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 
Compiled crop-tweaks branch commit 0ac3bafb
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?
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.
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:
but hey, this is just speculation 
Some examples from other tools I dug up
Didn’t look into this until now but all the above work similarly to my proposal.
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
The activated/deactivated state remains as it is. as soon as you change a parameter, the tool is activated
so for crop 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.
@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! 
Thanks for all developers effort in this fantastic piece of software! 
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 
Now it’s clear
@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
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… 
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!) 
Just wanted to crop an image, didn’t work, I thought, then I read:
Cropping in RawTherapee does not discard the cropped-off area, it just hides it by drawing a crop frame and zooming in to fit the frame to the available screen space.
That means I can’t crop? I am on 2470. That would be a deal breaker. Need to search an ART ZIP
It crops when you save the output.
Tried and works. But I find it disturbing/distracting to work on an uncropped image.
The cropped area can be hidden with these buttons.
When getting started with RT, I also found this behavior distracting. Now, I prefer it, because it means that I can tweak the cropping whenever I want during processing. No final decisions are made until the image is saved.
