Need Multiple Adjustment or Effect Controls active simultaneously

[Tango]

As a new paint.net user, I'm trying to replace Microsoft Photo Gallery (aka Windows Live Photo Gallery) so I have access to the more powerful features of paint.net.

 

One unfortunate hitch I've run into, which for me is a major limitation, is the apparent (and surprising to me) inability of paint.net to have multiple adjustment windows open at once. If I want to adjust both Brightness/Contrast and Hue/Saturation, for example, I cannot have both those controls open at once so I can iterate between them. I have to close one before I open the other.

 

For example, when I adjust Shadow/Highlight (using Tanel's plugin that I recently discovered), I find a frequently need to make small adjustments in contrast and then (for whatever reason) find that those adjustments have increased color saturation and I need to dial back Saturation a bit. With Photo Gallery I have all three (as well as others like White/Black Point, Hue/Saturation, etc.) all simultaneously accessible to iterate and fine tune as I need. With paint.net I need to close each Adjustment window in order to open the other, which is really awkward. To make matters worse, each time I click OK on one of the adjustments, the image is re-rendered, so to dial back a previous adjustment, I either have to do possibly several levels of Undo and then try to remember what I did before (unfeasible), or do the reverse adjustment (with possible unnecessary loss of quality).

 

This sounds like an architectural limitation of paint.net, perhaps owing to the Plugin model, but it would sure be nice, at the very least from a useability standpoint if any number of Adjustment and/or Effect control windows could be simultaneously open for iterating between any of them that I may want to. Any comments from those familiar with the inner workings?

 

While I'm on the subject, there are two other user-interface issues with the Adjustment/Effect windows that IMHO need some changes: One is counter-intuitive and the other "merely" annoying.

 

1. If, for example, I bring up the Brightness/Contrast control and set Brightness +50, OK that, and then bring it up again (perhaps after having made some other changes but not necessarily), it comes back up set by default at +50. That suggests to my intuition that I could undo my previous +50 by dialing it back to zero (which actually would be nice per my earlier comments) but that's not how it works. It has by default added an ADDITIONAL +50 brightness. If that's the way it has to work, there should be no memory of my earlier change and it should always default to 0 (or neutral/no change values).

 

2. These adjustment boxes all appear by default in the middle of the picture, almost always guaranteeing that I'm going to need to move it to see the effect. It should (a) appear somewhere off to the side and/or (b) the last position of each window should be recorded (in an .ini file or registry or whatever) so as to reopen in the last placed position.

 

[IRON67]

29 minutes ago, Tango said:

If I want to adjust both Brightness/Contrast and Hue/Saturation, for example, I cannot have both those controls open

 

Try Boltbait's Photo Adjustments

[BoltBait]

44 minutes ago, Tango said:

This sounds like an architectural limitation of paint.net

 

Yup.  You've answered your own question.

 

If you had a specific list of effect sliders you want combined to a single effect, I could probably code it for you.

 

But first, try installing my plugin pack and look at the following effects:

 

Adjustments > Hue / Saturation+

Effects > Photo > Combined Adjustments

Effects > Photo > Sharpen Landscape

[Ego Eram Reputo]

3 hours ago, Tango said:

1. If, for example, I bring up the Brightness/Contrast control and set Brightness +50, OK that, and then bring it up again (perhaps after having made some other changes but not necessarily), it comes back up set by default at +50.

 

Yup. Values you input are retained when you reopen the plugin (within the same paint.net session). Hit the Reset button to restore the default settings.

 

3 hours ago, Tango said:

2. These adjustment boxes all appear by default in the middle of the picture, almost always guaranteeing that I'm going to need to move it to see the effect. It should (a) appear somewhere off to the side and/or (b) the last position of each window should be recorded (in an .ini file or registry or whatever) so as to reopen in the last placed position.

 

Often requested. Rick (paint.net developer) is aware of this.

[Tango]

On 2/15/2017 at 3:11 PM, BoltBait said:

If you had a specific list of effect sliders you want combined to a single effect, I could probably code it for you.

Thanks, appreciate that offer! Let me take a look at your "Combined Effects" and also Tanel's "Basic Adjustments." They definitely help, but for sure I'll have others to add to the list, including at least the following that don't seem to be on either of those:

- Color Temperature (that you were kind enough to code for me recently on a separate thread)

- Shadow/Highlight Recovery (I downloaded the standalone plugin for that)

- White Point and Black Point (built-in--though still scratching my head trying to understand the separate input vs. output controls on that)

in addition to the various that are already on one or both of the previous two plugins (Brightness, Contrast, Tint, Saturation).

 

What these have in common is that I can see iterating between them as a change in one may cause me to reevaluate a change in another. Haven't used "Noise Reduction" but since Shadow Recovery is often accompanied with more Noise, I'll have to play with that. Can I take a rain-check on the offer, so I can fine-tune my request list over the next month or so after playing with this a little longer with real photos?

[BoltBait]

Be sure to download my latest plugin pack.  I just published an update that put the Temperature slider into my Photo > Combined Effects plugin.

 

Another good effect of mine is called Adjustments > Hue / Sat+

[Tango]

OK done! Downloaded current Combined Effects, played with it, and even felt ready to provide my wishlist for it! I posted that here as a response to the BoltBait's Plugin Pack thread.