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[bigmikey]

As much as I love using MC for years now, I can't help but wish the image abilities were a little better. As for organizing, it's very good. What would help though, is a few more conversion options.

1.  The resize option is poor, with the only choice being to either overwrite the original, or not resize. In my opinion, a resize option should never overwrite an original file, unless the user explicitely wants it to. Also, it should ask for a destination for the resized file.

2.  Batch options for resizing and changing format would be useful.

3.  A "compare" option would be really nice. The user could highlight several images, and then have them displayed side by side in the full screen viewer. I'm not asking for MC to replace a dedicated photo editor, but these are common features found in just about all photo organizers now. You could give some of the big names of photo organizers like ACDSee a run for their money with just a few more serious photo organizing features.

Keep up the good work!

Mike

[JimH]

I don't disagree, on 1 or 2, but on 3, can't you play them full screen to compare?  That's what I do.

You can also resize the thumbnails with the slider to get bigger images.

Maybe you could explain what you're saying in more detail.  I don't see how you can get multiple images on the screen at the same time at a size bigger than the thumbs now.

[bigmikey]

I don't disagree, on 1 or 2, but on 3, can't you play them full screen to compare?  That's what I do.

You can also resize the thumbnails with the slider to get bigger images.

Maybe you could explain what you're saying in more detail.  I don't see how you can get multiple images on the screen at the same time at a size bigger than the thumbs now.

Thanks for the reply Jim. What I mean is that you could highlight 2 or 3 images that you want to compare, and then right click, and there would be a "compare Photos" option. It would open up the photos side by side in the same full screen display window. Two photos would be enough usually, but many organizers allow up to four or more at a time. The more photos in the same display window, the smaller the photos will be to allow room. I seldom compare more than two photos at a time, so more than two is not an issue.  Of course the photos would be reduced in size to allow more than one photo in the same window. Then you could zoom in on the photos for a closer comparison. It's useful for us photgraphers that have several photos of the same subject, but at different settings. It's also useful for comparing different edited versions of the same photo. Of course a person can open one photo at a time in the dsplay window, but it makes comparing small differences difficult. It would be a nice addition someday, but first and formost I feel the resize and batch features would be the most important addition to MC.

[JimH]

Have you tried the slideshow capabilities for comparing?  Hit Enter to play one, then page up page down to page through them.  It gives you a very good comparison of two or three photos if they are similar.

[bigmikey]

Have you tried the slideshow capabilities for comparing?  Hit Enter to play one, then page up page down to page through them.  It gives you a very good comparison of two or three photos if they are similar.

That works okay for comparing the overall images, but for minor differences, such as noise or sharpening, you really need the two photos side by side at the same time, and the abilty to zoom in on them simutaniously. Organizers like ACDSee have had this for years, as does many others. Since your program is an all-in-one organizer, I realize that having every feature of seperate dedicate programs is difficult, but you come closer to accomplishing this than any other software I know of. It's pretty amazing what all MC can do.

Mike

[JimH]

I hear you, but mouse scroll wheel can zoom into a photo while you're viewing.  You can preserve this when you switch to the next by using shift plus the page up or down.

[Mr ChriZ]

I agree with what BigMikey is saying here.
That was why I was so against the thumbnail size change when it happened,
it was never in my opinion a real resolution.  I shut up because everyone else
seemed to love it.  When you've got one of these big flat panels, there's quite enough
space to have two pics or more pics next to each other.
The most obvious way of doing that is to select the pics and then select compare.

[Matt]

I'll second Jim's suggestion that zooming in, then using shift+page up or shift+page down is a _great_ way to pixel peep.

[Doof]

1.  The resize option is poor, with the only choice being to either overwrite the original, or not resize. In my opinion, a resize option should never overwrite an original file, unless the user explicitely wants it to. Also, it should ask for a destination for the resized file.

Now that MC supports Stacks, something something like this could be really nice, for all of the edits that MC is capabable of doing to a photo. Everytime it's resized, automatically make a copy and add it to the stack. Everytime it's cropped, or red-eye reduced, or whatever else the image editor can do, do the same.

That's one of the features I find to be very nice with iPhoto. No matter how many edits you make to a photo, the original is always preserved.

[park]

Re: the compare idea, I think that the thumbnail slider has done a pretty good job for being able to arrow your way through photos and tag them on the fly. It has appeased most of my concerns about being able to tag photos easily. I see what you are saying about the compare idea. I think that this could still be accomplished using the thumbnail slider. Currently it zooms in and then at a certain point just makes one thumbnail take center stage. There could be a tickbox next to the slider called "2-up" and/or "4-up", so that we could choose whether to zoom in two images as a unit.

I'd also like to say again that using the thumnail slider should always center the currently selected file. Currently you zoom in and have to scoll through the list to find the picture that you were just looking at. Also, iIt's ugly the way that you can see a bit of the next picture in the list.

[park]

I have just noticed that if you sort by year/month/day separately you can see your photos "most recent" first, but in shot order. This was something I've wanted to do for ages. It's great. I've added it t my sorting presets (another brilliant recent addition), but i think it should be one of the defaults that MC gives it' users.

[park]

Having spent the wekend organizing photos using MC's new interface additions, I'm finding the tooltip previews quite annoying. I was all for them initially, but now that the thumbnail slider gives you a preview of about the same size, I find that I have to always be concious of where I put the mouse cursor. It gets tiresome quickly when you are expanding stacked files and then a tooltip jumps up and blocks them all.

What do other people think?

[johnnyboy]

Now that MC supports Stacks, something something like this could be really nice, for all of the edits that MC is capabable of doing to a photo. Everytime it's resized, automatically make a copy and add it to the stack. Everytime it's cropped, or red-eye reduced, or whatever else the image editor can do, do the same.

That's one of the features I find to be very nice with iPhoto. No matter how many edits you make to a photo, the original is always preserved.

Agreed - Stacks are here now, lets put them to use and when MC sends to external as well, it should create a new file <imageName>_edit_01 and automatically add it to the original as part of a stack with the new file at the top of the stack and should then send that to the external editor. It would be nice if it then had options to 'edit original image (default editor)', 'edit this image (default editor)'
That was the thing that made Picasa stand out above the rest as so great - your original was never damaged or touched and so you could make 3000 edits harmlessly.

[dcwebman]

Having spent the wekend organizing photos using MC's new interface additions, I'm finding the tooltip previews quite annoying. I was all for them initially, but now that the thumbnail slider gives you a preview of about the same size, I find that I have to always be concious of where I put the mouse cursor. It gets tiresome quickly when you are expanding stacked files and then a tooltip jumps up and blocks them all.

What do other people think?

I agree. They made a tweak so when the thumbnail is a certain size, the tooltip doesn't appear but it still is bothersome sometimes at smaller sizes.

[Peter_T]

That was the thing that made Picasa stand out above the rest as so great - your original was never damaged or touched and so you could make 3000 edits harmlessly.

hear hear! 

I just messed up an original and had to dig through my backups to restore it... user error, sure, but many editing photos (and all the serious ones) preserve your original for you...