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[JimH]

We're going to do a little work on images.  Please name one or two features you would like to see.

Try to keep the posts short and to the point.  We're looking for things that are common needs.

Thanks.

[bjsolem]

Not sure if this fits or not....

I'd love a way to be able to burn a cd full of images and leave versions of the pics on the PC at screen resolution (78 dpi) only.  Maybe with a comment in an MC library field that said the name of the disc that I burned the full size image to.

That way I could show people the pic, use it in slide shows, emails etc. and be able to quickly find the full size image as well on cd.

Maybe this could be done by creating a Screen Resolution version of thumbnail or something.

[edbro]

I would like to be able to set a different thumbnail size for images than I do for album covers.

My favorite image viewer/browser currently is the freeware Xnview. I think the browsing capabilities of that program are perfect.

What I would NOT want to see is image manipulation features implemented. No bloat please. However, the ability to rotate is good.

[bebop]

Jim:  are you talking about photoshop like stuff? or more like MS photostory?  For myself, I am photographically challenged...so the easier the better.   Too many features only confuses me, so the basics ...resize, rotate, simple retouches  I have ACDC, Paintshop 4 and Hubby uses Photoshop - he and daughter #2 are the photo experts around here- so i get them to do any stuff that's complicated (layering, tough retouches or fixing a badly danaged pic) .  A few edges and frames wouldn't be bad either (or the ability to make use of those in Paintshop etc).  The ability to put together slideshows  with music  and burn to disc is also nice ( please correct me if this is already available - have been focusing on the tunes and not the photo's).  Bet

[pipsqueak]

1) ability to set font size of image title (caption) independantly of main screen text size - i cant read it on the big tv across the room

2) make it easy to rate images that are being played while music is also on (right click...would be nice)

3) add image commands to the 3d image shows (eg next image, previous image etc)

4) change rotate left / roate right to clockwise / anticlockwise

i think ive posted others over the last few months but this is all i can remember

pip

[JustinChase]

I really like the way Windows handles importing images (Wow, did I just admit that in public, I must be losing it), They have a 'wizard' of sorts to ask where you want to import, and what you want to call the files, then it numbers them sequentially based on the overall naming you have chosen.  I would like to see MC use a similar feature.  That way I don't have to import to windows, then import to MC.

I would like it if MC could automatically determine whether a picture is 'Landscape' or 'Vertical' and let me put them in respective folders (all landscape in one folder, and vertical in another folder), so I know what needs to be rotated.

I would love it if MC would allow me to 'tag' files while in a slideshow.  In other words, If I let images play in slideshow fashion, I would like the ability to just check the boxes that apply to the image onscreen.  Kinda the way you can with 'tagging mode', but on the fly, one image at a time.  If I could just check 3-5 boxes to sort of label an image, it would be faster (easier?) than tagging mode.

The ability to quickly resize and/or convert (with or without changing the original) images.

The ability to burn a slideshow, with music, to a DVD (or CD) to share with friends and family.  Preferably if it could be done in such a way as to allow them to just put it in a player/computer and have it start playing, in other words, they don't have to have MC to enjoy my gift to them.

I don't think MC should try to be 'ACDSee lite', but I think some of that functionality would be great.

[pipsqueak]

I would love it if MC would allow me to 'tag' files while in a slideshow.  In other words, If I let images play in slideshow fashion, I would like the ability to just check the boxes that apply to the image onscreen.  Kinda the way you can with 'tagging mode', but on the fly, one image at a time.  If I could just check 3-5 boxes to sort of label an image, it would be faster (easier?) than tagging mode.

The ability to quickly resize and/or convert (with or without changing the original) images.

YES YES Y-E-S

these would both be great

[JSmithson]

I have just started trying to organize some photos and was wondering when I should start asking for new features, so now that you asked.....

Viewing larger images.... while i'm tagging a bunch of files I need to see a larger image to make desicions...  If I'm showing the image in the Action window, then I can't edit the tags. Switching between the two is a pane. .... speaking of panes, I know that I could creat a view with the fields I want to change and use quick tagging, but the fields I want to change are not always the same.
Opening both in the action window would help, and maybe undocking the image window..... ( I know this goes back to the way the AW was in 9.1 and there was a reason it was changed) but think about it.

Got to go now I'll add more ideas later...

jim

[pank2002]

I would like MC to be able to import my pictures (from the camera) in folder with the dates name, in other words put the pics in folders according to their shoot date. Maby you coud do this with rename file tool ... but it would be nice if you could do it directly when importing.

Tagging should be improved. How, I am not sure, but as it is now, it's not good enough. Something more like Adobe PS album.

[Jaguu]

1) Select  an image playlist to send to an integrated wallpaper cycler application (wallpaper changing at selectable intervalls with images taken from Media Library).
2) Same for Screensaver
3) Use a combined audio/image playlist and store it to a screensaver *.src file with a specific name like "Summer screensaver" "Winter Screensaver", "Family screensaver" etc.
4) From the same audio/image playlist creating an executable *exe file that can be burned to a cd.
5) Same as 4) combined with a cd autorun feature
6) Same as 4) combined with a read only or trial version of MC9 to be burned on cd, so that it can be given away and could be transformed into a full working version. So we could give a way a trial version combined with preselected content.
7) There should be more configurability on how I want to display tag info on the screen for images like font size and color, area of the screen, duration of display, different moving modes etc. Some kind of extension of the track info page for images
8 ) Starting a slide show in Hairstyle should be simplified.
9) There should be kind of a presentation layer for slide show, so that on a cd it will start with a nice menu from where I can select different slide shows.
10) A good program that does all this and more is "Digital Photo Slide Show" at http://www.digitalphotoslideshow.com/. Unfortunately it cannot make use of tags. That's why I would like to have those features integrated in MC.

[Chris Shaw]

I use MC to bring in images from my digital camera and rotate them. I still need other software to do colour correction and cropping though and these mean the JPEGs need to be recompressed. Could the next version of MC allow these factors to be set and stored in the images without recompressing? Then they could be applied at display time. The most useful things would be

Black/white levels (settable for all channels or individual channels)
Gamma (settable for all channels or individual channels)
Saturation
Cropping (free or fixed aspect ratio)

Newbies might want a brightness/contrast setting, but this could just be an interface to the black/white level values. This would make MC all most people needed for photo manipulation.

Autopan ideas:
Hardware accelerated autopan. A 4 megapixel image zooms/pans very jerkily on even a quite decent machine.
Autopan should be a persistent option. I might always want to autopan my slideshows.
The slideshow timer should run during an autopan. I like my slideshows quite snappy: about 8 seconds per image. At the moment, the autopan takes about 15 seconds, then the timer runs for 8 seconds.
Advanced idea: Allow the user to select several hotspots in the image. MC would choose one of these hotspots at random and zoom in or out of it. That way, you could choose faces, landmarks etc, and stop it zooming in on bits of sky or grass.

Thanks, JRiver.

[Rob L]

The thing I was having trouble with was definitely not being able to see the picture properly when you're tagging them up without having to 'play' the image, so I'd agree with the people that say having the ability to see something bigger than just the thumbnail would be *really* handy :-)

[MusicPlayer4U]

I would like to be able to tag my music to show images in a theme directory.

Maybe a default setup which points to an image directory that can be changed per song.

This way we can have image themes that go with different genres.

[paulr]

I'm just now starting to use MC for images.  I had been using another product to print images in different arrangements (2 per page, 4 per page, etc.)  I know MC handles these normal print configurations, but it would be nice it users could build custom print templates...

If MC already does this, just ignore my post, but I haven't seen this feature yet.

[cncb]

Display and storage of captions would be nice.

[TestingGuy]

1) Image Rating Tagging, similar to existing music rating
2) Image Category Tagging, similar to existing music genre tag
3) improved performance on pan/zoom (too jerky now, early betas seemed to perform much better)
4) improved control over pan/zoom feature enable (make sticky & control via existing image display control dialogs)
5) configurable pan/zoom -- allow user to somehow specify one or more pan sequences and zoom sequences, MC to seqence through them one per image or randomly move from one to another pan/zoom sequence with each image

Basically, make enjoying images as easy & configurable as you've done with managing collections of music or video.

[Sauzee]

Images on Data CD's

Pasted and edited from another thread.

A lot of good changes were made to thumbnail generation recently but they did not address thumbnails of images on data CD.

E.G., Say I catalogue a data CD with images.  At the time I do this my thumbnail size preference is set to Large.  MC will only generate large size thumbnails.  

Say a couple of weeks later I change my thumbnail size view to extra large.  New data CD's will have image thumbnails generated in extras large size only.  

Now if I view or search my library by thumbnail view [with my preferences set to medium] I will not see any thumbnails for images on data CD's.

In a nutshell, viewing thumbnails for images on data CD's only works if you never change your List Style Thumbnail Options.  

So, if possible, can we have thumbnails generated in all sizes for images from data CD's?

[park]

Editable presets for "rename files from properties" would be cool.
The directory structure for saving my music and images are completely different and its a pain typing in (or pasting) the different naming structure each time I want to move around my newly imported images or songs.

Automatic scan and import of a folder would be cool. As would periodically automatic forced renaming of files to adhere to different naming/directory structure rules. and periodically forced "write tag info to files" (this would be great for music too).

The portrait/landscape feature would be cool.

A better infterface for viewing pics is needed. Doing it through playing now is a pain if I just want to browse images (not watch a slideshow).
I want to navigate through the files in the library view, looking at the files in a big window as I select them. At the moment I have to either: create a playlist and then play that playlist of pics, or: play one image file, navigate to playing now, detach the display window, then go back to the library and double click each picture to see it at a reasonable size.
The windows xp way of just clicking the left/right arrow to scroll through every picture in a directory is powerful and convenient, and would be supercool if implemented in the library (so that you could scroll through every file within a field,pane,directory etc)

[IanG]

it would be nice it users could build custom print templates...

That's #1 on my list!  Selecting images in-camera to upload would be nice too.  Any new features to manipulate images should have an undo option along with the ability to save as new files rather than overwriting the original.  I'm not sure how useful image manipulation is though - there are loads of excellent apps out there, some of them free, and MC already has a great interface to them

Ian G.

[JSmithson]

I'm having problems printing images.... If I do four to a page, the borders a not set up correctly. It seems to want to print all the way to the edge, which can't be done. When I cut up the four images they are all different sizes because the image has been cropped by the printer... I have to use the windows view/printer to get them all the same size....

[lee269]

Two hopefully simple suggestions:

1. The photo printing wizard works great for me, but needs a collate option for multiple prints. Most noticeably with index prints setting 2 prints gives an index print with each image twice, rather than 2 separate pages with each image once. The Excel print dialog handles this nicely:
 

2. Related to images, can the send to web feature allow sending to local addresses. Id like to be able to create the html on my PC for tweaking before I upload it.

Thanks for asking.

[Jaguu]

Editable presets for "rename files from properties" would be cool.
The directory structure for saving my music and images are completely different and its a pain typing in (or pasting) the different naming structure each time I want to move around my newly imported images or songs.

I support that too!

Presets would probably best be defined per media type

[Chris Shaw]

Editable presets for "rename files from properties" would be cool.

I support that too!

The last few presets you used are remembered under Presets. If you have a really complicated one you don't want to get pushed off the list, you can always create a calculated field

[IanG]

I would like it if MC could automatically determine whether a picture is 'Landscape' or 'Vertical' and let me put them in respective folders (all landscape in one folder, and vertical in another folder), so I know what needs to be rotated.

If this is implemented, please make it optional - some Kodak cameras recognise they've been rotated and adjust the picture themselves.  Maybe allow the pictures to be tagged in-camera and then rotate them on the fly?

Ian G.

[JustinChase]

I would like it if MC could automatically determine whether a picture is 'Landscape' or 'Vertical' and let me put them in respective folders (all landscape in one folder, and vertical in another folder), so I know what needs to be rotated.

If this is implemented, please make it optional - some Kodak cameras recognise they've been rotated and adjust the picture themselves.  Maybe allow the pictures to be tagged in-camera and then rotate them on the fly?

Ian G.

Yeah, the canon marks them as vertical also, but I think that mark is only read by the camera, but it might be a flag that MC can learn to read also, making that option virtually automatic.

[JollyJim]

from BJSOLEM....

Not sure if this fits or not....

I'd love a way to be able to burn a cd full of images and leave versions of the pics on the PC at screen resolution (78 dpi) only.  Maybe with a comment in an MC library field that said the name of the disc that I burned the full size image to.

That way I could show people the pic, use it in slide shows, emails etc. and be able to quickly find the full size image as well on cd.

Maybe this could be done by creating a Screen Resolution version of thumbnail or something

YEP - this would be really useful...as well as :-

When renaming Files from Properties (Library Tools), it would be SO useful to have a separate box to retain the path and filenames for Images. I can't tell you how many times I've renamed images to the music folder and vice-versa......

Jim

[JSmithson]

I've been doing a little more the last few days....

A few more simple editing tools would be great...
I use rotate all the time.... how about
brightness / contrast / saturation.......

[kiwi]

A few things... some have been listed above and I figured I'd mention again.  Others are just thoughts.  (in no particular order)

• A slider could be used for adjusting the sizing of thumbnails.  I believe that iPhoto does something similar.  I think that picasa also has this ability.
• Being able to import images directly into folders based on shooting date.
• All tags stored in the actual file (I believe that this is already done.)  This way, if you data base gets corrupted, all of the information is still in the file.
• Easily start an external editor.  I don't need (or really want) to have much editing capabilities w/i MC, however, I'd like to easily open the file in my photo editor of choice and have MC save an original copy (or open an edited copy, with the name of the file in the library being updated). (already available.)
  
• I'd love to have the file properties have a category geared toward images.  i.e. having all of the fields that would be useful/appropriate for pictures.
• I would like to have the internal image information available easily (i.e. iso, shutter speed, etc.)  It is available, however, it appears to only be available in the File Type Info portion.
• A resize and email function could be nice. (already available.)
  
• Autopan is a bit jerky on my 2.4ghz P4 with geforce FX 5900 (which should be able to handle it.)

Will add some more when I think of them.

kiwi

[skeeterfood]

It would be really nice if ISO, Aperture, Exposure Time, Focal Length, Exposure Compensation, Flash (not fired/fired & mode), and White Balance were all available as calculated fields that directly mirror the EXIF info.

-John

[JustinChase]

It would be really nice if ISO, Aperture, Exposure Time, Focal Length, Exposure Compensation, Flash (not fired/fired & mode), and White Balance were all available as calculated fields that directly mirror the EXIF info.

-John

Yes, please.

[lee269]

• A resize and email function could be nice.

In case you havent tried it, Send to/Email/Mail recipient already does all this, I believe.

[kiwi]

• A resize and email function could be nice.

In case you havent tried it, Send to/Email/Mail recipient already does all this, I believe.

Awesome!  Thanks... I'm blind...   Well, that can be crossed off the list.

Another thing that would be nice is Photoshop file support.  (Don't know how hard/expensive it is.)

As for my other request, the external editor... it's in send to --> send to (external)

kiwi

[kristan]

1: dropdown menu like in MusicMatch to change the size of the thumbnails.

2: ability to resize text size and number of characters independant of the thumnails.

3: sort tabs just like in the details view.

4: I love the way the tooltip displays the thumbnail and the tag info. a view of type would be great. i.e. two or three columns the look like tooltips.

5: when you scroll up and down it's always having to refresh the thumbnails. can these not be cached so there is no refreshing that has to hapen.

6: more thumbnail size options, perhaps even user defined sizes

7: in the details view mode, you should be able to add a thumbnail image column (and be able to set the size), not the name of the image file as is currently the case, the actual picture.

8: ability to adjust the size, contents and speed of the tool tips. ability to adjust the size of the image in the tool tip and how long you have to hover before it becoms active.

9: have the image in the image action window follow the playing now even when you are in the media library.

that's all.

It would be nice if there was a section where we could post our requests for features in a more organized manner...

would be nice to be able to see all of the most popular requests and which ones you are considering and how soon you will get around to it. sort of a public to do list.

perhaps you could implement a feed back section either on the site, or in the program. it could be grouped by topic (e.g. image features) and sub topics, if their suggestion/request has been posted by someone else, they simply provide a me too! if it has not been posted, they can add it. you guys can then work on the most popular requests first and provide status reports... i know it would be nice to know that my suggestions are being considered and it's fun to look forward to new features in the next release.

kristan

[lee269]

A few further suggestions for web uploading.

1. Offer some different template options for the uploaded output. The current output is a bit basic, but its beyond my extremely limited HTML skills to make anything very nice from what we get. Simple colour schemes or perhaps fonts would do.

2. Allow us to create nested webpages using tags, like view schemes. My image filenames are generally numeric and useless for IDing photos, but if I could create year/month/day, or people/place/events pages etc I would at least get a structured site without having to get notepad out.

3. Related, allow us to show more tag info than title on the page for each photo (or thumbnail). All that lovingly categorised and tagged content can then be published usefully.

[Soundman]

BIG Vote from me on this....  I want to be able to do this with a remote control.  I control which attributes are available in this mode (can't just show everything, it would be way too much).

I would love it if MC would allow me to 'tag' files while in a slideshow.  In other words, If I let images play in slideshow fashion, I would like the ability to just check the boxes that apply to the image onscreen.  Kinda the way you can with 'tagging mode', but on the fly, one image at a time.  If I could just check 3-5 boxes to sort of label an image, it would be faster (easier?) than tagging mode.

The ability to quickly resize and/or convert (with or without changing the original) images.

YES YES Y-E-S

these would both be great

[Soundman]

Better EXIF support.  My Canon camera stores an EXIF tag that tells you the image orientation. I expect MC to read this and display it correctly instead of me having to click "rotate".

Easy auto-renaming of the file based on EXIF tag information.

If I use MC to rotate an image, don't change its file timestamp on disk.  That makes an old image suddenly look new!

[Soundman]

Display and storage of captions would be nice.

Vote!  I want to type a quick caption while in any view (such as slideshow), and that caption to always show up when slideshowing that image in the future.  Exiting to the tag editor is a pain!

[Soundman]

I would like it if MC could automatically determine whether a picture is 'Landscape' or 'Vertical' and let me put them in respective folders (all landscape in one folder, and vertical in another folder), so I know what needs to be rotated.

If this is implemented, please make it optional - some Kodak cameras recognise they've been rotated and adjust the picture themselves.  Maybe allow the pictures to be tagged in-camera and then rotate them on the fly?

Ian G.

Yeah, the canon marks them as vertical also, but I think that mark is only read by the camera, but it might be a flag that MC can learn to read also, making that option virtually automatic.

JRiver, this is the same thing I was talking about in my post "Better EXIF support" a few minutes ago.

[Soundman]

Keep multiple versions of the same image.  If I launch an external image editor, do touch up, etc.  I always want to archive the original, preferably in a different disk folder.  I want MC to do that for me.   Move the original to an "Originals" subtree in Media Library.  But, keep it connected to the newly edited version.

If the external app blows away the EXIF info, as many of them do, MC should not lose it because it should duplicate all of the EXIF info into its own library, as others have requested.

[JustinChase]

One more thing,

Images are quite different from Music (and videos for that matter, but that's another story), and therefore, should have different fields available, and also different information is stored in those fields that can/should be shared.  The genre's that I use for music should never be shown for images, and vice versa.  The bitrate should not be shown for images, but maybe megapixels should be.  Size is important to images, but not to music, exif info would be very useful to me for images, but obviously not music.

I think you get the point.

I would love to have the cataloging, and playlist, and smartlists, etc for images, but I think they almost need to be handled as a seperate library of sorts, well, more like a different branch of the same library.  I wouldn't want to have to switch libraries to look at the different things, but I do think they maybe need to be handled quite differently.

Hope this makes sense.

[IanG]

One more thing,

Images are quite different from Music (and videos for that matter, but that's another story), and therefore, should have different fields available, and also different information is stored in those fields that can/should be shared.  The genre's that I use for music should never be shown for images, and vice versa.  The bitrate should not be shown for images, but maybe megapixels should be.  Size is important to images, but not to music, exif info would be very useful to me for images, but obviously not music.

I think you get the point.

I would love to have the cataloging, and playlist, and smartlists, etc for images, but I think they almost need to be handled as a seperate library of sorts, well, more like a different branch of the same library.  I wouldn't want to have to switch libraries to look at the different things, but I do think they maybe need to be handled quite differently.

Hope this makes sense.

Yes, please!!  Field display according to media type.  And maybe a "mixed" media category, too.

Ian G.

[park]

One touch option to "show photo at actual size" or "scale to fit" without having to keep going to the options.

The ability to be able to highlight a photo in the playing now window so that i can see its properties in the file properties window.

continuing from my last input to this thread:
how about if when you click on the "images" category icon you see the library with an automatically detached window (the playing now display window I guess) and whenever you click an image it shows in that window. It should remember its size from the last time it was open to and have options to be able to show the photo at different (size)percentages.

[KellerDH]

Playback of images needs some work, IMO ... before some of the power-user features are implemented.

1.  When music and images are both playing at the same time, it gets confusing as to how to control each media.  Maybe you could make the top control bar exclusively for music playback... even if there are only images being played.  Then, you could make the bottom bar into the exclusive image control bar.  It seems logical as it already controls, to a certain extent, the images and visualizations, and there looks to be enough room available on it to add the controls for PLAY, PAUSE, FIRST, LAST, etc.  (Maybe you could also add the slideshow START/STOP buttom there, too?)

2.  As far as thumbnails go... I'll keep my comments, again, to the primary issue of PLAYBACK.  Here, my suggestion would be to make another template for playback... like the Track Info idea.  On this template, you could have the customary thumbnail pane on the left (or bottom) with the full image view on the adjacent pane.  This view scheme might just be added to the current playback options of IMAGE, COVER ART, TRACK INFO, VISUALIZATIONS, etc.  Maybe call it THUMBNAILS or something.

===================
That said, for a power-user request, I'd like to see a way to send cover art to an external editor without the need to find the image in the images library.  It would be nice to be able to send it directly from either the playback view.... or from the right-click menu for the Action Window / File Properties / Image window.

Also, a minor fix might be to make it easier to specify the length that slideshow images display.  My slider jumps from 0:01 to 0:08 to 0:15 ... with nothing available in between.

Thank you.

[JustinChase]

Also, a minor fix might be to make it easier to specify the length that slideshow images display.  My slider jumps from 0:01 to 0:08 to 0:15 ... with nothing available in between.

Thank you.

I had this same problem also (I agree it should be addressed, but) if you click on the slider and use your left/right arrow keys on the keyboard, it will go in 1 second increments, so you can get what you want, just not quite as easily.

[jplumey]

Just a couple of quickies:

• Automatically set a key set of fields based on the image data (resolution, camera model, ISO settings, photo date, etc.)
• image manipulation (rotate, etc.)
• facial and pattern recognition to identify people in photos and then look up their social security numbers (hehe, just kidding)

All of my other requests have already been covered.

[JimH]

Rotate images is there now.

[jplumey]

Actually, I lied. There is one more feature that I would like and that is the ability to use a different Renaming Template (Library Tools-Rename Files from Properties) for images so that I can re-organize the files into a Category\Year\Month\Event folder type of structure.

It's a royal pain in the rear to have to reset this every time I want to use a different type of media.

Oh and the ability to browse the pictures in calendar mode (Like ACDSee does) would be cool as well.

[KellerDH]

I had this same problem also (I agree it should be addressed, but) if you click on the slider and use your left/right arrow keys on the keyboard, it will go in 1 second increments, so you can get what you want, just not quite as easily.

Thank you... I'll try that.

[paulr]

Would it be possible to change the "Don't import small files" option to be adjustable?  I'd like to be able to define what 'small' is, especially for images.

[JimH]

bumping this to the top