Re: F-spot first impressions

["Dotan Cohen" <dotancohen gmail com>]

On 03/07/06, Morten Siebuhr <msiebuhr gmail com> wrote:
> I'm currently beginning to use F-spot as my only photo-management
> application (formerly used Google Picasa under Windows XP). Being a
> developer myself, I like getting first-impression feedback from users,
> so here's my F-spot first impressions. Most of it is actually bugs,
> but I've included my whole list none the less. I've also added some
> random ideas for random improvements. I've been using the version in
> Ubutnu Dapper on a 1 GHz laptop.

I'm also a recent convert. I think that you're really going to like
Fspot and the community.

> Import dialog:
>
> - When I create a new tag under "Attach tag:", it doesn't get attached.
Simple workaround is to create the tag beforehand. But I'm sure that
you though of that. I've no Fspot at the moment (can't compile) but if
anybody can confirm this then I'll file the bug.

> - With a long list of tags, it gets quite scroll-intensive to get to
> the "New tag"-option - why not have an extra "Attach new tag: <text
> box>" below the "Attach tag:"? (With semantics like the semi-secret
> "t"-shortcut.)
There is a patch which lets the user resize the tag icons. This makes
for much less scrolling:
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=321025

> - I have a NTFS/Windows-partition mounted, which makes it show up in
> the import dialog - it kills f-spot if I select that by accident -
> could there be a safe-guard against trying to import mounts which does
> not seem to be flash-cards?
I'll look for a bug and file one if there is none. How is the
partition mounted, ro? Can I see your fstab entry?

> Browsing:
>
> - When adding comments, the text box stays in focus, seemingly no
> matter what key pressed. <shift>-<tab> does it, but why not simply
> <enter> and/or <esc>?
> - When looking at individual pictures, <space> goes *backwards* in
> time and <backspace> goes forward. That seems very awkward for me, and
> backwards of every other photo program I remember using.
We're on our way towards the Big Crunch! That's entrophy for you. We
remember the future but not the past because the thermodynamic arrow
of time is facing 180 degrees from the psychological arrow of time. It
was bound to happen sooner or later.

> - When looking at pictures in full screen, the <left> and <right>-keys
> does not work until either <space> or <backspace> has been used.
Again, if this can be confirmed then I'll file a bug.

> - When in the overview-mode, why is the bottom-most pane consists of a
> "add photos"-button, a "F-spot"-label (identical to window title, by
> the way) and a zoom-control. I understand the zoom-control, and the
> add-button, but why not use the remaining space to show some useful
> information ("Currently browsing 973 photos of total 10534 in
> collection")?
That would be nice. I agree that there is a lot of wasted space in the
interface.

> - The tags-browser is great, but it could be better. - A lot of space
> is wasted on showing a big thumbnail/icon and a little bit of text.
> Why not do like Rhythmbox' "Queued songs", showing a the title (which
> would be the tag name) in large font, and showing album and band name
> (eg. number of photos with the tag) with a smaller font. Personally, I
> think it would be really nice if the timestamp of the earliest and
> latest photo with the tag could be shown in a sensible way.
See above regarding patch.

> - All photo dates is seemingly shown in GMT, not local time.
Have you recently had windows on your computer? You may have set the
system clock to UTC by accident.

> Photo manipulation:
>
> - Where is the undo-button? Currently it seems the photo has to be
> removed from the collection, delete the extra files created and
> re-import the picture...
No, you see the dropdown box where it say "modified"? Change that to
"Original": there's your pic. It's actually much better than redo, as
you can keep both the original and the modified photo.

> - I really fancy Picasas cropping and rotating - when selecting a area
> with the crop-tool, the to-be cropped part is grayed out, giving a
> stronger visual clue about what the result is going to look like. And
> Picasa has s crop-preview... The rotation-tool is able to do
> increments less than 90-degrees, which makes it usable. (Perhaps a
> "straighten"-option where you add two points along a vertical or
> horizontal line in the photo, and then rotate it accordingly?)
File a wish. Sounds good.

> - When color-correcting, it takes an instant too long to make the
> changes show, which makes it somewhat irritating to use. And why can't
> the values be re-adjusted later?
>
>
> Export to folder:
>
> - When "rescale pictures" is selected, the exported pictures are
> rotated correctly. If it's not, the pictures are not rotated. Took
> some time to figure out ;-)
> - When "rescale pictures" are selected, small pictures get up-scaled,
> which (at least to me) seems counter-intuitive. I use it to enforce a
> maximum size of my pictures, not the other way around :-)
> - When exporting to a folder, the progress-bar immediately hit 100%
> and stay there until the export is finished.
> - The exported pictures are way smaller than the originals, measured
> in file size (~2.1 MB -> ~1.3 MB). As I doubt Canons DSLRs are *that*
> bad at JPEG-compression, what data is discarded? (And where do I set
> the JPEG compression factor?)
This seems important. Can anybody confirm?

> - The export-sub menu has a "Export to Web Gallery"-option (which I
> *guess* refers to Gallary2), but there's also an almost identically
> labelled option in the "Export to Folder"-dialog. Potentially very
> confusing.
There is definete need for documentation on this.

> That said (well, written), I really do like and enjoy F-spot as-is.
> Keep up the good work, everybody!
>
> --
> Morten Siebuhr


Dotan Cohen
http://what-is-what.com