curves.

I have no opinion about WB's tool, it could be part of both tab.

And for ICM, I'd even put it on first place in Color tab.

agriggio commented 6 years ago

So, what is the consensus here? Put the channel mixer back to the color tab, and move the color management tool right after WB?

For the icon, how about something like these? atom flasks-couple-of-different-shapes-with-liquids-inside microscope-scientific-tool-side-view

Icons made by Freepik from www.flaticon.com is licensed by CC 3.0 BY
Desmis commented 6 years ago

For me !

Beep6581 commented 6 years ago

@agriggio I like the atom icon best at that resolution, but it does not look like an atom at 24px wide (the icon is 24px wide, the image inside it is ~20px wide). The licence could be a problem. I saw no mention of CC on that site, I did find this: https://file000.flaticon.com/downloads/license/license.pdf

Here's a WIP of https://github.com/Beep6581/RawTherapee/issues/4298#issuecomment-357705021 https://filebin.net/m240xeqq3xckbpsw/expert.svg

agriggio commented 6 years ago

I also like the atom. I think there are many around the Web, some of which CC0. those are cc-by, as the text below them says (I cut & pasted following the instructions when I downloaded them)

Beep6581 commented 6 years ago

I finished making three possible icons, please choose: equalizer-wide equalizer-narrow atom

Desmis commented 6 years ago

for me the N°3 "atom"

heckflosse commented 6 years ago

👍 for atom

agriggio commented 6 years ago

both the 2nd equaliser and the atom look great to me!