Cropping is difficult to use in RawTherapee

Because it is more easier to use faststone or CNX2 for that.

For exemple, one can move the shape in the picture with the mouse, and with “enter”, we have the new picture on the screen…and only the new.

I’m sorry, but now, i’m using RT only for pictures very hard to work because its tools are very good, but for all days, I’m using Darktable 2.4 or CNX-2.

The “default” mode rarely give me a good picture at first time, while my other softs needs only very few adjustments for that.

Oh… I forgot to say that RT is slow to work now…

Same in RawTherapee.
http://rawpedia.rawtherapee.com/Crop

I’m not affected by your personal choices.

That statement is too vague to be meaningful.
http://rawpedia.rawtherapee.com/How_to_write_useful_bug_reports

<< That statement is too vague to be meaningful.>>
Yes indeed, but now, as I use it not often, I was waiting for another upgrade.
I tryed to follow the very very long tread about that, but I disconnected : too long, too complex ; I’m photographer, not programmer… and my english is too poor.

About the croping, I didn’t know because I didn’t read the tutorial… Cropping is a basic process and normally one should not to search anything.
Most of other software use the mouse in order to move the croped area.
So, it doesn’t matter… you know, I use ON1-effect, Nik Software, CNX-2, FastStone, GIMP, PhotoFiltre and Darktable for my work ; every have one tool or more that I prefer at the others and that’s enough for me.
I almost regret my post …

deleted

Hi, I tried to make use of the feedback provided here, and created a crop-tweaks branch which tries to improve the user experience of the crop tool. Feedback is highly appreciated. I won’t tell you what it does, figuring it out is also part of the feedback :wink:

1 Like

RawTherapee_crop-tweaks_5.3-386-g0ac3bafb_WinVista_64.zip

uploaded at
https://keybase.pub/gaaned92/RTW64NightlyBuilds/

@agriggio
I really prefer when the guides appear in the main window.
As I was quite satisfied with previous crop GUI, I don’ t have any other remark.

@gaaned92 thanks a lot for the build!

thanks. The plan is to have this configurable in preferences – hopefully whis will satisfy everyone :wink:

1 Like

Compiled crop-tweaks branch commit 0ac3bafb

  • The auto-zoom-to-crop behavior makes it difficult to tweak your crop when you mistakenly made it to tight. I’ve noticed that I can “get out” of the auto zoom by manually zoming or using f but this isn’t very transparent or expected.
  • Having guide lines visible only when dragging works for me but i’d prefer them not to be visible in the file browser.

On the whole I’m afraid it doesn’t solve my issues with the tool but the grid tweak is an improvement. What would solve the issue for me is, as someone mentioned above, a different active-tool logic.

The crop tool would be activated by c or click on crop icon. The crop icon is highlighted strong to indicate active tool mode. Alternatively an on off toggle is used for crop mode?

  • The full extent of the raw capture is revealed
  • The chosen grid lines are displayed
  • Drag handles are activated
  • Dragging the crop frame around is possible by just click-dragging inside the crop mask
  • c or icon/toggle click exits crop mode, hides cropped data in Editor and File Browser, hides grid lines. The thumbnails will now display only the crop as if the other data is gone.

Potentially the dashed outline (not guides) is visible in File Browser and Editor as an indication that the file is cropped. The zoom to crop icon is now superflous and should be removed.

My speculation is that the concept of not touching the raw data is influencing the design of some tools in problematic ways. It’s as if cropping and perspective correction Make perspective correction not crop the image · Issue #198 · Beep6581/RawTherapee · GitHub must somehow represent visually and conceptually that raw data isn’t deleted or modified. It could also be the existing code making some things a bit more difficult i guess. It’s just curious that considering all the great tools in RawTherapee it’s the canvas altering tools that are most problematic. I still can’t use RT perspective correction because it eats pixels and the cropping tool is also very unusual.

Perhaps part of my expectations clash with RT ideas. I frequently use the RT file browser to select files to be exported for various uses. This means I need to be able to assess the images from the file browser tab. Perhaps I’m aiming to send out 12 images out of 400 to an AD or for display on a website. I cant assess an image very well when cropped away data is visible and guides are shown. Same goes for processing. It’s hard to judge tweaks when cropped away data is visible. It changes my judgement. Perhaps a different workflow is expected?

I don’t have access to the proprietary alternatives right now but it would be interesting to know how they have solved it. The Darktable tool works exactly as I would expect. I use image editing tools a lot at work (days on end) and have used them privately since photoshop had an eye on the icon. For raw development i’ve used RT at work for last couple of years so don’t know the proprietary alternatives.

1 Like

hi, and thanks for the detailed feedback! I’ll try to take it into account.

how so? my speculation is that the problem is a combination of:

  • we don’t have enough manpower
  • several people (myself included) think the crop tool, although not perfect, is already usable
  • we have more interesting (for us) things to do

but hey, this is just speculation :slight_smile:

1 Like

Some examples from other tools I dug up

Didn’t look into this until now but all the above work similarly to my proposal.

1 Like

:smile: haha well you could potentially, perhaps possibly know better than me in this case… It was the perspective tools discussions that seeded the idea which then sprouted reading this thread.

To get the same behaviour as DXO and DT, an additionnal state of tools should be added" open/closed" without modifying the gui

  • when the tool menu is expanded, the tool is open. thus you can change all parameters
  • when the tool menu is collapsed, the tool is closed

The activated/deactivated state remains as it is. as soon as you change a parameter, the tool is activated

so for crop tool:

  • starting the tool: either open tool and change a parameter or click on crop icon (it opens and activate tool)
  • once open and activated, the crop window and guides are displayed.
    the crop window is moved by clicking on it (not shift-click)
  • once happy with parameters if you let the tool open, crop is displayed as now
  • if you close the tool, only the crop window is displayed without guides (it becomes the whole image). if you are on “fit whole image to screen” the cropped image is fully diplayed.
    Thus “fit crop to screen” is no longer useful.
  • if you deactivate tool then the whole image is displayed. You come back by reactivating tool.

I should say that for me, this logic is not better than that is done now by RT and really not worth modification.

I would much prefer that dev effort be applied on perspective tool.

To crop images I also use GIMP, Xnview , photobook SW and diaporama SW
As I mainly make paper photobooks or diaporamas, my experience shows that the way you crop is context dependant: you don’t crop a photo the same way for a page A3, a page A5, for a photo montage or for a diaporama view.

I agree with your reasoning about cropping, media etc. but have at som point changed my workflow from seeing exporting from raw as a one time step to one where the raw files are a continuous source of exported files for each media/context etc. I’m guessing it happened when raw developers got so bloody good and convenient.

For the export once, crop and adjust in gimp/equivalent workflow most of my suggestions are moot. Then the exported files are conceptually another level of source file.

1 Like

@agriggio: First, I think it’s great that you have made some changes to the crop tool! Thanks for that! For me, I’ve gotten used to the way cropping works in RawTherapee and I’m happy the way it is if it were to remember the zoomed in ratio, i.e. the zoom factor I get when pressing the Alt+f shortcut. When I browse (F3-F4) my photographs RT doesn’t remember this and the picture gets an offset based on the cropped area.

If your new crop-tweak could let me click a button to confirm my wished crop, @agriggio, it would be much simpler to use - cropping for me is an iterative process and I’m seldom happy with my first attempt.
So: the confirmation for wished crop and remembering the Alt+f-thing would make me super happy! :smiley:

Thanks for all developers effort in this fantastic piece of software! :+1:

1 Like

RawTherapee preserves the zoom ratio as long as the photo you’re switching to is of the same original dimensions as the one you’re switching from, else it zooms-to-fit.

Alt+f zooms to fit the crop. It’s unclear what you’re asking for.

@Morgan_Hardwood: Sorry if it’s vague: I’m asking for that RawTherapee automatically zooms to crop when switching from one image to another, so that I don’t have to press Alt+f every time :slight_smile:

Now it’s clear :slight_smile:

1 Like

@mks9900 the latest dev does exactly that, provided that you use a solid background for your images. Rationale: if you use a transparent background, you might be interested in seeing what’s in the transparent area :slight_smile:
Also, now you can customize (a little bit) the behaviour of the crop tool in “preferences → image processing”.

@agriggio: Maybe I’m doing something wrong here, but… :thinking: I tried the latest RT (5.3-399-gbb7afbe01) now and compiled it. I placed three images without any pp3-file in a new directory to try on. I have since before chosen a solid black background, and set automatic crop in preferences to be true.

When I cropped the first image, RT automatically zoomed to crop at 31 which is good. I went on to the next image; RT now maintained the 31 zoom factor from the previous zoom-to-crop (which I believe is the wrong behaviour?), cropped it a little more heavily on that one whereas RT zoomed-to-crop at 43%. Pressed F4 to the next image and default zoom was at 43 . When I pressed F3 to go backwards in the queue, RT always shows the image at 43 , not depending on the per-image-crop-zoom-factor (…).

If I press “f” (zoom-to-fit) the value for me becomes 24 %, which is the value I would have expected on an untouched image.

Does this make sense to you @agriggio or have I completely misunderstood everything? (Probably!) :wink: