"Explore" filter mode

Currently the "Edit" mode for filters has a couple things that complicate using it to simply explore a filter and see how it works. It might be nice to have either an Explore mode or specific Preference settings to affect these issues.

First, when you enter edit mode the filter Settings revert to the default preset, but it would be nice to be able to enter edit/explore mode with a copy of the active Settings rather than the defaults so that you're seeing how the image you were just looking at was actually created.

While editing a filter it's difficult to play with Settings and see other than the final Result. When you select Filter Controls, it also selects the Result preview. It would be nice to be able to play with the Settings while a component other than Result is selected. Perhaps the Settings values could become an always available "tab" rather than being mutually exclusive with the controls for a component.

It would be very nice to be able to edit Control Components in place (i.e make the Control component nodes "live" so that you can just reach out and frob them directly rather than selecting them and then going to the particular property you want to change. Perhaps changes made in this way could affect the "current" Settings value rather than the permanent default value for the Control.

It would be nice to have an option to either hide (or dim, or otherwise de-emphasize) Components that are not active currently (i.e. not affecting the Result) due to being Switched or otherwise having no effect.

Just some thoughts after playing around.

G.

From there you can move to the portion of the filter that has a control and move it. Then you can see in real time what is changing about the filter that leads to the effect or texture...
When moving thou just make sure you always have "FILTER CONTROLS" checked to see the presets and controls from the main window...

Cool, thanks for the tips.

G.