Re: [Gimp-gui] User Testing Report

[Elle Stone <ellestone ninedegreesbelow com>]

On 05/12/2019 04:33 PM, Alexandre Prokoudine via gimp-gui-list wrote:
> On Sun, May 12, 2019 at 3:45 PM Elle Stone wrote:
>
> > Could you give an example or two in GIMP of what you consider "overly
> > complicated/nerdy" terminology?
>
> Standard Deviation in Unsharp Mask would be one such example.

You are right. The user wants the radius in pixels, and in GIMP to get 
to pixels the user has to multiply the value GIMP shows by two and add 
1, as the tooltip says, leaving the user to wonder why the algorithm 
doesn't just do the calculation and present the slider units in pixels.

The same is true for Selective Gaussian Blur and Unsharp Mask, with 
additional issues for the additional sliders, not to mention issues with 
actually using the sliders. For example, for many use cases for 
Selective Gaussian blur (eg blur sky, preserve branches and building 
edges), useful edge-preserving values for Max. Delta seem to be down 
around 0.030 on the provided scale from 0 to 1.000, difficult to dial 
in, difficult to fine-tune. The hover text for the "Max. delta" slider 
says "Maximum delta", which is not helpful.

> And don't get me started on options in tonemapping filters :)

I agree here too, though the "on-hover" text sort of helps if the user 
doesn't mind looking stuff up on the internet. Which really for these 
sorts of algorithms, learning how they actually work is a good idea.

My main complaints about the tonemapping filters is that they are slow 
to show previews, CPU-intensive, and image-specific in terms of results, 
sort of reduces the user to shoving sliders around to see what happens. 
But I'm guessing these issues are not specific to GIMP's implementation.

Best,
Elle