I am currently working with Andi Clemens to improve some important usability issues in Image Editor and Showfoto.
In April, Risto Saukonpää, the designer (and photographer) who re-designed digikam.org website and digiKam logo (updates coming about those) provided a great mockup and ideas for Showfoto how to speed-up workflow during image editing. Well, i'm happy to say that work is in progress in KDE3 branch. I have written a new API for editor named Editor Tool and it will be used for all image plugins.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://www.digikam.org/news/2008-08-24_digikam_image_editor_usability_improvements_screencast/