INTERACT FORUM
More => Old Versions => Media Center 11 (Development Ended) => Topic started by: marko on October 22, 2005, 03:01:43 am
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a while back,Jjimh and I had a brief discussion re. MC and image handling.
Back then, Jim intimated that he was keen to get some things, like a thumbnail size slider, work on ftp'ing and album creation, exif handling, worked into the next version.
The question is:
Are any of these, or any other image handling improvements, pencilled into 11.1 along the way somewhere?
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I am also very curious to know if 11.1 is aiming at better image support.
To manage the expectations, so to speak.
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As am I.
I have paired down over 7000 images to just over 3000 from this trip, and haven't even tried to manage them in MC. I'm using ThumbsPlus. But, obviously, I would rather use MC.
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Issues I have with photo management so far:
-- Inability to read/write exif tags ~ standard fields like date acquired, camera, manufacturer, shutter, exposure, etc. Some people find these fields useful. They're in the files - why not use them?
-- Inability to reorientate photos according to exif orientation, and not resetting this field when images are rotated in MC
-- Not enough control over display of thumbnails (not a big one for me, but some control would still be useful)
-- Personally, I hate the way MC automatically assigns a date to the album field. I use my own album titles and find this behaviour really annoying.
A bit of feedback on using current system: I use custom fields to organise by time, people, event, place (country, city, suburb, place, subplace) and photo source. This system works ok for me but is useless for people I share photos with. They either do not use MC or if they do don't have the same custom fields. Custom tags are great for ME on MY computer, but most people I share photos with don't use MC (crazy I know) so the data is essentially inscrutable to them. Some standardisation wouldn't go astray. Get people to submit fields they find useful and incorporate them into the program. This would make photo sharing a helluva lot easier and data wouldn't be lost or duplicated.
The only other thing I'd be interested that would be useful in photo management is having MC recognise how many values are in a list field. This would help a lot in organising by people (without having to make a separate "# of people" field). Not a biggie, but would be useful nonetheless.
I'm not particularly interested in actually editing photos in MC (although the rotate function is handy) ~ I have plenty of fully featured programs for that. If this is a direction you intend to travel down, make sure it's done well!
EDIT: Just reread this, and it sounds really negative :) It wasn't meant to! MC is still a lot better than a lot of the alternatives for image organisation, but is just missing a few features that seem like givens to me. Keep up the good work, and please don't forget about those of us who use MC for video, images and documents as well as music!
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-- Inability to read/write exif tags ~ standard fields like date acquired, camera, manufacturer, shutter, exposure, etc. Some people find these fields useful. They're in the files - why not use them?
Look at Action Window > File Properties > File Type Info for an EXIF readout in MC.
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Wow, I actually didn't know about that. Thanks Matt :)
Still though, can't use tag data in fields or for any real organisational purpose yet!
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Personally, I hate the way MC automatically assigns a date to the album field. I use my own album titles and find this behaviour really annoying.
I bumped into this too. I've not explored this any further, always one of those things to get done 'tomorrow', but, I set up a viewscheme here that has:
-[=mid([album],2,1]=/
in the search field (step 4). It removes all the default MC assigned albums from the album pane, leaving just my own album titles on view.
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version tracking would be a neat trick too if we could get that.
if we use the "send to external program" option to open and edit a picture, then save it as a new file, MC could keep track of the versions, and default to only display the latest version of the file.
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several image handling fixes in 11.1.66, nice one!!
more to come?
I've been beavering away here building a nice picture DVD for my mother-in-law's Christmas present.
I've been using MC to organise the files into their respective slideshow groups, then I can simply drag and drop from MC into the DVD authoring software (ProShow Gold). This works really well, but you know what make the partnership so much more friendly?
If MC could have an [image description] field that it kept in synch with the EXIF field of the same name...
Slip it into the next build and I'll give it the mother of all beta tests :)
If we could get something along these lines working, it would be such an asset. Most programs like ProShow are able to read these tags and make use of them within their projects, and as the drag and drop works so nicely, it would make an ideal bridge between MC and those other 3rd party proggies we use to get creative with our images.
-marko.