This questionnaire is an attempt at establishing a baseline among darktable/Ansel users in regards to the value range of the chroma sliders in the 4-ways tab. Once we have some data regarding the most common usecases, it can be used to verify whether the actual ranges are valid and useful, or if a change in a particular direction might be in order. Please notice that we are looking for the most common scenarios.
If you have a moment to fill out the survey, that’d be great!
What is the basis of this…seems strange…many of the DT default ranges are set to “sensible” limits but you can right click and enter higher values and save that as a preset to be essentially the new default… chroma is at 50 but could go higher though not likely needed often???
Like I said, this is just to get a sense of what people’s general use cases are. For myself I tend not to go over the middle of any of the chroma sliders pretty much ever. That means that it is a bit harder to effortlessly and precisely pick the desired value. If a significant amount of users fall under the same category, perhaps those values are not so sensible after all, and maybe should be changed. Meaning, if going over the middle (or 2/3, 3/4…) of any particular slider is only necessary on rare occasions, perhaps it makes more sense to have a narrower value range, increasing ease of use for the majority of cases, and type in those more extreme values manually when needed.
Or perhaps my assumption is not true at all, and people’s use cases are so varied, that it makes sense to keep things as they are. In any case, we will have learned something.
However, in order for this to be useful, we need a large enough sample, so please do fill it out if you have a moment to spare.
Thank you for making the survey.
I am a bit confused about the values, though. The first question shows options in a range of 0 - 1%, yet the slider has a range of -50% to +50%. Do I just “map” the 1% in the question to 50% (i.e. max standard value) of the slider?
How about negative chroma?
Or do I misunderstand something completely?
Those are the current values of the module. They go from 0% to whatever their current max is. There is no negative chroma, according to AP.
I’m talking about the chroma slider, not the luminosity slider, in case that’s what you are referring to. Just to be clear, this survey is about the chroma slider in the 4 ways tab. We are talking about color grading. We’re interested in the chroma values for global offset, shadows lift, highlights gain and power, not the linear chroma sliders on the main tab. Those are fine.
Ah, that makes sense now, thank you 
I was in the master tab and misinterpreted the german translation of the global chroma slider 
Thank you, one of the questions could lead to error. It’s now fixed.
No worries, it was my fault. I updated the survey. It’s likely what was throwing @priort off as well.
Much appreciated - I took the survey and now it made perfect sense
Using the whisker or the keystroke modifiers for fine/macro adjustments are likely a better way to go to dial in a precise value if you are not wanting to enter it with a right click…seems like further restricting the range to somehow improve sensitivity along the slider is a more restrictive solution to the problem…but I guess you will find out…… You can also use a virtual slider over the image and just dial it in visually… program a shortcut to say alt +move right to increase chroma by just holding down the mouse button and dragging it across your image….
The whisker is very helpful if you are in the ballpark. Not as much if you are slightly far off, though. And, although shortcuts are incredibly useful, they are out of the scope of the survey. What we are trying to find out is if the value range of the sliders are in line to most people’s use of them. If people almost never use say the upper third of the slider, lowering the max will not restrict, but enhance the user experience imo. If people do use the full range, then the values are well chosen. We’ll have to wait and see.
Well you need this right I think they are meant to be LCh values and so to theoretically be able to select a certain rgb value equivalent you need that…
Maybe I need to check but I think this is correct
at least overdoing it results in strange artifacts… and plenty of complaints
That too, but that issue depends on the selected hue. What may be valid for reds, will totally ruin the picture for blues. That aside, we’re trying to verify whether the default ranges are sensible or not. The issue you describe can be solved by not pushing the slider so much to the right hehe
Interesting poll… I’ve been quite happy with the current arrangement of the 4 way slider, but now you mention it I realize I rarely use more than half the slider range. I’m still happy with it though. Filled in the survey. At first I though the question was about the linear chroma grading sliders in the master tab. With these, I’ve been kown to use the full range, so I wouldn’t want them to go any smaller. I like my colours 
My primary use is one of two. I use the picker to neutralize a cast in the selected tonal adjustment and then make subtle changes to that or I will add 180 degrees to the hue to enhance the cast in that range. I rarely add a color on my own and 95% of the time I start from the picker value and the chroma is just moved up or down to suit my taste so for me the range really never comes in to play but I can appreciate others will use it differently …
Hi again! Sorry to nag you, but it would be really great to get a larger sample in this survey. If you haven’t filled it out, please do so. It would be really helpful.
Thank you!
@paperdigits would you consider pinning this post for a couple of days, so people can find the survey more easily?
I have zero interest in contributing to Ansel, sorry. I don’t really understand what we’re going to get out of this anyway.
Wow, that’s some friendly moderating. Never mind Ansel. Let’s talk darktable:
Say a given slider goes from 0-100%. Let’s also assume that a large portion of users only use said slider between 0-15% most of the time. The slider’s value range between 15-100% in this case is useless. To make matters worse, most users, most of the time have a hard time picking their desired value, since the desired clickable area is so small. In this case, I would say, changing the default span would make things better most of the time for a majority of users. For more extreme corner cases, the value would have to be typed in manually.
Let’s assume the opposite. Most users most of the time pick values between 0-100%. In this case the value range is well set and no change should be applied.
Since our individual experience is subjective, the best way to figure this out would be through a survey. That’s why I asked you to pin it, so we can have a more sizable sample. With those results both the Ansel and darktable dev teams can make an informed decision whether it makes sense to change the default values or not.
Just to be clear, I have no affiliation to either project. I use Ansel, because I agree with its approach, and it suits my needs. I mentioned this issue to Aurelien, and he asked me to gather feedback before reevaluating such a change, which is what I am doing. I have no intention to pick fights on internet forums with you or anyone else because you use this or that application, or because there’s bad blood between developers. You can either help me (and the rest of us users along the way), or not.
You’re asking me to spend my personal free time doing something I don’t want to do. Perhaps another mod can pin it for you. I’ve given you an honest answer, i don’t want to spend my time doing that. If you can’t understand that, I don’t know what to tell you.