[Shotwell] suggestions

[Florin Andrei]

On 05/06/2010 11:16 AM, Jim Nelson wrote:
>
> In fact, Shotwell does have a photo viewer mode similar to what you're
> asking.  If you right-click on a JPEG file you can select to view it
> with Shotwell.  The photo viewer will navigate through the directory's
> contents (currently JPEG only, although more formats are on the way).

I see now.

That's good.

I was confused because there's no obvious way to switch between the 
viewer and organizer modes in the app. It's all controlled exclusively 
by the way the app is launched. Out of sight, out of mind.

> All the editing tools you have in library mode are available here as
> well.  The only difference is, when you save your changes, they're
> written directly to the file.  (In library mode, we're
> non-destructive.)

Save changes to file is actually a plus for those people who organize 
their pictures manually. ;-) I used to hate Picasa and did not use it 
for tweaking until I figured it requires an explicit Save to apply the 
changes to the picture.

I haven't tested your red eye reduction yet, but so far Shotwell has a 
pretty good chance to replace Picasa when I'm on Linux and I need to 
tweak a few pictures quickly (for the heavy lifting part, such as RAW 
processing on a calibrated monitor, I use Adobe Lightroom 3 beta on 
Windows).

I would guess the Shadows function is inspired by Picasa & Co. A big 
weakness of those programs is that the filter is easy to use but 
primitive. It can lift the shadows, sure, but often the pictures end up 
looking washed out.

Could you guys add a gamma curve tweaking? (unless you want to keep it 
very simple) Or maybe make sure that Shadows is truly applied only to 
the bottom of the gamma.

With Lightroom 3 (I keep using it as a reference, for obvious reasons), 
there's something called Blacks (IIRC, I'm on Linux now), and it truly 
makes changes only to the gamma floor. With Picasa, when I try to lift 
the shadows (often required when shooting with a tiny-sensor 
point-and-shoot camera), it's like lifting Blacks and increasing 
Brightness at the same time (when compared to Lightroom).

I'm not sure what Shotwell does here. I'll have to check it out. But 
keep in mind - shadows means shadows, if I want to increase brightness 
I'll do it myself.

Speaking of which: Brightness and Contrast? Please? :-)

Also, some kind of markers or a scale or something for the sliders on 
the Adjust tab? Even if it's a fake percentage point scale it's better 
than nothing. Of course, reading the temperature from EXIF and placing 
the Temperature slider in the right point automatically would be very 
cool. ;-)

> The one thing not available is a directory browser; I've added a
> ticket for this: http://trac.yorba.org/ticket/1883

That's good.

Here's how I always configure gThumb:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/29966/gthumb-4-shotwell.png

There are other ways too - Picasa has a thumbnail bar at the top, etc.

-- 
Florin Andrei
http://florin.myip.org/