I’m using DxO on a Mac. I have two problems with the interface:
The default colours for various palettes render text as mid-brown on dark brown, making it barely legible.
The default font sizes are far too small.
This is an extremely poor decision - I refuse to call it a design - from an accessibility POV, and I am on the point of dumping DxO on that basis alone. I can’t believe I’m the only one who has problems with this.
Does anyone know if there is any way in which the colour scheme & font sizes can be altered, please?
What size monitor are you using? What is the resolution? Others have indicated that the GUI tool contrast on Macs needs to be improved. To the best of my knowledge there’s no way a user can currently address that issue on a Mac. As far as tiny font sizes, I can’t help you with that since I’m a Windows user, but on a Mac it’s most likely a result of the combination of the monitor resolution and the monitor size which is why I asked about them. Hopefully a Mac user will respond and will be able to help you increase readability by changing the font size using a feature in your operating system. PhotoLab itself does not have that option. Something similar can be done in Windows.
You’re not alone with this. Search the forum for “readability” or “legibility” to find other posts that deal with this matter.
DxO provides no means at all to alter PhotoLab’s appearance. When I set screen brightness to about 100 (cd/sqm or nit), I find DPL usable, but would still prefer an improved appearance.
@Joanna,besides the ability to change resolution, Windows give you the option of changing the size of text and other items globally without changing resolution.
iOS/iPadOS has this kind of feature but not (yet) macOS.
However, these are all workarounds. At the very least PhotoLab needs a contrast improvement. Even those of us who can easily read text that small have issues with the contrast. I think the text should also be bigger by default and have controls to make it larger for those who need it.
It’s a significant amount of work, especially if the existing design is designed by pixel, but I think it has to be prioritised over any new features.
On a separate note, I did not know that Windows’ settings went to the individual application level! I may give that a go if I ever go back to work in my office, as setting one screen out of three at a different scale gave me a real mess when I tried it with certain applications (including one by Microsoft!) failing to adapt properly and looking substantially worse.
It was actually pointed out to me by someone here a couple of years ago, However, while I used it for PhotoLab for a while, at this point I just use the global scaling if 175% rather than the Windows recommended scaling for my 28" 4K monitor resolution of 150%. It is just a more comfortable setting for my eyes at my age. Unfortunately, as per @Joanna’s examples, it seems that Mac users do not have similar scaling features and must lower the overall display resolution to accomplish this.
May I thank everyone who has responded here. Your comments have all been helpful in confirming what I suspected - ie that DxO does not provide any means of altering the appearance of the user interface. The information on the increased capabilities that Windows provides is interesting. Although I’m not a fan of MS, this is one area in which they are clearly superior. MacOS merely provides the ability to run an app, leaving it to the app developer to provide extra capability for visual preferences particular to that app. This in turn places certain responsibilities on the developer, a point I shall return to in another post. Setting of screen resolution is global in MacOS, and will apply to all running apps. The same is true for screen contrast. Furthermore, this cannot be restricted to text, but will also operate on the image being edited, making it unusable.
I did however discover something useful under the accessibility options. There is a facility labelled “Zoom”, which has a “Text Hover” option. This allows any text item under the cursor to appear in a magnified window, with user-selectable font, size and text/background colours. It’s possible to run the cursor down the displayed DxO palletes, and read a clear display of the items. Not as good as having them all clearly visible at once, but it does offer a work around.
Wow, and by all means, not to denigrate your experience, but “… 1. The default colours for various palettes render text as mid-brown on dark brown, making it barely legible.”
I’ve been using DxO Photolab/Optics Pro for 10 years and have ever seen anything other than a very dark grey background w/ almost white text throughout. You say you are on a Mac, and this is a brand-new problem I’m hearing about for the first time. The text is small, but I’m 70 and wear glasses and have had no problem reading the text on a 4k Apple monitor on a 15" MacBook Pro.
This thread is 1.5 years old, I admit, but I was just curious if you ever got it fixed. My guess is this is something on your local settings and has nothing to do w/ DxO.
It might also be a problem with your monitor calibration that’s WAY out of kilter, but this would affect ALL your content severely if that was the case. Although you sound like someone who would keep up with monitor calibration, it’s the only thing I can think of that would cause this. Dark brown interface w/ light brown text… I’m blanking out on this one.
