Accessibility
Siderea works with the keyboard, with VoiceOver and with the display settings of macOS. This page lists the shortcuts, what is announced, which settings it follows and where the limits are today.
Keyboard
Every command in the menu bar can be reached without a pointer. The shortcuts below are the ones the menus show. To change one, open System Settings → Keyboard → Keyboard Shortcuts → App Shortcuts and enter the menu item with its exact name. The single keys under Keys that need the focus belong to a control and cannot be changed.
With Keyboard navigation (System Settings → Keyboard) or Full Keyboard Access (System Settings → Accessibility → Keyboard) on, Tab moves between the controls of a window. When you open another workflow step, the focus moves into its content, so you do not have to tab through the toolbar again.
Menus
File
| Command | Shortcut |
|---|---|
| Open Image… | ⌘O |
| New Stack… (opens step 3) | ⇧⌘N |
| Review Frames… (opens step 2) | ⇧⌘R |
| New Project… | ⌥⌘N |
| Open Project… | ⌥⌘O |
| Add Frames to Project… | ⇧⌘I |
| Close Image (closes the image in front; the help or settings window closes itself; in Frames, Analyze and Stack, which do not show the image windows, the window itself closes, not the image behind it) | ⌘W |
| Save Project | ⌘S |
| Save Project As… | ⇧⌘S |
| Export… (opens step 7) | ⇧⌘E |
Edit
| Command | Shortcut |
|---|---|
| Undo | ⌘Z |
| Redo | ⇧⌘Z |
In a text field the keys undo the typing first. In the steps Frames, Analyze and Stack they act on the project, in the other steps on the image, see Undo in the project.
Image
| Command | Shortcut |
|---|---|
| Open in GraXpert | ⌥⌘G |
| Load GraXpert Result… | – |
| Stop Waiting for GraXpert | – |
View
| Command | Shortcut |
|---|---|
| Workflow step 1 to 7 | ⌥⌘1 to ⌥⌘7 |
| History | ⇧⌘H |
| Zoom In | ⌘+ and ⌘= |
| Zoom Out | ⌘− |
| Fit in Window | ⌘0 |
| Actual Size | ⌘1 |
| Pixel Crosshair | ⌥⌘P |
| Loupe at Center (Analyze step) | ⌥⌘L |
| Move Loupe (Analyze step) | ⌥ and an arrow key |
| Auto-Stretch | ⇧⌘A |
Window (the image windows are not macOS windows, so these commands are how you reach them)
| Command | Shortcut |
|---|---|
| Next Image Window / Previous Image Window | ⌥⌘→ / ⌥⌘← |
| Minimize Image | ⇧⌘M |
| Move Image Window | ⌃⌘ and an arrow key |
| Resize Image Window | ⌃⇧⌘ and an arrow key |
| Move Image to Desktop | the submenu lists the other desktops |
| Show desktop 1 to 9 | ⌃⌥1 to ⌃⌥9 |
Frame (the menu follows the open step)
| Command | Shortcut |
|---|---|
| Frames step: Move to Lights, Darks, Flats, Bias | ⌃⌘1 to ⌃⌘4 |
| Frames step: Exclude from Stack / Include in Stack | ⌘E |
| Frames step: Open as Image | ⌘↓ |
| Frames step: Show in Finder | ⌘R |
| Frames step: Remove from Project | ⌘⌫ |
| Analyze step: Previous Frame / Next Frame | ⌘[ / ⌘] |
| Analyze step: Play / Pause | ⇧⌘P |
| Analyze step: Exclude from Stack / Include in Stack | ⌘E |
Stack
| Command | Shortcut |
|---|---|
| Cancel Stack (works from every step while a stack runs) | ⌘. |
Help (while the help window is in front)
| Command | Shortcut |
|---|---|
| Siderea Help (from every window) | ⌘? |
| Back | ⌘[ |
| Forward | ⌘] |
| Find… | ⌘F |
⌘[ and ⌘] are Previous Frame and Next Frame in the main window and Back and Forward in the help window; the window in front decides. In the help window ⌘+ and ⌘− still zoom the image of the main window, not the help text; pinch on a trackpad to enlarge the text, and swipe left or right with two fingers for Back and Forward.
Siderea → Settings… opens with ⌘,.
Buttons
| Command | Shortcut |
|---|---|
| Apply (a module's parameters) | ⌘Return |
| Start Stacking / Build Masters | ⌘Return |
Return alone only confirms the value in a field, so a module is never applied and a stack never started by accident.
Keys that need the focus
These keys belong to a view and work while it has the keyboard focus (click it, or press Tab until it has the ring). They never take a key from a text field, the Speed slider or a menu.
| Where | Keys |
|---|---|
| Table or preview of the Analyze step | ← / → previous or next frame, Space play and pause, X leave the shown frame out of the stack or take it back |
| Loupe in the Analyze step | Esc closes it |
| Image (zoomed in) | Arrow keys, Page Up, Page Down, Home, End scroll |
| Image with the pixel crosshair | ⌥ and an arrow key move it by one pixel (⇧⌥ by ten), Esc removes it |
| Frames table | Return opens the selected frame as an image |
| Handle between tool panel and canvas (Tool Panel Width) | ← / → narrower or wider |
| Comparison Divider of before and after | ← / → move it by 1 % |
| An entry of the master library | Space selects, Return renames, ⌫ asks whether to delete it |
| A desktop or a master while you rename it | Return keeps the name, Esc leaves it as it was |
| The note of a session | Tab leaves the field (⇧Tab goes back) |
Dialogs
Return presses the highlighted button and Esc cancels. The start dialog's Continue Last Project is the default, and Done closes Sessions and Calibration and Manage Sessions; Esc closes both too. A question that would throw something away never has that choice as its default: when you remove a desktop, Return cancels while Discard and Remove is selected.
VoiceOver
- Step bar. Each step is read as "Step n of 7", with its progress while it runs, done when it is, and the stack finished or the stack failed until you have seen it. The selected step is marked as selected. When you open another step, VoiceOver announces it and the focus moves into its content.
- Announcements. Siderea speaks when something finishes that you did not wait for: Processing… and Ready in the status bar, a stack that ended (finished, failed or cancelled), Analysis finished, Cache cleared, Export finished, Frame report exported, the result of Locate Missing Frames…, and the error line under a module's controls when the live preview fails.
- Dock icon. A stack that ends while Siderea is in the background bounces the Dock icon once and shows a badge (a check mark or an exclamation mark) until you come back, see Stacking. A mark on the number of step 3 stays until you open the Stack step.
- Night chart. The chart is read as a whole (the number of lights and how many are marked); each point is read with the frame's name, its value and Marked or Excluded. VoiceOver's audio graph and chart rotor play the frames in the order they were taken, one series per group. The Analyze step shows the same frames in its table.
- Histogram. It is read with the values of each channel, and its scale (linear or logarithmic).
- Image. The pixel crosshair reads the position and the values of the pixel. Sliders such as the comparison divider and the width of the tool panel are adjustable with VoiceOver's adjust gesture.
- Lists and grids. The cells of the session overview and the calibration matrix, and the entries of Manage Sessions, are read with their session, column and contents, with Warning in front where a warning mark is shown. The entries of the master library and the desktops offer VoiceOver actions (Rename, Show in Finder, Delete…, Remove Desktop…).
- Buttons that cannot be used say why where it matters: Start Stacking, Apply and Continue Last Project give the reason in their tooltip and as a VoiceOver hint.
Display settings
Siderea follows Increase Contrast, Reduce Transparency and Differentiate Without Color from System Settings → Accessibility → Display. What each one changes is described in Display and accessibility. Secondary text reaches a contrast of 4.5:1 and the outlines of controls 3:1 on the surfaces they sit on, in the Light and in the Dark color scheme. A state is never told by color or dimming alone: the groups of the night chart differ by shape too, and marked frames are diamonds.
Under Siderea → Settings… you choose the look yourself, see Settings:
- Color Scheme: System, Light or Dark. It applies at once.
- Text Size: 100, 115, 130 or 150 %. Text, rows, bars, buttons and columns grow together; it takes effect after a restart.
- Sheets can be resized. Sessions and Calibration, Manage Sessions and the dialog that removes a desktop can be dragged larger or smaller; in a small sheet the content scrolls instead of being cut off.
- Scroll bars follow Show scroll bars in System Settings → Appearance (Automatically based on mouse or trackpad, When scrolling, Always).
What does not work yet
- The frame report as PDF has no tags. The text can be selected and copied, but the PDF has no structure, language or title that a screen reader could use, so the reading order is not guaranteed. Export Report therefore writes an HTML page next to the PDF, with the same content as a web page with language, title, headings and tables with named columns, and a CSV that lists every file of the stack with its values. The HTML page and the CSV are the accessible versions of the report; use them with a screen reader. See The frame report.
- Grids are labelled cells, not tables. The tables of the Frames and Analyze steps are macOS tables, with sorting and selection. The session overview, the calibration matrix and the lists of Manage Sessions and the Progress panel are read cell by cell and row by row with a label that holds the column; VoiceOver does not offer its table navigation there.
- The text size does not follow macOS. macOS has no system-wide text size for Mac apps; Siderea has its own Text Size setting (100 to 150 %), which needs a restart. It scales the main window; the title bar of the image windows, the help pages and the settings window keep their size. The images zoom, and so do the help pages (pinch).
- The help pages are dark. The color scheme applies to the app; the bundled help window and the website keep their dark look.
- The area behind the image is dark in every color scheme, on purpose, so faint nebulosity is judged against black. The frame report is always white paper.
- The pointer shows more than the keyboard in a few places. The values under the pointer are the pixel readout; the keyboard has the pixel crosshair. A few shortcuts are shown only in tooltips, which need the pointer; all of them are in the tables above. A point of the night chart is selected by a click; with the keyboard use the table or the frame keys of the Analyze step.
- Dragging has a menu twin. Image windows are moved and resized with the menu Window, frames are moved to a group or session with the menu Frame, and files are opened and added with the menu File, so no drag is needed.
- Image windows are not macOS windows. The system's window commands do not reach them. Use the menu Window of Siderea, see Image windows.
- Single keys cannot be changed. Space, X and the arrow keys of the Analyze step work only with the focus in the table or the preview; the menu Frame has the same commands with modifier keys, which you can remap.
If you find something that does not work with your setup, please tell us which step and which assistive technology you use.