Please add navigation sliders to allow more precise movement within zoomed images.
I often have to scour digital image frames looking for dust spots from the sensor that need repaired. I’ve also recently started rescanning hundreds of rolls of film, so I spend more time using the repair tool than anything else, often at 200 to 400 percent.
Dragging the move/zoom box around to get to different parts within the zoomed-in image is fine for jumping around to a different part of the frame quickly, but not very efficient for trying to examine an entire frame for defects and correct them as quickly as possible.
Sliders would greatly improve the UI and usability of PhotoLab’s tools. Zoom to 100 percent or greater, examine and/or correct everything you see in the top left corner of the zoomed-in area, then start sliding the horizontal navigation slider over toward the right side of the image until you get all the way to the end. Then slide the vertical navigation slider down until you get to the next unviewed portion of the image and begin navigating horizontally again.
Clicking and dragging the move/zoom box is very clunky compared to the precise navigation sliders would offer. It’s slower because more mouse travel is required and it’s less efficient because it’s hard to move the box from left to right without it also drifting up or down a little. I’ve had to go back and redo photos several times because I missed one or more defects needing repaired due to the coarse navigation of the move/zoom box.
This seems like it should be a relatively easy UI tweak to implement and would greatly improve the user experience for everyone who spends time working on zoomed-in images.
Hi Billy, and welcome to the forum.
I perfectly understand your discomfort by dragging the “move/zoom” box. This box is intended for “quick jumps” from one area to the other, it’s not meant for tiny and/or precise movements inside your image.
But I have some good news for you: precise panning is already available in PhotoLab, you just have a few options:
while pressing the spacebar, drag your image around (directly in the viewer), and more specifically:
• if you have a trackpad you can just scroll up & down to pan inside your image (and pinch to zoom in/out)
• if you have a mouse, use the scroll wheel to zoom in/out and while pressing the spacebar drag your image to the desired area of interest…
@StevenL, I have just tried that out. With my version of Windows it is not possible to move the visible zoomed-in area of an image exactly one screen page down or sideways by simply moving it while holding down the space bar or using the mouse wheel at the same time, as Billy requested. In that respect, I don’t think his idea is bad at all. Or is there again a difference between Windows and Mac?
As said above, the mouse wheel zooms in/out. For panning, it’s the scroll with the touchpad that does it (while pinching will zoom in/out when using a trackpad).
Having said that, even on Windows it works as described (in the video below I have tested exactly your configuration). With the mouse wheel the image zooms in/out, while click & drag lets you move left/right or up/down.
Steven, I know how to move the image around in all directions while holding down the space bar. For my modest requirements this is also sufficient, but what Billy wanted was probably rather that one can move the picture pixel-exactly around a screen side down and afterwards from left to right, in order to be able to scan the picture in strong enlargement strip for strip for errors. And that with as few hand movements as possible and without the danger of accidentally changing the height of the section, for example, when moving horizontally. I thought this would also work by pressing the space bar and simultaneously rotating or right/left clicking the mouse wheel, but unfortunately this doesn’t work.
