[Digikam-devel] Comments on Light Table

[Luis De la Parra]

On Thursday 24 May 2007 08:35:14 Gilles Caulier wrote:
> 2007/5/23, Luis De la Parra <lparrab at gmx.net>:
>
> Hum, are you tested to use Drag & drop between thumbbar and preview panels

yes. I've tried Drag & Drop.. and I think it's a good thing and should 
definitively stay as an option... but I think it is too slow...


> This mode is usefull for pro photograph witch have a lot of very similar
> pictures taken with a brief of time between shots. In this mode the
> pictures are loaded automaticly on Left and Right panels when you clic on a
> thumbs or when you use Page up / Page down. But i let's Arn to explain
> better this mode : he has the orginal idea to implemente it.

still don't see the point. If you have tons of photos, I *could* probably 
understand if you said "I want to scroll/review them all quickly".. but for 
that you would have to jump two pictures at a time: showing picture 1 and 
2..then clicking page down and showing 3 and 4 and not 2 and 3 like it is 
now.  
like I said.. I don't really have anything against this feature and I can just 
ignore it. Still.. I don't see the point, though.

> Personaly, i'm always using the mouse and never (excepted for some case)
> the keyboard. Toogle between mouse and keyboard is a waste of time to work.

Yes. I do use the mouse most of the time too.. but it does depend on the task 
you are doing.
If I have for example 25 pictures I just shot and want to quickly review them, 
trash the "no no"s and select the better ones from the rest, then I want to 
1)click once to open the first picture in the preview and then
2)without looking at anything else or reaching for the mouse, just do a 
quick "right arrow" or "page down" to change to the next one
3)if I really don't like the picture, quickly hit "delete" and have it 
dissapear and the next one automatically loaded
4)If I really like one, just hit "4" to give it 4 stars   ( I really don't 
want to grab the mouse, move it over the picture, do a right-mouse click and 
select the rating from a sub-menu
5)repeat from 2) untill I'm done. 

If you have good keyboard shortcuts (which I think Digikam doesn't have at the 
moment), the keyboard can speed things a lot. specially if you have to do the 
same thing for a lot of images (reviewing, sorting bads out, rating)

I think Digikam as a photo management and photo-editor is a very very very 
powerful application, and I really like it. and I think it has pretty much 
all features I want (at least the big part of them =), but some actions 
just "take too long":
*rating is too difficult (submenu in popup-menu), or just one click on the 
sidebar, but then you don't see the metadata.
*if you want to see exif AND iptc, it takes at least two clicks. 
*the editor is very powerful, but the most-used options should probaby be 
available on a panel and not only on the menu. one of the items in my 
whish-list is cropping and small rotation (horizon correction) directly on 
the image and not trough a dialog in the menu. (cropping is 'almost' there.. 
it's only missing "doulbe click on the selected area to commit the crop".
clicking and dragging up/down to rotate the photo a few degrees is still 
missing.

ok ok. so this is degenerating to a  "the few things I find annoying about 
digikam"-mail, which is really NOT my intention. All I wanted to do with this 
mail was to tell you that I find the LT great, and that I would find it even 
better if the navigation was easier.

> > instead of opening a new window. maybe it's just me, because everyone
> > seems
> > to find this ok (same goes for the editor)
>
> This is my first approach to develop Light Table, but... After some tests,
> i have seen than embedding LT on Album GUI will introduce some problems :

yes. I know this is easier said than done.

>
> Here i use Xinerama with 3 flats screens to work on pictures. It's very
> very very powerfull. I have one screen for album gui, one for LT, one for

wow.. 3 flats.  that sound like fun!

>
> Well, to be homogenous with the rest of digiKam : image editor, preview
> mode
> >from album gui, image plugins preview mode (noise reduction tool for ex.),
>
> etc. All use the middle mouse button to move preview contents.
>
consistency is good... "usefullness" is better:
the LT does not use the normal click for anything, so...
> use the pan icon widget on the right bottom corner of editor and preview
> panels ?
yes, and it's great. If I want to go from one corner of the photo to the 
other, the pan-widgets is wonderful. If I want to just move a few centimeters 
from where my mouse currently is.. dragging a bit is faster.

> Thanks again (:=))))

you're welcome!  I really think digikam is __by far__ the best photo-app for 
linux, and feature-wise is really very advanced. the only negative point I'd 
give it, is that (for me) some of the great features are more difficult to 
use than they have to.

Regards.
luis