The development is very nice! I was very much against it (because I couldn’t sort my images and I couldn’t make my shortcuts work) but once you get used to it is SO NICE!
These 2 “star filters” are independent filters
You can use one of them or both or none. Whatever you like. Besides - these pins - you pin what you want on the top bar. If you don’t like it - just unpin it. Not only that - whatever order you have in the collection filter - it will organize it in this way on the top - completely customizable! Not only that - you can have collection filters “sets” or styles and apply them with one click.
Looking back - when I was fighting the UI myself - it was not fun at all - I did not realize that “range rating” is a completely different - independent and complimentary filter to “rating”.
In my opinion - the developer (or developers) have created something way better than we were able to appreciate!
Maybe the only think I would change would be to change the name from “collection filters” to “collection filters / top bar” (something like this). But even if nothing is changed - it is a very nice tool as it is.
If so much functionality was to be done on the top bar alone - it would overwhelm it. Because there can be items that the user wants to sort by and not look at them all the time.
And because I don’t know who’s idea was this - I would like to ask @Pascal_Obry(if it is okay) to say thank you to all the people who worked to create something so flexible.
Not every body uses folders as organization, some use dates or just a sequen e numbering.
So grouping images in film rolls can be of use, as you usually import related images after a session.
But I agree the term can be confusing. And it forces you to group images that are imported at the same time that is not allways what you want.
Other processor let you import files and put them in folders and control the naming and folder placio g during import, similar to DT.
But then they have collectiins or albums that let hou group images in a hierarchical mode.
During import they let you create a new album or add them to an existing one if you want. It is more flexible.
In DT i find it a bit confusing too, so I do not use too much clasification, I organize by years and month folders and create a new folder for images of every related event or sesion with a descriptive name.
I had never learned how to use the organizationak tools of DT. It is time to begin.
Filter is a term commonly used in quering.
A query returns a set of results, in this case images in a folder or film roll, and then you use the filter to sort and select a subset that meets a criteria.
I see filters as a local selection of results get by a selection or query, as a subselection.
I don’t find the term odd, although filter has other photograpic means. May be it can be named selection criteria instead of filter collection.
I like the new star range as it easily and flexibly let you select what you want, images with no star, ones with less tha 4 stars or no star, images with 2 to 4 stars (something many programs dont let you do, as the select only images with more tha selected stars), and it is not difficult to use, just drag de mouse to select the range you want. May be the feedback of what you have selected could be more clear, asi it only changes the background slightly, but the concept is good for me.
@lhutton : You have the old star selection method yet, you just have to un pin the new one and oin the old in the filter collectiin tab.
So no complains you have both ways, for me new one is better and more flexible once you learn how it works.
The right filter box is not redundant, it lets you select other filter criteria that are not in the quick filter bar, and select which criteria appear in the filter bar (pinned filters) and make more advance d logical combinations for the selection that are not possible in the filter bar.
Said that, I have to admit that I don’t use star rating too much. I began trying to clasify my photos, tagging them, selecting the bests… it took too much time and I am not discipline enough.
And you need a clear criteria to assign stars and be consistent, which I am not.
So right now I don’t do too much classification or tagging.
Cool to see this discussion really being “calm” as mentioned in the title. People make experience with the new tool and we can see how to possibly improve it instead of diagnosing a “regression” before gettting used to a tool that might really help many of us.
I was also a bit confused for some days after seeing it, now after re-editing a large number of images in many folders because of various reasons i would say i got used to it pretty fast and appreciate it as being powerful, flexible and yet not overwhelming or distracting from what i want & need.
I think everything can be said and discussed, but without anger, blaming or insulting.
I partly understand the frustration when a dev is convinced of his reasoning and is not able to convinced others or users (users only see results and have their expectations, don’t see the difficult it can be or problems impose in development).
If you have quite a different goal or vision you always can initiate your own path.
I don’t know if there are problems in its code and problems maintaining that code, as it was suggested.
But for me it is not a regression at all, I appreciate the effor of providing a more advanced selection criteria and much more flexible than it was (and you can still have what you previously had).
What seems true is that it is not a very used feature (complex filtering) but it is something that is good to have and good culling and classfication programs have.
May be it could be taken away from the prominent place it has in the left and put in a dialog box for the times you need it, accessed from some kind of menu as in LR.
It lacks still some filter, you cannot select images from a camera maker or model or from a given lens, it godd be great to be able to select images filtered by any exif, as in other programs, or any metadata (horizontal vertical orientaions, etc).
All that options may clog the space at the left. So may be a dialog box or a special view in the interface to make advanced filtering would be better.
Being able to select quick filtering criterias to add to the filter bar is great for the user (I don’t know how complex is it for devs to maintain that or if that slows down performance and development as was said).
The star and color label widgets are not consistent with one another – with the star widget, you “select all” in order to view all images in the collection and remove images from the lighttable view by selecting “less”. With the color label and search widget, you do the opposite (selecting “more” on the widget removes images from the lighttable view).
The module also allows you to set up your top bar in such a way that you really don’t know what it is supposed to be filtering. For example, see the following:
I defy anyone to interpret that (and building the histograms built into the widgets took a couple of seconds when I added them to the module).
In fact what I did was reflected as follows in the collection filters module:
Not only is it not possible to know what fields are reflected in the top bar, you will also note that there is an “or” selection against the exposure filter (which is also not reflected in the top bar).
In the module itself, the ranges shown were all selected by click+drag, with the actual selected start and end values reflected in boxes below the widgets. For the aperture selection, this looks reasonable (because aperture mostly falls into a very fixed range of values). My range of capture dates for this collection spans probably 15 years or more and my click+drag selection has filtered down to the second (this looks bad and with a range this large, could never have been my intention). Similarly, the exposure values are shown with 6 decimal places.
Many of these issues are probably resolvable, some of them perhaps not so easily.
I think the main issue people had with the implementation of this feature was that it was not yet production-ready and I hope I’ve illustrated some of the reasons why this is the case. I should say I’m still willing to be persuaded that this can be improved but so far I’m not convinced that can be, or that it’s necessary to do so, and I would still prefer to have kept the top bar simple and concentrated on evolving the collections module to something better.
Yes you are right, I think there is margin to improve the readibility of what are you selecting with the filters. You provide there some quirks and misfunctions.
I like being able to filter quickly using the top bar and customize the accesible filters. But a good feedback of what you are selecting is needed.
For the star rating selection, it would help to draw in color the selected stars/items in gold/yellos color for example to make it more clear what range you are selecting.
I the case you are showing, the name of the criteria (creation date or aperture) would be needed.
For selecting range of dates, the bar interface is too small to be able to see what you are selecting in a collection with many years of photos.
Chris, i think breaking the link between the top bar filters and the other filter makes sense. I think the top bar should have just stars, colors and a search field to search tags). I think these are the ones that will get used 90% of the time. The left side module, i think should be called advance filter and have all the ands ors not or whatever. I think the histogram (building) is not that useful.
Edit to add: i think we should also have a Clear all filters button in the top bar. And maybe a last imported.
It seems that the “color label” filter behaves differently depending on the operating system.
If I click on the color labels in Linux, the widget switches between states as documented.
When I click in Windows, after a few times there is no real prediction for me as to how the filter will behave when filtered. The logical indicator never changes and cannot be changed manually, it always shows “U”. If you press a color label three times without the Ctrl key, the icon cycles through the three states. As examples.
Did I miss something or is it a bug?
This is the only thing I might complain about, great work, thank you!
In general: I’m sure there will be some day use cases I’m happy that such fine grading filtering will be support my workflow. And on the other days, I don’t care about the collapsed modul (but still aware and happy it’s there).
and I think it covers a lot of my work - 90+%. I absolutely love that I can combine easily stars and color labels with and / or logic, build in search. This helps me a lot. @paperdigits suggested a hamburger menu (for the top bar) up in the thread. I find it a good suggestion.
I am sure there are things that can be done better. The thing is that every user works in a different way.
complexity wise - I can only imagine that there is so much involved in it. But I do appreciate the added functionality (the screenshot above).
If you like it as it is by default, you just don’t need to change the pinned filters.
But others may use a filter by date or by lens aperture (many people do not use stars at all, I have never used color tags) and prefer that filters be quickly accessed.
Thank you @Pascal_Obry and @AlicVB ! Your work is very much appreciated!
I did have a challenge understanding how the function is intended to work (for some reason I perceived “range rating” and “rating” as one and the same) and it took me some time to get used to it. Only after @ariznaf pointed to a possibility to re arrange the top bar did I realize how much I have missed. Now I see a lot of benefits in it. And this is why I wanted to say Thank you!
So, new issue, when I import photos and click on a collection in the collection window it just shows me all my photos (all 75K of them) in my library. I was messing with collection filters last night so I think I may have done something … but this is a strange unwanted behavior. If you’re selecting a film roll or a folder it should just bam show you the photos in that place.
Edit: yeah the filter was “stuck” had to clear it … this seems counter intuitive.
I’m not impressed. I use pretty much only one type of filtering an that is all / all but rejected / rejected only. This filter suddenly disappeared and I had to discover it by trying to right-click the star rating. Not a good design.
You can put the old-style filter back. It’s in collection filters as “rating” (the new one is “range rating”). Just unpin it, change it and then pin it again.
