While the interface change for the Nik Collection 4 seems to align more with most other applications, one of the nicest things about U-points was being able to easily adjust settings at the actual point. Having to change them at the side is extraneous movement and not a time saver. Also, when a new U-point is created, the menu scrolls back to the top and requires you to scroll down to make adjustments. After having used the new interface in v4, I really do wish we could still make adjustments at the physical location of the control point. That capability was absolute genius. I certainly hope DxO isn’t planning on removing that from PhotoLab.
If the control panel for local adjustments is under the layers panel it will be easy to simply click on the layer (labelled so you know what you are adjusting eg Sky) and then make the relevant adjustments. Personally, a much better UI. The old NIK style adjustments have had their day, I hope 
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I disagree and hope that DXO will move all the local adjustment sliders to the local adjustment panel in PhotoLab. They are a distraction using them on top of the image, are difficult to adjust, are inconsistent with the rest of Photolab’s adjustment sliders, and limit the addition of new features to local adjustments. They are a remnant of a bygone UI design and the sooner the equalizer format goes away the happier I will be.
Mark
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PhotoLab has the same sort of settings in its local adjustment control points. Having the ability to adjust at the point should at least be available as an option. I appreciate the efficiency of movement they permit. To me, it’s annoying to have to move the cursor back and forth across the screen when adjustments could be made at the point; personally, I have not found the equalizer to get in my way (maybe I’ve learned how to use them differently than you). If nothing else, I hope they’ll give the user the option to use them either way.
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It’s obviously different strokes for different folks kind of thing. Personally, I find it much easier to simply click on a control point (or group of control points) than have to create labels for the points and then pick from the list. I’d rather click a point and have the control capabilities right there. But, again, it all comes down to personal preference I suppose.
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Hi @c.gephart,
Control points and their “at the point adjustments UI” were an incredible idea, but I think they have reached a dead end. Not because they do not work now, they are OK-ish, but because they prevent us to further develop the local adjustments as they should to.
Local corrections are better if the “local” part is just the affected area of the image. All adjustments should be made elsewhere, otherwise they “get in the way” of your editing as soon as you start adding local corrections on your image…
Having a completely different UI forces the user to learn two distinct ways to basically apply the same correction, and this is a bad user experience and an unjustified cognitive load…
Current controls in Control Points offer way less power/fine tuning then their “palette” counterparts…
If we want (and we do want) add more corrections to Control Points, with the current “equalizer” we have close to zero possibilities of evolution. For instance, how can we add a Tone Curve, the HSL or the Selective Tones to an already crowded UI without wrecking the user experience completely?
The U Point technology is a powerful tool to quickly draw precise masks, literally in a matter of seconds.
This is what makes them special and unique. And, speaking of local adjustments, being able to quickly define an area to “adjust” is what is all about. The second important thing is to have a vast array of corrections and tools to make all the adjustments needed to achieve your results. And this is the missing part today.
Steven.
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I appreciate your response. Does this mean the same will eventually be happening with PhotoLab?
Either way, I still like them and wish they could be a user controlled option. To be honest, I used Nik plugins WAY back when they were packaged with Nikon’s software in the pre-Google days and had mixed feelings about the control points. However, over the years, after using Lightroom for a while and then On1 Photo RAW 2021.5 and Luminar 4 and Luminar AI (yeah, I keep them up to date for odds and ends things), being able to make adjustments at the control points are something I’ve really grown to appreciate.
Anyhow, your points are appreciated. I’d still like to see the old equalizer as a user-enabled/disabled option.
Craig
I appreciate your response. Does this mean the same will eventually be happening with PhotoLab?
Either way, I still like them and wish they could be a user controlled option. To be honest, I used Nik plugins WAY back when they were packaged with Nikon’s software in the pre-Google days and had mixed feelings about the control points. However, over the years, after using Lightroom for a while and then On1 Photo RAW 2021.5 and Luminar 4 and Luminar AI (yeah, I keep them up to date for odds and ends things), being able to make adjustments at the control points are something I’ve really grown to appreciate.
Anyhow, your points are appreciated. I’d still like to see the old equalizer as a user-enabled/disabled option.
Craig
I have no doubt that sometimes they can be effective and useful in their current “form”, but the “future” seems to tell us to explore something else if we want to improve our products and the results our users can achieve using them.
If we decide to evolve CP’s controls into something else (like a normal palette for instance) I’m afraid we cannot afford to keep their current implementation at the same time, by having like a setting where you can decide which “form” works best for you.
If we decide to abandon the “equalizer” is not a mere “form” shifting/redesign, it’s about revisiting and empowering what Control Points can do in the first place. Having a “double” UI/system will force us to maintain the old CP and the new CP, knowing that the new ones will provide way more features and functions…and knowing that this extra development effort to keep the old ones doesn’t offer any real added value to the user…
As human beings we are extremely flexible and can adapt easily, but at the same time we’re always afraid of any change. I’m pretty confident that if we want to get better CP and local adjustments, the current paradigm must evolve into something else. And it will be better 
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Oh, I’m not worried about being unable to adapt. I’ve been working in IT since the early 80’s. I’ve spent my life adapting. However, I still really loved the control that was possible at the U-point.
Thanks again for taking the time to give such a thoughtful response.
Craig
1 Like
I can understand your arguments for changing the UI for future expansion. Please also consider reducing the ‘cognitive’ gap when using u-points (or control points) Right now, with the new UI, one has to scroll to the controls which are “off page”. I often move the u-point around slightly, adjust a parameter slightly, move point around, while observing the effect. The current UI makes this kind of fine tuning very hard.
One option to consider is keeping the UI simple by hiding those controls not in ‘current use’, or not directly related to a control point, when a control point has been selected on screen. I maintain that when a user has selected a control point that’s what they intend to work on. The point becomes active and all the controls for that control point should be “ready to hand”. This would create a form of ‘modal’ interface, and that too has its downsides, but somewhere is a balance between having so many controls that they don’t fit on a screen and having just the ‘current working set’ of controls on screen.
Thanks for listening.
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Put me in the new UI camp. I love the new UI and hated the old one. Can’t wait for the same thing to happen in PL.
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Very much so. Not our decision in the end
Yes - that’s the “killer” reason for shifting the controls over to the palette … As an important example; it’s not possible, with the current LA controls, to fine-tune slider values with the arrow-keys (and there are, as of now, 30 votes from users requesting this capability).
John M
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So the big question for me is if this new UI that separates the control point from its controls finally provides for easy, fine control of the warmth, hue and tint? It frustrates me no end that I cannot adjust warmth in anything less than 160K steps - IF I’m really careful. And that business of dragging out into outer-space to get your finer increments is absurd. It’s like trying to start your car in top gear. I don’t want to upgrade from v3 until that frustration is out of the way for me.
Craig, please tell me something: I also got to know and love control points via Nikon Capture NX and that is why I shifted to PhotoLab when Capture NX2 became defunct but I find the selection with PhotoLab is not as clearly defined as it was with Capture NX2. Is that your experience too?
I posted this comparison some time ago:
I have been using Control Points since I went digital with a Nikon D200 ay back when. . I used Nikon Capture that was based on Control Points with the changes made on the image area. I have tried NIK 4 in Silver efex and Vivesa with control point commands along the side. Yes it is different, but if that change means more or better control of local adjustments for a point on the image, I am OK with it. I also use DXO PL4 Elite, and find using Control Points right on the image area to be difficult sometimes (and my monitor is 30 inches). For me the important thing is getting the sliders to work the best. I can adjust to the location change if needed.
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The ability to make quick adjustments right at the control point are one of the primary reasons I’ve bought and used the Nik plugins since they were still with Nik. It’s more intuitive. The tool and controls are right there at the spot you’re looking at changing. Not every adjustment needs the “power/fine tuning” you describe. You don’t have to have every tool appear in the point control. There have been two places to make adjustments for a very long time and it’s never been difficult. Just change the check box in the palette from “show or hide this slider” to “show or hide this function at the control point”. That way the user can limit their most used adjustments on the point interface and allow all the the rest and the fine tuning on the palette. It doesn’t take much “cognitive load” to know which functions are where, especially when it’s set that way by the user. You could always make them all off by default and have a preference toggle that turns them on for those that like them. A much bigger “cognitive load” is the fact that the different tools in the collection are getting interface changes incongruent with each other so now you have to remember how the U-points work in each separate tool rather than how they uniformly work in the collection as a whole. Being that the software is sold only as a collection the least you could have done when selling it as a full version upgrade would have been to upgrade the interface in each tool within the collection so that they were uniform.
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Hi Jeffery,
Welcome to the forum!
I understand your point of view, and changing habits are always something we, as humans, prefer to avoid . Sometimes, to evolve and lay down the future roadmap of a product, you have to change things which were put in place years ago.
But you have a strong point: speaking of a “Collection”, a user might expect (perfectly legitimate) to have access to, according to a dictionary, “a group of objects sharing some particular characteristic or theme that have been brought together…” Even if we may concur that the Nik Collection’s plugins do share a common DNA and some other characteristics, at the moment, they do not fully share their UX/UI. In an ideal world we’ll love to iron out those discrepancies on day one, but realistically it has to be done with incremental steps.
But again, I can absouletly feel your frustration and disappointment.
@StevenL I would add one comment, which I have raised elsewhere.
At the moment, it is very difficult to distinguish visually which of the tools in the palette apply to U-points.
It would be very useful if they could be “contained” as a group in a dedicated palette item.
I, for one, am very much looking forwards to this feature arriving in PL 
3 Likes