lightcraft/docs/ui-parity.md

UI parity

Last reviewed: 2026-10-10 · Last updated: 2026-10-11 · Change: minor (Alt/Option-drag slider previews) · Target: Adobe Lightroom Classic 15.5 / Lightroom 9.6

How LightCraft's interaction compares with Lightroom's: views, panels, tools and handles, modifier keys, shortcuts, zoom, context menus and feel. Rows for individual menu items and shortcuts live in parity-checklist.md (sections Y and Z, Classic keys); this page is the assessment and the notes that don't fit a row. Visual reference for agents: plan/lightroom/ (local, gitignored; 10-observed-ui.md and screenshots).

Measured counts (2026-10-10)

• 226 engine commands (crates/engine/src/cmd/, 30 modules) and 143 UI commands (UI_COMMANDS in crates/ui-egui/src/menus.rs, 73 with a shortcut) plus 10 language commands; 23 secondary shortcut bindings (ALIASES, crates/ui-egui/src/shortcuts.rs); a keymap editor.
• 122 develop controls plus 10 indexed templates (crates/develop/src/controls.rs).
• Checklist: menus 95.3% (86 in-scope rows), desktop shortcuts 94.4% (81 rows), Classic extras 48.2% (82 rows), measured by recounting parity-checklist.md.
• 31 panel modules (crates/ui-egui/src/panels/), 26 context-menu sites.

Assessment by area

Area	Target	LightCraft	Ready	Main gaps
Layout and views	Lightroom: grid / detail / edit; Classic: Library, Develop, Map, Book, Slideshow, Print, Web modules, filmstrip, panels	Lightroom-style single window: Photo Grid, Square Grid, Detail, Compare, Survey (≤ 48), Before / After, People, quick slideshow, second window, filmstrip	75%	no Classic module switcher (by design) or output modules; dark theme only
Develop panels and sliders	Light, Color, Effects, Detail, Optics, Geometry, Lens Blur, Calibration	every global slider; scrub, double-click reset, Alt-drag previews where implemented	80%	Lens Blur, Calibration panel depth; slider feel (acceleration, fine Shift-drag) unmeasured
Crop, Upright, transform handles	handles, aspect lock, angle, overlays (O / ⇧O), guided Upright	✅ all of them; overlay cycle on ⇧O	85%	crop opacity of cut-out area (15.5)
Masking tools	brush (A / B, flow, density, auto mask, pressure), linear / radial, range masks, AI masks, pins	brush, linear, radial, colour / luminance range, add / subtract / intersect / invert, masks panel, pins	60%	brush live preview (#517 / #518), no pen pressure, no depth range, AI masks, Feather / Edge controls (15.5)
Remove / heal	content-aware remove, heal, clone, visualize spots	heal, clone, auto source, visualize spots, red / pet eye	65%	content-aware (patch synthesis) remove, generative remove, detect distractions
Zoom and navigation	Fit / Fill / 1:1 / 2:1 … 11:1, Navigator, spacebar pan	Fit to 800%, pinch zoom, pan, Navigator-like	60%	original-pixel detail at 100% with a mask overlay or soft proofing (no zoom window there; Detail, Before/After, Compare and Reference have them; P0 gap LR-VIEW-ZOOM)
Library culling and metadata	ratings, flags, labels with keys, painter, keywording, metadata panel, filter bar	ratings / flags / labels and advance, keyword list and sets, keywording box, metadata fields, smart albums, filter bar	85%	painter tool, quick collection, some Classic keys
Shortcuts	Lightroom desktop and Classic keymaps	Lightroom-desktop keymap with Classic additions, editable	85%	deliberate differences below; no Classic keymap layer
Context menus	everywhere	26 sites (grid, filmstrip, albums, folders, keywords, masks, presets…)	70%	unaudited against Lightroom's menus item by item
Text fields	native editing behaviour	custom text field (LR-BEHAV-TEXTFIELD)	70%	IME and selection edge cases
Accessibility	VoiceOver / Narrator, keyboard navigation	AccessKit: sliders, buttons, dropdowns, section headers announce	30%	canvas tools pointer-only; not audited with a screen reader
Feel and responsiveness	GPU-interactive sliders (15.3)	≤ 16 ms slider budget on GPU; background renders	75%	colour NR at half resolution, 100k-photo grid test
UI/UX overall			~70%	estimated, weighted by use (develop and library 60%, tools 25%, rest 15%)

Remaining: 40–70 h (zoom detail 8–15 h, brush and masking feel 8–12 h, accessibility audit 10–20 h, Classic keymap layer 4–8 h, context-menu audit 4–8 h, text-field and IME polish 4–8 h). Output modules and AI tools are counted with their features in target-app-parity.md.

Shortcuts

Compared plan/lightroom/06-shortcuts.md (desktop part) with our bindings: command specs in crates/engine/src/cmd/, UI_COMMANDS in crates/ui-egui/src/menus.rs and secondary bindings (ALIASES) in crates/ui-egui/src/shortcuts.rs. no_conflicting_bindings (same file) fails when one key fires two actions.

Fixed (M16.1): added Lightroom-desktop keys as secondary bindings for existing commands — ⌘D Select None, ⇧E Export dialog, Space Toggle zoom, ⇧M Create Version, ⇧X Reject + advance, ⇧U Unflag + advance. ⇧Y fired both Before/After Split and the History panel; History lost the binding. W and ⇧⌘I also fired the engine command under the UI command that wraps it (a no-op error); the UI command now wins.

Deliberate differences (our key → Lightroom desktop key) — each is a conflict with another binding we have:

Action	Ours	Lightroom desktop	Why
Pick flag	P	Z	Z = toggle zoom (Classic convention); P is the Classic pick key
Photos panel (left)	⌘⇧L	P	P = pick
Expand/collapse edit sections	⌘⌥1–5	⌘1–6	⌘0 = Zoom to Fit, ⌘1 = Zoom 100 %; Geometry lives in the Crop panel
Histogram	⌘⇧H	⌘0	⌘0 = Zoom to Fit
Square Grid	⇧G	(none; ⇧G = Guided Upright)	Guided Upright is a button in the Crop panel
Export dialog	⌘⇧E (+ ⇧E)	⇧E	⌘⇧E is "Edit in Photoshop" there; no external-editor command yet
Crop overlay cycle	⇧O	O	O = mask overlay; ⇧O (mask colour / overlay orientation) unused otherwise
Create Version	⌘⇧S (+ ⇧M)	⇧M (Windows: Ctrl+⇧S)	—
Select None	⌘⇧A (+ ⌘D)	⌘D	—

Library culling (KEYC-RATING): 0–5, 6–9 and P/X/U reach egui on macOS even when displayed in the native menu (adapted from PR #261; issue #283). Shift+0–9 applies and advances once; Shift+P picks and advances in Photo Grid / Square Grid and retains Presets elsewhere. See library shortcuts for the verified Classic mapping and regression coverage. Remaining Classic gaps: rating [ / ], flag cycling and filter-bar keys.

Alt/Option-drag previews (issue #937): hold Alt (Option on macOS) while dragging an Edit slider, before or during the drag. Exposure, Highlights and Whites show highlight clipping (black, clipped channels in their colour, white where all three clip); Shadows and Blacks show shadow clipping (white, black where all three clip). Sharpening Amount shows greyscale, Radius and Detail the detail band sharpening amplifies, Masking the mask (white = sharpened). Releasing the key or the slider brings the photo back; the edit and its history are unchanged. Not yet: Noise Reduction, mask range sliders and the Masking panel's local sliders. On Linux desktops that move windows with Alt+drag (KDE Plasma's default, also some GNOME / Xfce setups) the window manager takes the drag first: set its window-move modifier to Meta.

Still missing / broken:

• No command yet: F1 help (verify the rest of the old list: full screen, settings, stacks, visualize spots and merges have commands now).
• H opens Remove; Lightroom also uses it (Classic) to hide pins — pins toggle from View → Show Mask Pins.
• ⌘M / ⌘H / ⌘Q / ⌘W rely on the platform window defaults (unverified).

Revision history

Date	Change	Summary
2026-10-11	minor	Alt/Option-drag slider previews (clipping, sharpening) and the Linux window-manager note
2026-10-11	minor	Zoom row: Compare and Reference get zoom windows; what remains of LR-VIEW-ZOOM is overlays and soft proofing
2026-10-10	major	Created: measured command and shortcut counts, assessment by area, estimates; moved the shortcut conflicts section here from the checklist