Re: Mission Statement - Summary

[David Tenser <djst mozilla gmail com>]

Bengt Thuree wrote:
> Hi Guys
>
> I thought I would collect all the various mission statements we have
> produced so far into one mail, so we can continue the discussion a bit.
>
> I like #3, but perhaps modify (simplify) it a bit. The powerful I read as
> for more professional.
>
> 8)
> F-Spot helps you manage your digital photos in a powerful yet
> highly-intuitive way.  It provides easy ways to perform common tasks
> like finding, organizing, modifying, and sharing photos with friends and
> family.
>   
What exactly does "modifying" mean in this context? Coming from Google's 
Picasa, F-Spot seems very limited in terms of image 
manipulation/touchup. If F-Spot's mission includes image manipulation, I 
think we should discuss what people most often do with their digital 
photos when it comes to touching them up.

The tools I usually need to improve a promising but not perfect photo is:

* Auto contrast. Ideally, it should be a button in the already existing 
color dialog, which should adjust the slides accordingly, so you have a 
chance of fine-tuning it before comitting.

* Straightening a photo. Picasa has a really good tool that not only 
straightens the image, but auto-crops the image so you don't need to do 
that manually afterwards. Much easier than starting GIMP and rotating 
freehand (without any reference lines) and then cropping to remove the 
transparent areas.

* Cropping. My camera sensor produces 4:3 images, and most of the time I 
prefer to crop them to 3:2. F-Spot has this feature but the 
implementation is very non-intuitive. You need to select between 
portrait/landscape aspect ratio with a drop-down list. It would be much 
easier if F-Spot could just detect which direction you're dragging the 
mouse the most to.

* Rotating. Even though the EXIF tag says the image should be rotated, 
basically every other application ignores this, making F-Spot's rotation 
useless. Please, just do a lossless jpeg rotation like every other 
software! Also, rotation--unlike every other operation in F-Spot--is not 
treated as an actual modification. In other words, a (Modified) copy of 
the image is not created.

* Filtered B/W. Sometimes you can achieve a much better B/W effect by 
using this method. Try Picasa to see what I mean. The difference can be 
stunning.

* Levels/Curves. Maybe this is a bit advanced, but at the same time it 
can really make a huge difference on an image. Being able to, for 
example, increase the light of shadow areas, while preserving the light 
on the midtones and highlights is invaluable in a high contrast image.

Moreover, I like the idea of F-Spot creating a (Modified) copy of the 
image you are manipulating, preserving the original. However, there are 
things I don't like about it:

* The modified copy is usually a lot smaller (in file size) compared to 
the original. There seem to be no preserving of the jpeg compression 
quality. I've seen examples of the original jpeg being over 2MB and the 
modified version under 700KB. That's not normal, is it?

* There is no way of specifying where the modified versions should go. 
Currently, they're dropped in the same folder as the original, with an 
added " (Modified)" suffix. To me, it would make much more sense to put 
them in a /Modified/ subfolder. I like to separate originals from my 
"mastered" versions.


Before ending this message, I'd like to ask the developers of F-Spot 
what programs they use to manipulate photos? Surely F-Spot is not 
sufficient, unless you are an expert at keeping your camera straight and 
it creates punchy, high contrast pictures by default?

To answer the question myself before I pass this on: Right now, I use 
two programs: Picasa for rotating, cropping and straightening the 
images, then the GIMP to do touchups like auto-contrast, levels/curves, 
and other things. Picasa admittedly has auto-contrast built-in, but 
since I tend to do more photo editing when I start the GIMP, I'd rather 
start with an unmodified copy (save for the straightening/cropping work 
that's just so much easier to do in Picasa).

Thanks for listening. I really want F-Spot to become the number one 
choice for me for image editing.

--
David Tenser