Skip to main content
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
March 7, 2017
I believe it's the very same issue that's been plaguing the app for many iterations already. 🙂 
Inspiring
March 7, 2017
Yup same here.
alanterra
alanterraAuthor
Inspiring
March 7, 2017
So, I repeat, if we knew which bug Adobe said it had fixed, we would be less outraged (Perhaps just as annoyed, but not speaking quite as emotionally). The "New features summary" for this release says that it has fixed a bug, which links to a bug report, which Adobe staff have equated with this bug.
Unfortunately, you're all right. The tone curve panel is still having issues. The team has acknowledged the continuing of this bug. Here's the latest bug report and thread that the team is following: Tone curve still broken in LR CC2015.8 | Photoshop Family Customer Community
If you could all go to that thread and post your respective System Information and other relevant details or at least, click the "Me Too" button up top, that would help the bug stay at the top of our priority.
Melissa
Rikk Flohr_Photography
Community Manager
March 7, 2017
The bug associated with this post and thread is still open at Adobe. The bug to which the Blog Post refers and to which Alan subsequently refers is different. 
Rikk Flohr: Adobe Photography Org
OmerVC
Known Participant
March 7, 2017
Just updated to 2015.9 and the tone curve problem still exists with Sierra. Apparently Adobe is perfectly OK taking customers' money and providing faulty products. 
alanterra
alanterraAuthor
Inspiring
March 7, 2017
So, as far as I can tell, whoever was put in charge of this bug at Adobe didn't actually read this post. If you go to the blog entry that announces this update, it links to a Twitter post 

which, as far as I can tell, is complaining about a different problem. (I am honestly not sure what problem it is referring to: "The cursor disappears, but you can see where it end up.  I did it down and it worked fine.")

If you go to the link on this forum that announces the update and click through the "update details" you find a link that has nearly the same text as above but goes to a different bug report on Adobe's other Lightroom Forum:

Fixed erratic cursor movements when working on the point tone curve.

I presume that this bug report ("I can't make a minor adjustment to any point, it's  a massive jump requiring a lot of touchpad movement.") describes the same bug as the Twitter post. But then Adobe staff posted there pointing to this post, saying that the team is following this one as the main place to report bugs with the tone curve.

So, as far as I can tell, Adobe acknowledged this bug, but filed it with a link to a different bug, and then (I presume) fixed that bug. Since I have no experience with the "erratic movements" I can't tell you whether that bug was fixed. However, Adobe did not fix the bug I reported at the top of this chain, 3 months ago. 

Perhaps, instead of just acknowledging bugs, Adobe could make a public posting of what the bug is, then those of us who have spent the time trying to make our bugs repeatable and clear, could check Adobe's description and make sure it corresponds to our problem! And then Adobe's testers could actually test against the reported bug!
Inspiring
March 7, 2017
I'm step ahead. I have capture one trial and I'm getting used to it.
Participant
March 7, 2017
Agreed, I'm so close to packing my metaphorical bags and heading over to Capture One full-time...
henriko72124252
Inspiring
March 7, 2017
Still not working for me either. I also still have the same terrible experience as you show in the video. What a disappointment. I wonder how they test, or not. How can it be left like this, when reported fixed, again. Please, Adobe... This is looking rather unserious.
Wondering what's up with Adobe Lightroom's desktop division. It sadly seems to not be working very well. I wish them the best of luck to get this turned around for the better, whatever that takes - more resources, better management, better ideas, who knows... 
The missing bug fixes (now repeatedly), continued bad performance and lack of any real progress lately is not what I had hoped for. Does the team and/or code need a major shuffle/rewrite? I'd like to stick with Lightroom, but need more than this to stay put.
alanterra
alanterraAuthor
Inspiring
March 7, 2017
Rikk, can you commit to actually testing whether this bug is fixed when Adobe releases its next version Lightroom CC? Two releases that purport to fix this bug but do not is shameful.