GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 313676
Cleanup of EXIF tab (or, if you want, side pane)
Last modified: 2007-06-25 22:59:09 UTC
EXIF is technical jargon most ordinary users don't know the meaning of and it's a bad idea to expose it to them. Also, the tab contains information most users aren't interested in. Things that they actually may be interested in, like the date the photo was taken, is hidden amongst tons of other information. Here's an idea, have no tabs in the side pane (no need to think up some replacement for the EXIF label) and put interesting stuff like date etc in the root with what's in the File tab now. Hide the other less interesting stuff under expanders that are closed by default. Just an idea :) What do you think?
In fact, I'm seriously thinking about removing Image Information side pane and put all this in a dialog. This side pane takes too much space from image and there's too much information to show in a little space. This dialogs would have a thumbnail of the image and next/prev/close buttons with the EXIF data divided in tabs (Camera, Image Data, Image Taking Conditions, Maker note and Other). For reference, GThumb has a similar dialog (File -> Properties). I think the EXIF date and orientation could be in status bar when present. Comments?
Information pane or properties dialog... I dunno (maintainer input needed). Your idea doesn't sound completely off though :) and people should be used by properties dialogs from other apps (Nautilus etc). I think the most important thing, about this bug, is to: 1. get rid of all the technical jargon (where possible) 2. make the most commonly sought after information easily accessible and not hidden amongst a gazzillion other things
I definitely like the idea of hiding lesser-used EXIF data and only showing the "raw" data if the user requests it. +1 from me on that one. I'm not completely sold on the idea of moving the sidebar to a dialog--but if we could maintain the next/prev/close buttons that Lucas mentions, I'd be plenty happy.
All about use cases. I think previewing images is _the_ case for Eog. As eog is a simple and quick image viewer I tend to agree on moving the image properties into a separate dialog, accessible through File>Properties (Alt+Enter). Consistent, elegant.
As we have cairo now: What about some transparent overlay?
Created attachment 54623 [details] Overlay mockup
I have a love/hate relationship with the EXIF tab. When I need the info, it's great, but most of the time it's the wrong size (forcing the image to rescale) and just plain in the way. I don't feel that an extra dialog would be an optimal solution, but how about a collapsible side pane? Similar to what Totem achieved with the play list in Gnome 2.12: http://www.gnome.org/start/2.12/notes/en/figures/figure-totem.png
gthumb behaves the same way as is proposed for a long time already - it shows most interesting information in transparent overlay in fullscreen mode, and in statusbar in window mode. can take that code from there... exif data is available in separate tab, but "File->Properties" dialog would be intuitive/convenient way to show all information, in several tabs if needed. same as nautilus.
As a user, I would really like to see the date/time the photo was taken more prominently. Perhaps as an overlay, or possibly even in the titlebar ("Photo taken at 15:39 on 11/11/2005" is far more useful to me than just "0712-123456.jpg") The filename is really just a "technical bit", which has very little connecting it to the image (from the user's pov) other than that they usually appear together.
I would love a bar (most likely at the bottom, user-toggled on or off) that would show "interesting" EXIF data by default. The bar could then have a "More..." button that would launch the dialog. Not sure where to put it if the bar is hidden. See Gallery 2.0 [1] EXIF module's interface for the source of this idea. It shows certain camera and exposure info, and the original date. The detailed view shows more, but not all (EOG's show all info dialog box would take place of the detailed EXIF view). [1] http://gallery.menalto.com/
I find the Exif Metadata to be intrusive and wish it wasn't enabled by default which is why I pushed for I like Quicktime Picture View quite a lot and sometimes leave EoG with only the menubar showing but that really isn't the best way to use Eog. What I'd like to be able to do is configure what is shown in the Titlebar/Statusbar like the gimp allows (Zoom, Filename, size etc). This kind of detailed configuration is probably not something you would want to expose to end users but making it possible to somehow show more information (including EXIF) might help alleviate various issues including the issue mentioned here in this report. Following on from the Evince related ideas which have been floated you might want to try having a sidebar, and then allowing users to have either the File listing or the Properties information (EXIF) showing in that sidebar. Good luck, tough problem to solve and even harder to keep everyone happy.
I prefer to have the metadata in a sidebar, rather than an extra dialog. Let me explain why. I'm an amateur photographer and I often have pictures of the same scene, taken with different camera settings. With the metadata in a sidebar, I can easily view the differences in both the images and the camera settings. That is more difficult to do with a separate dialog. I really like the idea of the collapsible side pane (comment 7). In this sidebar, we could also provide additional types of metadata, like iptc. For me it is also important to have as much information as possible. That's also the reason why I want to have support for exif makernotes, bug 350809. Showing only some basic information (like gThumb does) is not sufficient for me. But I understand all this information can be overwhelming for the average user. For this, we could provide a way to switch between "basic" (the default) and "full" information, by means of a preference or something else.
I decided for an "Image Properties" dialog with navigation capability. It's less invasive (doesn't take image view space) and still allows easy navigation through the images. If the image has EXIF|IPTC|Creative Commons metadata, there will be a respective tab on the dialog for them. About those tabs on the dialog, I'm thinking about just showing the basic information. If you want a complete dump of the metadata (like we have now in the sidebar), there would a button like "Advanced" or "All information" that would popup all metadata in a treeview (like we have now in sidebar too). Comments?
(In reply to comment #13) > I decided for an "Image Properties" dialog with navigation capability. It's > less invasive (doesn't take image view space) and still allows easy navigation > through the images. If the image has EXIF|IPTC|Creative Commons metadata, there > will be a respective tab on the dialog for them. What do you mean with the navigation capability? Does this mean the contents of the dialog gets updated automatically when another image is selected in the viewer? If some buttons (next, previous) are added to navigate to other images, I suppose the viewer is also synchronized with this dialog? So that navigating in the properties dialog also shows the corresponding image in the viewer? If the reason for the separate dialog is to maximize image space, why not consider a collapsible side pane? If you need the space, you can easily hide it. If you need access to the properties for some reason, you'll always have to use some space for it (whether it's a sidebar or a dialog). > About those tabs on the dialog, I'm thinking about just showing the basic > information. If you want a complete dump of the metadata (like we have now in > the sidebar), there would a button like "Advanced" or "All information" that > would popup all metadata in a treeview (like we have now in sidebar too). What about a "Basic" tab with only the basic metadata. And the complete metadata in extra tabs, one for each different set of metadata (e.g. exif, iptc,...)?
Dialogs are evil. Collapsible Sidepane++.
(In reply to comment #13) > I decided for an "Image Properties" dialog with navigation capability. It's > less invasive (doesn't take image view space) and still allows easy navigation > through the images. If the image has EXIF|IPTC|Creative Commons metadata, there > will be a respective tab on the dialog for them. > > [...] > > Comments? > I do not think the "Image Properties" dialog (IPD) is a good idea. First of all I find it hard to think of any use cases where I would be searching through the IPD looking for photos with specific properties. Therefore I do not see the reason for the navigation capabilities. Second after that, even if the general tab adds a thumbnail of the picture I would not be able to see the picture when I switch to the exif tab. I do not know the HIG, but I do not think it is a good idea to make the content of two tabs "depend" on each other, if you know what I mean. I think the mockup created in comment #6 and the way gThumb does it in fullscreen mode are good ways of presenting the information to the users. From my perspective I can see two distinct use cases: Either I want just basic information such as date, time and UserComment, or I want all of the information regarding exposure etc. The side pane is good for presenting the extended information, and I can not think of how it could be improved. But for the basic information, I think a transparent overlay at the bottom of the picture would be a good solution.
(In reply to comment #14) > (In reply to comment #13) > > I decided for an "Image Properties" dialog with navigation capability. It's > > less invasive (doesn't take image view space) and still allows easy navigation > > through the images. If the image has EXIF|IPTC|Creative Commons metadata, there > > will be a respective tab on the dialog for them. > > What do you mean with the navigation capability? Does this mean the contents of > the dialog gets updated automatically when another image is selected in the > viewer? If some buttons (next, previous) are added to navigate to other images, > I suppose the viewer is also synchronized with this dialog? So that navigating > in the properties dialog also shows the corresponding image in the viewer? Yes, the dialog content is updated when the selected image changes. Yes, navigating in properties dialog also shows the corresponding image in the viewer. > If the reason for the separate dialog is to maximize image space, why not > consider a collapsible side pane? If you need the space, you can easily hide > it. If you need access to the properties for some reason, you'll always have to > use some space for it (whether it's a sidebar or a dialog). The advantage of a dialog is that you put the dialog anywhere you want (even "outside" EOG's window if you have a screen big enough. If not, you can just resize the window to best fit your needs). As I said, you have full control over the image list navigation through the dialog therefore you don't need to do the annnoying operation of close-then-open-again for each image. > > About those tabs on the dialog, I'm thinking about just showing the basic > > information. If you want a complete dump of the metadata (like we have now in > > the sidebar), there would a button like "Advanced" or "All information" that > > would popup all metadata in a treeview (like we have now in sidebar too). > > What about a "Basic" tab with only the basic metadata. And the complete > metadata in extra tabs, one for each different set of metadata (e.g. exif, > iptc,...)? That's similar to what I did. See this post in my blog for screenshots: http://blogs.gnome.org/view/lucasr/2007/01/24/0 I'll probably to the same for IPTC data and XMP.
In response to comment 17: Looks great, could you please also add, assuming there is enough EXIF data (need the sensor size), Focal Length (35 mm equiv): where this represents the focal length in 35mm terms? E.g. on a Canon EOS 350D (1.6x crop factor) you would see Focal Length: 50mm Focal Length (35 mm equiv): 80mm and on the Canon EOS 5D (full frame) you would set Focal Length: 50mm Focal Length (35 mm equiv): 50mm and on a standard digicam (with a 1/2.5" sensor) you'd get Focal Lenght: 5.8mm Focal Length (35 mm equiv): 35mm Apple's Aperture does something like this FWIW. I haven't got the EXIF specs handy right now but can cook up a patch sometime next week if this feature is desirable? Thanks.
On Lucas's blog, there's a comment by Yo Baby! with nice examples of how overlays with pictographs are great for displaying selected EXIF metadata. Here are the links: http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/canong7/page3.asp http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/nikond40/page8.asp I couldn't agree more that a) some metadata is more important than the other, and b) the sidepane isn't that great of a design. But here's a use case that'd be great to support: make it easy to compare several photos of the same subject shot under different conditions.
Lucas: I'd advice against the expander, in that layout at least. What happens with expanders, specially with large content like this, is that they make the window grow (the screenshots show this nicely :). This by itself is enough to be annoying (not to mention a potential problem for low resolutions), and is amplified by the fact that usually they don't shrink back (which wouldn't be nice either...). What I suggest instead is to have a toggle button that changes the whole view between the human-friendly, processed data and the 'raw' data. This would allow the window to maintain it's size more predictably, as well as allow nicer way to remember the state (which you really should). I'd also claim that if you do want to see the raw data, you know what you are looking for and thus the already processed data won't be as interesting to you. Thus it will only be in the way and offer no additional value. Otherwise the dilog approach is definetly the way to go and looking good :)
Considering I've just fixed the issue mentioned on comment #20, I consider that the basic work for the new image properties dialog is done. Any further properties-related requests should go on new bug reports. Thanks everyone for the feedback!