[Digikam-devel] New Filterdialog option "Preview"

[Andi Clemens]

Hi,

I have added a new option to the filterdialogs: a "Preview" checkbox.
Right now the filterdialog works as follows:
Some filters take a lot of computation time, even in PreviewMode. For this, 
some of the filter dialogs have a "Try" button, where you can set your 
settings, zoom in, move the preview area around and watch the results by 
pressing the button.
But somehow this is a strange way to use those filters. If you move the 
preview area for example, you have to hit "Try" all the time. Also when 
changing the preview mode, you have to hit the button. This looks like 
a "broken" dialog to me. When I'm in preview mode, I expect the preview to 
update automatically, not by hitting a button.

So here is the new behavior:
In normal mode, you can set your settings, zoom in and position the preview 
area where you like to have it. Then you can hit the "preview" checkbox like 
you would with the "Try" button. The difference is that now every change in 
the filter settings will affect the preview, like hitting "Try" all the time.
I think this behavior is much more natural and is also used in Photoshop or 
Gimp.

Unfortunately i18n is frozen, so this change (if accepted) will never hit the 
KDE3 version of digiKam...

I'll provide a patch here, it fixes the filterdialog behavior in general. 
Additionally the sharpen filter will be fixed with the patch, too. So you can 
actually use one filter with the new behavior.

patch:
http://digikam3rdparty.free.fr/misc.tarballs/temp/filterdialog_previewmode/previewmode(%20+%20sharpenfilter).patch

demo video:
http://digikam3rdparty.free.fr/misc.tarballs/temp/filterdialog_previewmode/filterdialog_preview.mpg

What do you think? For me it is a usability improvement, maybe we can use it 
in further digiKam releases?

The preview checkbox can be placed elsewhere of course if this is no good 
place...
Also the preview mode buttons can be disabled if checkbox is not set, so it is 
visually clear to the user that the normal view mode will not affect 
anything.

Andi
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