Almost unreadable overlay text in grid view

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Nick Kennedy

Nick Kennedy

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Hi,
I am having great difficulty reading the text over the thumbnails in grid view. The background colour can take one of four possible grey tones depending on the selection criteria. These grey tones are apparently unalterable by the user.

In the 'Expanded Cell Extras' it is possible to set four possible attributes. These are displayed in dark grey for the top two items and light grey for the bottom two. In particular for the bottom two, the contrast is so low that I have to peer really hard to make out what is written. There seems to be no way to alter the colour, size or font for this text.

Although the problem appears to be shared by a large number of Lightroom users no amount of searching on the web has yielded any solution.

Does anybody here have an idea how to improve the readability?

Cheers,
Nick K.
 
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Microsoft distribute a free app called Zoomit, which will magnify your screen when you type a hot key. That may help with the readability. So does changing the Font Size in Preferences, but that tends to make your interface spend too much real estate on text and not enough on pictures.
 
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Thanks for your reply, Hal.
I use a mac, which also has a magnifying glass function. But that's far too cumbersome a solution for me.
Under the Lightroom preferences I have the choice, under Interface/Font Size, of either small (Default) or large. Using either of these makes no difference at all to what I see. And I do restart Lightroom after changing from one to the other. Maybe this is a bug in my system? I'll examine that further because I seem to remember seeing a screenshot where there were more choices for the font size.
Regards, Nick.
 
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Nick Kennedy said:
I'll examine that further because I seem to remember seeing a screenshot where there were more choices for the font size.
Click to expand...

That screenshot you saw was likely from a Windows system, where there are indeed more options for the font size.

Perhaps your best bet on OSX would be to increase the thumbnail size of the grid, which will increase the font size of the cell info (but that still won't improve the contrast). That'll become a trade-off between legibility and preferred thumbnail size.
 
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No, the thumbnail size does not increase the size of the font used in the cell info, at least not after a certain point. Making the thumbnails much smaller decreases the font size, but once you are back at the true font size, making the thumbnails even bigger doesn't do anything anymore. A very big thumbnail will simply hold more text before it gets truncated.
 
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BTW, the font size setting in the Lightroom preferences is only for the side panels. The difference between 'small' and 'large' is not much, and it only has an effect on the width of things like your keywords. You do not get fewer lines in a panel if you change the font size from the 'small' default to 'large'.
 
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Thanks for all your comments.

The bottom line is clearly that there is currently no solution to the readability problem in Lightroom's grid cells.

But just to clear up any possible misunderstandings here are some observations and clarifications.
  • Jim's info, that there are more font size options under Windows than under OS X will save me much fruitless searching on this issue. Thanks.
  • His statement that increasing the cell size will also increase the font size in cells is, as Johan pointed out, incorrect.
  • Johan also correctly wrote that the font size options do not affect the font size in the cells. On my system its effect, if any, on the size of text in the side panels is so insignificant as to be indiscernible. I can post screen shots to substantiate this.
And this nostalgic gripe is not intended to elicit a response. It just reflects a mental state.
When Apple discontinued support for Aperture I bought Lightroom and after some considerable effort transferred my photo library there. Both systems have, or rather had, strong pros and cons. But on the whole it was for me a no-win, lose lose situation.

Cheers
Nick
 
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JohanElzenga said:
No, the thumbnail size does not increase the size of the font used in the cell info, at least not after a certain point.
Click to expand...

Which means that up to that "certain point", increasing the thumbnail size does increase the size of the font, yes?

I know, I'm maybe splitting hairs, but just like you Johan, I don't like it said that I've provided incorrect information when I don't think it is. Incomplete maybe, but not incorrect.
 
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Jim Wilde said:
Which means that up to that "certain point", increasing the thumbnail size does increase the size of the font, yes?

I know, I'm maybe splitting hairs, but just like you Johan, I don't like it said that I've provided incorrect information when I don't think it is. Incomplete maybe, but not incorrect.
Click to expand...

Yes, sorry about that. Because I have my thumbnails set to that 'certain point' already, I tried what happens when you increase the thumbnail size (because I was pretty sure that would not help) and noticed that indeed nothing happened. So I wrote that first. A bit later I realised that maybe making them a lot smaller would decrease the size, so I checked that too and changed my initial reaction accordingly. Perhaps I should have rewritten it completely, so that it didn't suggest that anything was incorrect, just incomplete.
 
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No worries, guys.....I probably got out of the wrong side of the bed today!
 
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