Histogram Features

Got an idea for something that SharpCap should do? Share it here.
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'+1' posts are welcome in this area of the forums to indicate your support for a particular feature suggestion. Suggestions that get the most +1's will be seriously considered for inclusion in future versions of SharpCap.
CityObserver
Posts: 13
Joined: Sat Jun 03, 2017 11:33 am

Re: Histogram Features

#11

Post by CityObserver »

Amazing! Thank you — looking forward to testing it. Alas it’s a bit grey and wet today...
CityObserver
Posts: 13
Joined: Sat Jun 03, 2017 11:33 am

Re: Histogram Features

#12

Post by CityObserver »

Thanks! I tested out the interface changes -- and it's really helpful! Thank you!

Unfortunately, I'm getting a lot of crashes on the new builds, some on launch. So I've not been able to test much on the new builds.

Thanks again.
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admin
Site Admin
Posts: 13173
Joined: Sat Feb 11, 2017 3:52 pm
Location: Vale of the White Horse, UK
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Re: Histogram Features

#13

Post by admin »

Sorry to hear that you are getting crashing issues - have you beeen able to send the bug reports for the crashes or does it just close without offering to send the bug report? Keen to get as many bugs as possible sorted out to enable me to finally release 3.1

thanks,

Robin
CityObserver
Posts: 13
Joined: Sat Jun 03, 2017 11:33 am

Re: Histogram Features

#14

Post by CityObserver »

Sometimes it sent the bug report, other times it didn't. Mainly it did offer to send the bug report -- but unfortunately I'm only connected to the internet about 50% of the time I use SharpCap. I sent them when I could.

That said, I had a successful evening using the latest build of the 3.1 beta last Thursday and I didn't have any issues with crashes. It seemed pretty stable. So the bugs seem to be fixed! Thank you!

I've now tried the histogram with touch and mouse and while the change of sensitivity speed off the histogram image makes a big difference, the histogram is still a little tricky to control. This is because the bars end up so close to each other when stretching it's hard to pick, judge and move them. As I said, it's much better with the fine control off the histogram, but I ended up several times with a stretch that placed the bars very close together.

As a solution, the best, least complicated I can imagine is a zoom/scale feature to provide the flexibility and control: a slider that allows you to "zoom in", pulling apart the yellow level lines, giving you more space. Something like:

Full Zoom Out (as is currently the standard) -- this is where my level bars were when trying to stretch the image the other night.
FullZoomOut.jpg
FullZoomOut.jpg (157.74 KiB) Viewed 1935 times
The zoom slider control is next to the other buttons on the histogram. As you can see I added a bit of a scale in the background of the histogram so that you would have a sense of the zoom as you move the slider. These would be fainter than here, I've made it clearer on this to demonstrate.

Here it is zoomed In slightly:
Zoom In.jpg
Zoom In.jpg (147.98 KiB) Viewed 1935 times
I would imagine the zoom focuses on the last bar clicked on. So if you last moved the Mid Level adjustment bar, it would centre and zoom in on the Mid Level adjustment bar.

Maybe you have a better idea! But that's the best I could think that cause the least work. Effectively it's the same as changing the sensitivity again, but with a slider. If it makes it easier still, it could even just be stepped increments of zoom.

One final thing -- the colour histogram sensitivity change, I couldn't get working by holding the shift button.

On the main histogram I did notice that you had to press shift and the select. You couldn't just drag, then press shift in the middle of a drag to change speed. Either way I couldn't get the colour sliders to move at a slower pace at all.

When I mentioned the numbers before on the colour histogram -- I was thinking that the numbers would be a permanent addition so that you could type in the number for repeatability and accuracy. The sensitivity is difficult to get accurate, whereas if you could just type in the number like on other sliders it would be easy. Plus -- when tapping the sliders to increase or decrease, there is no readout as to what number you are on.

An example here:
histogram.jpg
histogram.jpg (147.74 KiB) Viewed 1935 times
Thanks again! Hope you don't mind the UI suggestions! The changes you've made have been super helpful even as they are.
pjwack
Posts: 24
Joined: Fri Jan 05, 2018 11:52 pm

Re: Histogram Features

#15

Post by pjwack »

Re: the live stack histogram
This is a very useful feature. Adding the shift-drag option was great. 2 suggestions
1. Allowing for curves adjustments would be useful. I realize this can be done in processing, but the ability to do real-time adjustments
is beneficial for live.
2. I noticed that the histogram controls do not automatically reset when a new session is started (i.e., after reconnecting the camera and/or moving to a new target)
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