Improvement Request for Cropping Tool

DxO PhotoLab Feature requests
1

Hi,

the cropping tool in PhotoLabs (latest version) lacks of some important features, which would massively improve its usability as described below:

  1. The croppping tool features an optional grid having help lines, which divides the image into thirds. There should be also an option to choose an alternative type of dividing according to the rule of the golden ratio (aka golden cut), which is also important for composing images.

  2. Additionally there should be an option to make help lines visible, which divides the cropping frame into halfs (horizontally and vertically).

  3. Additionally there should be an option to make help lines visible, which are diagonal. All this symmetric helplines would help composing when doing the cropping process.

  4. The cropping frame should be movable or resizable by keyboard shortcuts (like the arrow keys, eventually in combination with ALT, CTRL or SHIFT keys). This would give a user the chance to resize the cropping frame without accidently moving it. If one can only resize the crop frame with the mouse by clicking the borders (like it is right now), then resizing without moving the frame is practically impossible. Let the arrow keys make a movement of the crop frame in the desired direction. Let the arrow keys with combination of the ALT key make a fine movement (pixel by pixel), let the arrow keys with SHIFT key make a resizement in the regarding direction and let the arrow keys with CTRL key zoom the crop frame without changing position (maybe arrow key + ALT + CTRL could do a fine zoom pixel by pixel).

  5. When fumbling with the crop frame a dynamic zoom window should always show the image at mouse position with, lets say 10x or 100% (or what ever is fine).

  6. The latter feature may also apply to many other tools in Photo Labs.

I request the features as stated above, because they are a common user experience for image editing software (even software for mobile devices feature these capabilities, sorry to say that).

For sure I might give further details on request. Looking forward seeing theses features in the upcoming release :-).

Kind regards
Markus Peters

2

Hi Markus,

Thank you for your suggestion.

Kind regards
Akki

2 Likes
3

Good morning!

Isn’t it about the same - Suggestions for cropping tool ? I have to close one of them as they are duplicates from you and it would be hard to follow the voting. Which one I should close? I suggest this one - Suggestions for cropping tool as it’s voted only once.

Regards,
Svetlana G.

4

Hi,

yes, please delete https://forum.dxo.com/t/suggestions-for-cropping-tool/9448. This was my very first post, which did not appear until now.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

Kind regards
Markus

5

Done!

Regards,
Svetlana G.

6

I would like to second the suggestions. In addition, I would like to see an improvement in using a mouse for cropping. I sometimes have difficulty positioning the pointer over an anchor point. I wish it were not required for the sides of the frame. Instead, enable placing the mouse pointer anywhere on the side of the frame and just use anchor points on the corners.

7

Hi John, that would be a good improvement. Thanks for your suggestion! Please don’t forget to vote for this request ;-).

8

Hi Everyone and thanks once again for your suggestions and feedback on this specific feature.

The crop Tool… oooh my.

We know, and deeply want to revamp it completely, but to tell you the truth, this specific feature is one of the (if not THE) oldest part of our legacy code, which makes it very hard to tackle “immediatly”…

And I assure you that there’s not one day that we’re not wanting to refresh it and have a smoother and more decent user experience regarding this feature, which is quite central to lots of users.

We’ll add / merge your suggestions with all the previous ones that we’ve gathered so far, and hopefully, one day, we’ll be all happy to have the crop tool PhotoLab deserves. :smiley:

I’ll close this topic and release the votes.

The DxO Team

3 Likes
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