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alanterra
Inspiring
December 8, 2016

P: Tone curve still broken in

  • December 8, 2016
  • 95 replies
  • 3002 views

The bug that I reported here has not been squashed in the latest Lightroom.

The problem is hysteresis in the response of points on the tone curve control when following mouse movements.

If you drag a point (say, the white point) in the Tone Curve and move it back and forth, after a few drags you will not be able to put the point back in the upper right corner of the response panel.

The underlying cause is that (a) the point does not move directly with the cursor (LR hides the cursor so you can't see this, but when you let go of the mouse button you will see that the cursor does not align with the point, (b) as you drag, the relationship between the cursor position and the point changes, when the point hits the right edge of the box and the cursor continues to the right, then when you move the cursor back to the left it does not "pick up" the point at the same location that it "left" the point, and (c) the (invisible) cursor is limited by Mac OS to stay on the screen.

The work-around (which is not perfect), is to make your Lightroom window smaller so that there is more space beyond the right edge of the window, so the hysteresis effect doesn't show up as quickly. If you have 2 screens, you can move the Lightroom window to the left screen, which effectively solves this problem.

I assume that this problem occurs for all four edges of the Tone Panel, but because the Tone Panel is on the right hand side of the Lightroom window, the effect is seen mostly when trying to move a point on the tone curve to the right hand side of the panel.

If this is not clear, let me know, and I'll see if I can post a video.

[Edit -- I just confirmed this bug for the top edge of the Tone Curve as well.]

This topic has been closed for replies.

95 replies

Inspiring
February 21, 2021

You are correct, I must have been using the parametric curve, while I thought I selected the points curve while playing around with it. I now have it working on both platforms, thank you for getting back with me!

Bob Somrak
Legend
February 21, 2021

*amberleighhh 

The issue of the cursor not following the point is fixed in 10.1.1.  Are you sure you are using the points curve and not the parametric curve.  The point curves are activated by the second thru fifth circles on the top of the curve.

M4 Pro Mac Mini. 48GB
Inspiring
February 21, 2021

Hello, I am experiencing this issue & I have the latest LR CC & Classic software (10.1.1 & 4.1). I am not able to adjust the ends of my tone curve. I'm using the latest update on a MacBook Pro.

Inspiring
June 12, 2017
Not fixed.
Mac Pro (Late 2013)
3.5 GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon E5
32 GB 1866 MHz DDR3
AMD FirePro D500 3072 MB

CC up to date
Lightroom 15.10.1
Camera Raw 9.10.1
Rikk Flohr_Photography
Community Manager
May 28, 2017
The fix was in 6.10. You need to update. 
Rikk Flohr: Adobe Photography Org
Inspiring
May 27, 2017
still not working...
MacBook Air (13-inch, Mid 2012) Sierra LR6.9
Rikk Flohr_Photography
Community Manager
April 24, 2017
[Alt/Opt] also reduces the sensitivity of the movements to 10% of normal for precise adjustments. 
Rikk Flohr: Adobe Photography Org
Participant
April 24, 2017
Hello there again! I wrote about the inaccuracy with the curves a little bit higher up in the thread. Anyway,  I am very glad to see that the curves are now much smoother than before. Thank you!

I am a little frustrated however. There is now an even more annoying "problem" going on with the curves. After the update that fixed the previous problem, making a point only by clicking on the curve now moves the entire curve if you're not clicking exactly on the line. Before the update, the curve didn't move when creating a point by clicking on it, it stayed "natural". This is good (for me) since I sometimes make several points, and then only make minor adjustments with ONE of the points.

Great news! I now discovered that the curve do not move when holding "alt" while clicking on it, "jumping around happily". I guess I will get used to this. I know that it's impossible to make the curve stay "natural" in photoshop like this though. I think it's a bit weird that details like this gets overlooked. Or am I the only one who do not want to let my mouse decide where the curve lands? Mouses aren't that accurate for a human to be able to nail the exact percentage of the curve with one click.

I really think this is something that should be "fixed" in photoshop as well. It's so inaccurate for minor adjustments it's impossible for me to use.

Sorry for being a bit dramatic.
Rikk Flohr_Photography
Community Manager
April 18, 2017
@grasse,

Are you talking about the small vertical oscillation when dragging horizontally? 
Rikk Flohr: Adobe Photography Org
Legend
April 18, 2017
It's an erroneous warning, you can ignore it. Details here: https://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom/kb/compatibility-warning-with-edit-in.html