Re: When a photographer uses eog -- some observations

[Felix Riemann <friemann svn gnome org>]

Am Sonntag, den 06.07.2008, 00:53 +0200 schrieb DigiSus:
> Dear developers
> 
Hi Marcus,

>  From a recent photo weekend workshop I needed to browse, select, delete 
> and sort >2000 photos. I thought it might be interesting to developers 
> to learn about my experiences when doing this with eog 2.22.2 (ubuntu 
> Hardy Heron).
> 
> First of all, it is possible to handle large amounts of photos with eog. 
> :-)
> 
Good to hear that. :-)

> But some tasks could be more efficient and some tasks are not (yet) 
> possible.

Certainly.

> My observations are strictly from an end-user point of view as 
> I am a hardcore user and not a developer. Sorry, the email got so long 
> and thanks for bearing with me. :-)
> 
Not a problem so far. :-)

> 
> 1) The ever-recurring task is to look at each photo (in fullscreen, 
> sometimes 1:1 view) in a folder and decide about deleting it or moving 
> it to another folder. Currently, eog provides only the deleting option 
> with an irritating confirmation question:
> - A preference tick box to suppress the confirmation question after 
> deletion would save a click with each deletion. That is many clicks. ;-)

The dialog should only come up if you use the keyboard, as its intention
is IIRC to avoid image deletion by accidentially hitting a key. The
checkbox would opposite that, but I guess we could talk about that if
necessary. Maybe just as a session-wide property, so the dialog comes
back the next session?

> 2) Going to next/prev image. I read that the mouse wheel for going 
> next/prev was removed, but I do not know why and whether it is possible 
> to get it back. It would be very helpful.
> 
This was taken out as it was a bit buggy [1] and was seen as a usability
issue [2].

[1]: http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=333595
[2]: http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=331645

> Another elegant and visually appealing way could be: When the mouse 
> touches the right or left border of the screen (in F11 mode), the 
> next/prev photo is shown.
> 
Now, this sounds indeed interesting. Beforehand we would have to
implement image loading feedback in fullscreen [3] and then need to
decide how this should work if sidebar or collection are at the side of
the screen, though. You should probably create a feature request in our
Bugzilla for this as it could get lost otherwise.

[3]: http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=340743

> 3) In F11 mode, I can zoom in/out of a photo or see it in 1:1 or 
> windows-fit size. Unfortunately, this setting is not remembered when I 
> go the next/prev photo. So, I have to zoom again... Maybe, make it a 
> preference tickbox to remember zoom setting or not.
> 
Yes, I think there is already a feature request for this in our
Bugzilla. Could be doable I guess.

> 4) The image collection pane and EXIF information are essential features 
> for this work and I am glad eog provides them. But the properties/EXIF 
> window takes too muich screen space which I need for the image. And it 
> is overloaded/confusing. Could something similar to the Ctrl-i feature 
> from gthumbs be implemented that shows the image/EXIF information in a 
> small box -while- in F11 mode? I put the properties button in the icon 
> bar but it does not show during F11. This way, I see no way to see EXIF 
> data during F11 mode...?
> 
> 5) As to the EXIF information itself: There is no need to write down all 
> the words "aperture value", "exposure time", etc. because the values 
> (f/3.2 or 1/125) speak for themselves.
> 
> Here is a use case proposal to think about: When the user presses "i" in 
> F11 mode, a small semi-transparent box with two lines of text should 
> appear (and stay with subsequent photos) showing image information. In 
> preferences, the user can select how much information should be shown: 1 
> or 2 lines. Pressing "i" again switches off the info box.
> 
> Example:
> 
> (1st line)
> P416724.jpg - (13/437) - 2736x3648 pixels - 3.2MB
> (2nd line, optional)
> f/5.6 - 1/250s - 85mm - ISO 100 - 05.07.2008 17:13
> 

I am not sure if this is possible with the way the current image viewing
widget works. Generally this sounds/looks pretty nice. If possible one
could leave the actual layout of the two lines up to the user.

> BTW: The value currently given as "Focal length" is not what 
> photographers expect to see. They need the value in [mm] given under 
> Details|Camera|FocalLenghtIn35mmFilm.
> 
Looks like this got lost during the sidepane->dialog conversion:
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=313676#c18

> 6) Judging photos has a lot to do with aestethics. It would be helpful 
> if eog would support that by being in the background as much as possible.
> Good start: In F11 mode, the background around the photo is black. But 
> the image collection bar is system grey as is the top icon bar.
> - Could the pane have black background as well around the thumbnails, so 
> that only the thumbnails are visible?

I'm not sure if this is currently supported by the GtkIconView widget.

> - Could a small/middle/big sizing of thumbnails made in the preferences?
> 
> 7) Often, adjacent photos need to be compared. Could a 2-up or even 4-up 
> view in F11 mode be implemented that show 2 simultanesouly next to each 
> other or even 4 in the four quadrants of the screen? (Next/prev would 
> then mean moving 2 or 4 photos at once.)
> 
Currently not, as EOG is primarily written to show one image at a time
(in one window). Especially the image displaying widget will get in your
way here. Although, one could probably implement this as a plugin (using
it's own displaying widget). 

> 8) Having a GUI preference to choose where the collection pane should be 
> shown (bottom top left right) would be helpful. For example, sometimes 
> the pane makes sense to be at the bottom, but sometimes more efficient 
> use of the screen space for the photo makes sense and then the pane 
> should be vertical on one side.
> 
We actually had this for a few releases during the 2.19/2.20 development
cycle. But the functionality itself was not fully bug free. For example
the toolbar could overlay the collection in fullscreen. So, the
preferences GUI elements were taken out again before the 2.20 stable
release. Nonetheless you can still move the collection "inofficially" by
modifying the /apps/eog/ui/image_collection_position GConf key.

> 9) The last two are not crucial but may win over many people who work 
> visually:
> 
> 9a) Could we have a smoother scrolling in the image collection pane? 
> Perhaps it could be done with the mouse hovering over the pane? Moving 
> far to the right scrolls fast forward, more to the middle scrolls 
> slower. (think iPod scrolling...)
> 
I'm not sure I fully understand how you're trying to scroll here (not an
iPod user).

> 9b) slideshow. To have it look professional (e.g., when showing photos 
> to a larger audience with music in the background, etc.) it would be 
> nice to have fading between the photos, in 3 variants: Fade via black, 
> fade via white, fade directly into next photo.
> 
I don't know if the current image viewing widget (yes, once again) is
powerful enough for this. It might be worth keeping an eye on the
experiments Claudio is currently doing with a possible replacement using
the Clutter library.[5]

Bye,
Felix 

[5]: http://www.gnome.org/~csaavedra/news-2008-05.html#D05