Some thoughts on improving the Tone Equalizer UI about darktable HOT 4 OPEN

But as a user, I am most interested in spreading the mask's values from black to white without over- or underexposing.

As a user I sometimes want to only affect the lightest or darkest part of of the image so I move and adjust the mask to that section.

Have you watched Boris's videos on tone equalizer? He has some use cases that broadened my horizons with respect to what tone equalizer is capable of.

I don't want to lose features (flexibility and capability) in the interests of making tone equalizer easier to use, especially when ease of use is often in the eyes of the beholder and their workflow.

For my part I find tone equalizer quick and easy to use. Mostly I use presets and the masking isn't an issue unless I didn't do a good job in camera or got a really challenging scene. For the cases where I want to spread the mask over the entire range I have a lua script that uses the auto pickers to accomplish it. It's good for 90+% of the images I use it on, so every once in awhile I have to do it by hand.

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I remember a vivid discussion about exactly this feature, either in the github issues or in the forum at pixls.us.

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Found it here: https://discuss.pixls.us/t/should-the-mask-adjustments-in-tone-equalizer-be-improved/41374
There are also concrete UI suggestions later in the thread. Maybe continue the discussion there?

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Not going into detail - again, this has been explained multiple times here and on pixls - the nodes and the maths behind the simple and advanced UI are identical, they use an identical spline curve.

Also, it does matter how the nodes are positioned and the spline function is calculated as the pixel calculating math depends on it. So it's not about implementing a UI mockup.

BTW this is also noteworthy for the nodes in the color equalizer ...

So any change in the UI must be done with above considered.

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