[Digikam-users] Easy downgrade?

[Remco Viëtor]

On Saturday 06 September 2014 07:18:06 Anders Stedtlund wrote:
> It does not work for me on openSUSE either. I have the same problem. I
> build from source so I can easily have multiple installations though.
> 
> I still use 3.5 for most of my work, I only use 4.2 to download images.
> Den 5 sep 2014 22:15 skrev "Wilkins, Vern W" <vwilkins at indiana.edu>:
> 
> >    I've been tempted to downgrade because 4.2 still doesn't work right 
on
> > fedora.  I've submitted bugs since 4.1 but I think they believe 4.2 
fixed
> > the problem.  The trouble I still have is in editing mode, not being 
able
> > to see the image at the correct size after resizing.  Seems the resized
> > image is always scaled to the original size, which makes things like
> > sharpening impossible.  Changing the %view to anything doesn't work
> > right...basically same bug that was first reported with 4.0 that seems 
to
> > be lingering forever but in this case it's probably fedora developers
> > because they did something to get around having to update so many
> > dependencies, especially opencv.

Indeed, preview (before/after) still has problems (and that's in both the 
version from OpenSuse 13.1 and a build from source), to the point it's 
useless for e.g. the refocus tool.

In addition, USM sharpening is behaving weirdly (again, in both the pre-
compiled and 'home-build' versions): I see a huge increase in image 
brightness after sharpening with fairly normal values (1,1,0 for instance). 
And the values I have to use for 3.5 give really ridiculous results 
(typical values I use in 3.5 are radius 30, strength 0.5, threshold 0-0.05, 
and yes, that radius value is high compared to other programs).

Also, there's again the automatic generation of previews, which was removed 
earlier after discussion in this list (not everyone has/can afford the 
latest 8-core CPUs).

And that is just in one of the more commonly used tools. I didn't even get 
to check out the other tools I tend to use...

So for now, I'll stick with 3.5. An alternative would be to change to 
another editor, and use digikam as a pure image manager.

Remco

P.S. Sorry if this sounds like a rant, but since several version I'm 
getting afraid to try the new versions, as there's often new bugs in 
established functions, and/or undocumented changes in behaviour.

Might it be better to introduce new funtionality less often, and have pure 
bug correction releases (e.g. versions like 4.1.1)?