Question / Help Am I blind, or how do I change image opacity?

[Videophile]

Hey,

Added an image that I need to change the opacity on.

I couldn't find that in the properties or filters of the image source.

Is it not in yet? If so, how could I achieve the same effect?

 

[ThoNohT]

Right click, filters, add colour correction filter, set opacity.

 

[Videophile]

Right click, filters, add colour correction filter, set opacity.

Thanks.

That's unintuitive.

 

[Subaru071]

Thanks.

That's unintuitive.

Not that unintuitive as you think it is, but thanks for the tip!

 

[Videophile]

Not that unintuitive as you think it is, but thanks for the tip!

If you found this post, I assume you googled how to change opacity. This means you didn't know as well and it is unintuitive.

 

[Sapiens]

Programs as complex as OBS and OBS Studio can't be completely intuitive about every feature you don't know how to use.

 

[Videophile]

Programs as complex as OBS and OBS Studio can't be completely intuitive about every feature you don't know how to use.

Oh trust me, I know. :)

 

[KillyMXI]

I came here from Google.
It feels like the current way it works is dictated by programmer convenience or computational efficiency rather than any UX considerations. Just make it as an additional effect inside one of existing filters rather than a separate entity and call it done. Looks like some filters have intersecting features for similar reasons.

When I'm looking for opacity - I could not care less about color correction.
I'm thinking about blending/composing instead. And the only relevant filter - Image Mask/Blend - requires extra moves (requires a picture mask - can't use the full image in the absence of that.)

 

[LastofAvari]

I came from Google too. In my mind opacity is not associated with color correction, but maybe that's just me.
Anyway, thanks for the topic. It helped.

 

[fog_wild]

Created an account just to say : this is ridiculous, unintuitive.

 

[FerretBomb]

Just to chime in.
The reason I believe this is handled in Color Correction is that Alpha is just another (color) channel, same as red, green, and blue. It is manipulated with the same operations as the other three. That's the reason most professional suites refer to color as 'RGBA', and website hex codes include leading or trailing alpha; the transparency of a pixel is encoded into the color value.

It may be confusing to people who haven't dealt with digital color much. But it's pretty standard to have alpha (including adjustments) grouped with color when you do.

 

[Raven_Singularity]

Just to chime in.
The reason I believe this is handled in Color Correction is that Alpha is just another (color) channel, same as red, green, and blue. It is manipulated with the same operations as the other three. That's the reason most professional suites refer to color as 'RGBA', and website hex codes include leading or trailing alpha; the transparency of a pixel is encoded into the color value.

It may be confusing to people who haven't dealt with digital color much. But it's pretty standard to have alpha (including adjustments) grouped with color when you do.

Alpha is not part of a colour, it is opacity. It explicitly cannot change any aspect of the colour! Hue, Saturation, and Brightness define a colour (or RGB amounts if you prefer), not Opacity/Alpha. RGBA is how video memory stores things, but that doesn't mean it should be coded into the GUI that way! "Opacity" should not be hidden in something called "Colour correction". Opacity is not correcting any aspect of any colour, it has zero impact on colour values.

It's in an entirely unintuitive location. I also found the Blend filter (the closest title to what I wanted), but the opacity slider on that one does nothing without setting up an additional image beforehand. Then like others I was forced to web search for a solution, because none of the other filters had anything to do with my objective.

There should obviously be a filter named "Opacity"! You only need one of these filters for the entire filter chain, there shouldn't be redundant Opacity sliders in every different unrelated filter! That's absolute nonsense. The entire point of a filter chain is you can apply various filters one after the other, building off the previous effects. Jamming unrelated functions into a single multi-purpose filter is idiotic design. Filters should contain the absolute minimum number of items possible for that one task, and nothing else.

Edit:
The easiest solution is to rename the filter from "Colour correction" to something representing what it is actually doing, such as "Colour adjustments". Then everyone will be able to find it, no web searching needed.

 

[Raven_Singularity]

Apparently I can't edit my post now. A better title would be "Adjust Colour/Alpha".

 

[FerretBomb]

Light, pigment, and the resulting hue all contribute to resultant color. Opacity definitely plays a significant part in all of that.

The short version is, computers handle opacity the same way they handle any color channel.
And traditional-media artists will add water or other thinners to adjust the opacity/strength of the ink, paint, and dye they use on a surface, in much the same way.

It remains a logical grouping.

 

[aspiers]

Created an account just to say that this is unintuitive, regardless of whether it's logical. People are having to google for the answer and are finding this thread; that should be a clear indication that the UX has room for improvement.

 

[LiliaTheSuccubus]

I always knew it was in the filters, but I googled hoping there would be a better way to adjust it on the fly rather than have to go through extra steps to access it. Maybe there's a plugin that adds sliders.

 

[photoshopeando]

Also came from google. And also find it a little hard to figure out, but it's not the only area in OBS which is not exactly intuitive.

Anyway, at least I found the answer Thanks.

 

[Snö]

Logging in to an account I apparently made several years ago just to add on:

No. This isn't intuitive at all whatsoever. I understand what FerretBomb is getting at, but just because it makes sense to a programmer doesn't mean it makes sense. Computers count from ZERO - if you have 16 of a thing and ask a computer how many you have, it may just tell you there are "15" of the thing.

As an artist, Alpha HAS NEVER EVER EVER EVER AT ALL been EVER considered part of the color AT ALL, PERIOD. It is not how light works, it's not how paint works, it's not how our eyes work, and it's not how artists conceptualize color. It's ONLY how computers CALCULATE color from the otherwise flawless RGB color space.

AT BARE MINIMUM, the feature should at least say so in its name that it impacts opacity too, because personally, I conceptualize transparency as a transformation. That is, my intuition was to look for int in the "transform" menu, because the intent is to TRANSFORM how the image looks, not to "correct" its color, which was otherwise fine.

So yeah no, it's not intuitive to put opacity in something called "Color Correction" and we all seem to be unanimous -1 on this.