I have to do lots of colour corrections and sometimes colour grading, and Shotcut, while not as powerful as especially DaVinci, is pretty good at this. Actually, implementing DaVinci’s capabilities (including the steep learning curve) would be overkill for Shotcut.
However, since Shotcut has a separate Colour UI mode (just like DaVinci), it might make sense to display all colour-related filters when switching to this mode instead of the standard or customised filter selection in the Edit mode. Ideally, it would be possible to switch between both of them in the Colour mode.
What you are asking for will not be done because I do not agree with it. These are not modes and are certainly not strict. They are customizable workspaces that you can switch between easily and quickly. “Color” does not need to be for color work.
Now, to address your needs is already very simple:
Press F to open/raise the Filters panel and focus its search field
Start typing “color” - you may not need to complete it
Press Down to start selecting one
Press Enter to choose one
All of the filters have keywords you can see at the bottom, and I have added some categories to many of them.
First of all, my suggestions aren’t meant to be disrespectful. In my experience (and I’ve been involved in several Open Source and Open Content projects for two decades) sometimes ideas or suggestions that seemed crazy, impossible to achieve, or undesireable at a certain point in time might be picked up by someone or a development team and turn out to be good. So, if I’m making suggestions, I hope to seed something that may or not be sowed at a later time – and for the good of the project!
Back to the topic: I agree that mentioning Audio was stupid. I only think that Shotcut should automatically display the Audio filters in the Audio mode on the left side of the filters dialogue.
As for videos, I still think that the colour-related filters should be displayed first in the Colour view (perhaps even active), especially the colour wheels (Colour Grading), White Balance, the HSL filters etc. Users would still be able to access other filters with a simple switch in the UI.
As I noted in the title, this is about usability and a smoother user experience. I’d even volunteer to create a UI prototype for my idea with Qt Designer or any other tool. I’d also volunteer to create a set of all colour-related filters that can then be used for the mentioned purpose.
As regards coding, I don’t think this will take a lot of effort.
I have on the road map to add Recent and Most Used selections to the Filters menu. I can add Color and make it the default in the Color workspace. Likewise, Audio workspace can default the menu to Audio.
Another thing I thought about would to provide a general way you can detach a filter from the Filters panel into owns panel, possibly tabbed or moved just like any other panel. Changing any value would add the respective filter if not already added; otherwise, it only shows the first of its kind. Then, the default layout of various workspaces could include some of them. That will be a challenge and require a feasibility study.
These are good ideas. Here’s another – related – suggestion, even though this might justify a new topic. What about adding an export/import option for customised workspace layouts? I currently can create a new layout and save it, but this can’t be transferred to another machine or OS. I tried to find a relevant file, but didn’t succeed (Linux or Windows).
That way, users could simply create, say, a colour correction or a colour grading layout, transfer it to another computer, regardless of the OS, and import it into Shotcut. Thinking further ahead, users might be able to upload and share their particular layout with others somewhere. After all, this would only be an XML file, wouldn’t it?
Layouts are saved to config data. The FAQ explains where that is per OS. Another page on the web site explains all of the configuration keys for that data.
For the next version, I added a drop-down menu button to Video filters menu that adds items like 10-bit, Color, GPU, etc. I wanted some of these for a new feature. The filters menu now defaults to Color filters in the Color workspace, and Audio filters in the Audio workspace.