Image blur when editing with mouse use of sliders

Hi.
Can anyone explain to me why DxO PL (3.2 Elite) Customize blurs the image when you use the mouse to drag the sliders. As long as the mouse is “clicked on” you cannot see the effect on the image. It’s this way for most of the sliders (exposure comp, selective tone, colour accentuation, contrast) but for some reason NOT microcontrast.
This is a major nuisance as you cannot “grab and drag” the slider to where you get the effect you want, the slider works in practice like the very small and very precise arrows for up / down scaling the result.
This can’t be right, the slider should work as continuous adding / subtracting of the tool - and with the result continuously visible.
Regards Johannes Elkjaer Madsen

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It’s disappointing, especially if you have fairly fast hardware and know that the software isn’t taking full advantage of it. My understanding is that the blurring of the preview image is a design decision, made a long time ago, to keep the preview speedy when what’s being adjusted doesn’t affect finer details. That would be why adjusting Contrast blurs the image but adjusting Microcontrast and (if you have FilmPack) Fine contrast does not. The blurred adjustments are indeed rendered much more quickly on my computer, while the others exhibit quite a bit of lag.

Hello,

Yes, Greg, you are absolutely correct - it was done for Light and Color sliders to increase the performance. We’ll see if we can improve it.

Regards,
Svetlana G.

Hi, thanks for the explanation. It’s not that the experience is that applying the edits is (very) slow, I have a capable computer. It’s that the slider should be able to continuously apply the edit, as opposed to the little hard-to-hit arrows to the right, which applies changes in steps. In practice the slider gives the same experience when you have to let go all the time to see the effect, and thus the slider ends up changing in steps as well.
It would be a major improvement if this could be fixed.
Regards Johannes Elkjaer Madsen

Hi Johannes,

I’m not sure to understand what you are saying…

“Steppers” (the little arrows) sometimes have a different scale of increments compared to their respective slider. For white balance for example, the stepper increments are of 100, while with the slider you have a more granular control. The same goes for exposure compensation, where the stepper has 0.10 increments while the slider gives you more control…this, of course, isn’t true for all sliders.

Could please be more specific? I’d like to have this info and looking on our side for possible solutions.

Thank you!

Cheers,
Steven L.

Hi StevenL
By stepping the slider I mean I have to apply a little, then let go the mouse (clicking on the slider handle) for the image to sharpen up, apply more, let go the mouse for the image to sharpen up, then maybe apply a little less because as the image blurs when operating the slider you cannot tell when your done.

All this is more like clicking the arrows for a stepped applying of the edit than the continuously applying that the slider should be. And also is - just that with the image blurred it doesn’t work in practice because you can’t see where you are.
Regards Johannes Elkjaer Madsen

Ah OK, now I get it.
“Continuously real-time” previews are tricky, moving a slider while showing the final rendered effect can get quite complex at the end and it’s also deeply tied to the core of PhotoLab… But yes, this doesn’t prevent us to imagine ways to improve it.

Thanks.
Steven.

Just happened upon this thread, and couldn’t work out why it was a problem, as I don’t have that experience. But I can replicate it, when dragging the sliders with the mouse!

However that’s not what I do, and so I think I have solved the problem, probably accidentally. I just click on the slider (don’t drag) then use the scroll wheel to increment or decrement the slider value. You will see the value (number) in the box to the right going up in increments of 5. Then you see the result almost instantly, with no blurring. If an increment of 5 is too much for you, then you can go up and down in values of 1 by using the up/down arrows on your computer keyboard (while the mouse is still clicked onto that slider). This is actually very easy to do, and a lot easier than repeatedly clicking on the up/down arrows in the box.

Try it!

Hi, thanks for reacting to my problem.
I have also found a way out of this, although not in a pleasant way. I have given up on DxO PL3 as my editor and instead now uses PL3 for raw rendering, which is great for my Sony files, also for global noise correction (HQFast) which is also great, and of course for optics corrections. From here I hurry over to Affinity Photo which is so eagerly promoted by the DxO team for Nik support, and as it works great - although with a steep (and long) learning curve - this is what I intend to continue with. And I don’t miss the galore of generated TIFF files even the slightest.
Regards Johannes Elkjaer Madsen

I am trying out the demo version of PL v4 and surprised a photo editor blurs the image when you make an adjustment with the slider. I think it is a great program, but won’t buy it because of this one problem.

There are other apps out there that might not have the exact same glitch but, from my experience, there isn’t an app out there that is totally perfect. Added to which, this doesn’t happen on all adjustments, just some that are particularly processor intensive.

Don’t ignore the fact that most other RAW developing apps require you to create a second bitmap file (TIFF or other) before you can work on the RAW file. PhotoLab doesn’t clutter up your hard disk with a duplicate of every single file that you edit - it only creates a bitmap file when you export. Then you can use the file and delete it, knowing that you can recreate it at any time from the edited original RAW.

What are you adjusting when you see this?

Seems to be all adjustments. Contrast, Tone, White Balance for sure. I just realized that this is a windows forum. I am using a new m1 mac with a 4k monitor FWIW.
I understand no app is perfect, but it makes it pretty hard to make adjustment when you can’t really see what is going on.

Joanna and Gordon - can I please refer you to my answer above (Jun 20). Just click on the slider once, then instead of sliding it left or right with the mouse, use the scroll wheel to change the value up or down. Then the blurring does not happen.

Interestingly, rolling the scroll-wheel (after clicking on a slider control) elicits no response at all on my system (Win10) … Instead, I use the {Right-click either side of the slider control} method - which works as Nigel describes.

John M

@John-M – hmm, works here like @nputtick described in post #8.

After clicking (anywhere) on the slider to ‘activate’ it, the mouse pointer has to be over the slider or the entry field to be able to scroll in 5 increments.

[ tested with scroll setting on default ]

I find 5 increments to be too imprecise. If I don’t need a precise value I prefer to just drag a slider. If I want a precise value I will use the up and down arrows or (rarely) enter a value directly in the text box.

Mark

Curious/interesting: It doesn’t work for me at all … and I even removed the splint from my damaged “scrolling finger” to be sure it wasn’t just me ! … Scroll works fine for other actions; such as Zoom in the image area - but no reaction on sliders.

( Doesn’t bother me tho - I prefer the {Right-click either side of the slider control} method - as it results in even increments of +5 or +10 … which satisfies by OCD tendencies !! )

John M