[Shotwell] Shotwell 0.5 Impressions of a New User

[Vadim Peretokin]

Why would you, as a user, ever need to worry as to where import goes?

I don't fully know where my programs are installed to, and frankly I'm glad
I don't have to worth about that. Same here.

On Jun 17, 2010 11:42 PM, "Lu Timdale" <lutimdale at yahoo.com> wrote:

I think this application shows the most promise from any linux based photo
manager thus far.


Things I liked a lot:

- I like the concept of events and the way it is filtered based on date.  I
love "mark key photo for event".

- Speed. This app is fast.  Everything seems to sing.  'nuff said.

- I love merge events.  Select 2 events, right-click, merge.  Beautiful.
Similarly creating a new event from a subset of pictures.  This one is not
obvious though... have to select Event > New Event from menu.  A right-click
option would be good here.

- when selecting multiple events, the status on bottom left was intelligent
and let you know from/to dates.  Nice touch.  Similarly for selecting
photos.

- the general feel of the app is that it is well thought out and what is
there works well.



Things that need to be fixed:
- red eye fix coloured area outside of the pupil which is unacceptable to
me.  You should be able to click on "fix red eye for entire image" and have
it be fixed automatically, or hone in on a general area.  It cannot be only
the eyeball area... most people have their eyes partially closed (the area
requiring fixing is not circular) and it is unrealistic to expect a general
user to exactly pinpoint an eyeball.

- I was confused that when renaming an event, it didn't bring in the current
name of the event (the date), but a blank entry dialog.  When I typed
something, it overwrote the date... no way to get it back in the same
format.  I personally like to name my events "date + name"... for example
"2010-01-01 New Years Day"

- I was really confused as to where the files were stored.  Import didn't
really tell me where they were imported to, and I couldn't find it within
the filesystem.  There is no preference for the file location.  There is no
right click option to locate the file.

- rotate needs to be both ways... cannot click 3 times to rotate to the
left.

- when looking at an individual picture, it is unclear how to get back to
the gallery (especially the same spot you were in before).  A "back to
gallery" button could help here.

- when I enhanced a picture, I didn't understand if it was saved or not.  I
think most people don't care about storing multiple copies of pictures...
they want to fix their pictures and move on.  I think a "Save Changes"
button or prompt would fix this issue.


I would like to see:
- nesting of tags (eg. Family > Kids > Johnny) where tagging
something with Family only works as well.  Filtering by Family brings in
everything explicitly tagged as family, but also all the nested tags
under family

- import rolls.  At the very least, the last imported role.  THis should be
a high level folder along with Photos, Events, Tags.  "Recently
Imported" probably makes sense here.

- Favorites as a top level item.  It is a bit confusing to click on
Photos, then select "View > only favorites".  Ideally, it would be
based on a 1 to 4 star system, not just one star.  This would be similar to
nesting of tags, where selecting 2 stars gives you everything 2
stars and above.

- when viewing a single photo, the controls can all be on the left pane
instead of showing the hierarchy, which doesn't apply for the individual
photo.

- View by filesystem as a top level tier.  Currently you get only all via
photos.  As mentioned above, it would be ideal if renaming an event
a) renamed the folder the photos were contained in (eg. 2010-01-01 New
Year's Eve)   and
b) renamed the pictures to a similar format "2010-01-01 New Year's Eve
001.jpg"
The filesystem view should show all folders nested under the currently
selected folder, separated by the name of the folder containing those files.

- if allowing file system view, events do not need to be renamed.  Events
become a date view.  Events should be the file system view... no?

- Import should be file system based (organize by folder) and this should be
configurable.
Pictures/2010/2010-01-01 New Year's Eve/
or
Pictures/2010/01/New Year's Eve
or whatever format a user wants.
I cannot stress how important this is.  This is required for archival
purposes.  You should not need Shotwell 10 years from now to be able to view
your organized photos.  I should also be able to import my pictures,
organize them, and be able to browse them intelligently in the file manager.


That's all for me.  I hope this application gets some of the changes
mentioned.  There is no good enough application on linux for
importing/managing photos yet at the filesystem level.  I have been using
Linux on the desktop for 2 years.  Believe it or not, I still use Windows
PHoto Gallery within a VirtualBox/windows vm to import my photos.  Please
help me get rid of this dependency.

Thanks.


 Lu Timdale
lutimdale at yahoo.com



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