[Shotwell] Shotwell 0.5 Impressions of a New User

[Adam Dingle]

Lu,

On 06/17/2010 08:42 PM, Lu Timdale wrote:
> I think this application shows the most promise from any linux based photo manager thus far.
>    

Thanks!

> - 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.
>    

It's true that the New Event command is slightly hard to discover.  
We've tried to keep our context menus short by including only the most 
commonly used commands, and we haven't included this command for now 
because we think users won't use it too often.

> 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'll leave it to Lucas, our red eye expert, to respond to this point.  :)

> - 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"
>    

If you give an event a name, Shotwell uses that name; otherwise Shotwell 
uses the event's date.  So if you want to return an event to the state 
where Shotwell displays its date, simply edit the event's name and 
delete the entire name.  It's true that Shotwell doesn't give you any 
way to use your preferred format "2010-01-01 New Year's Day" easily.  
Perhaps at some point we could provide an option to display both the 
date and the user-specified name.

> - 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.
>    

As described in the Shotwell documentation at 
http://trac.yorba.org/wiki/UsingShotwell0.5, Shotwell 0.5 stores your 
photo library in the XDG Pictures directory. The XDG Pictures location 
is specified as XDG_PICTURES_DIR in ~/.config/user-dirs.dirs. Usually 
XDG_PICTURES_DIR is ~/Pictures .

In Shotwell 0.6, which will be released in the next two weeks, there is 
a preference for the file location and a right click option to locate 
the file.  These features are implemented in the trunk, so if you'd like 
them now you can build from source, or you can just wait for the 0.6 
release.

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

The Photos menu contains Rotate Left and Rotate Right commands.  As 
described in the Shotwell documentation, you can also rotate right by 
clicking on the Rotate toolbar button, or rotate left by holding Ctrl 
and clicking on the same button.  In Shotwell 0.6, the '[' and ']' 
keyboard shortcuts also map to Rotate Left and Rotate Right.

> - 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.
>    

As you probably figured out, you can either double click the photo or 
press Escape.  It's true we could add a "back to gallery" button, though 
I doubt anyone would ever use it once they've realized they can double 
click or press Escape.

> - 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.
>    

Yes - a number of users have complained about this.  We'll try to 
improve the situation in 0.7.

>
> 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
>    

We'd like this too.  This is http://trac.yorba.org/ticket/1401 .

> - 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.
>    

Agreed.  We have tickets at http://trac.yorba.org/ticket/897 (to show 
last imported photos) and http://trac.yorba.org/ticket/1793 (for a more 
general import roll capability).

> - 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.
>    

Yes - Shotwell currently has only a binary rating system where a photo 
either is or is not a favorite, but it's become clear that many 
photographers want a 5-star system, and we need that to be able to 
preserve ratings imported from other programs such as F-Spot or iPhoto.  
This is http://trac.yorba.org/ticket/1878; probably coming soon.

> - 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.
>    

True.  We may eventually move some controls into the left pane once we 
have more adjustment options.

> - 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.
>    

Yes - we do want to put a file hierarchy tree into the sidebar.  This is 
http://trac.yorba.org/ticket/1594.  A lot of users want this, so we may 
even take this on for 0.7.

> - 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?
>    

This is a Big Question and is debatable.  Once we have a file system 
view, it's true that you could simply arrange photos into directories 
based on their time and rename the directories to have event-like 
names.  With that usage pattern, events simply become a date view and 
there's no need to rename them.  Many people might want to use Shotwell 
this way, but some might want to use a different directory organization 
but still have independent renameable events.  I'm reluctant to take 
away a feature that people may be using and like, so I think we'll 
probably still allow events to be renameable even after the file system 
view is implemented.

> - 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.
>    

Completely agreed.  This is http://trac.yorba.org/ticket/1597 .  I hope 
we can make this happen before too long.

>
> 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.
>    

OK - thanks for all the feedback, and yes, I also hope we can eliminate 
your Windows Gallery dependency before too long!  :)

adam