All, I have aquestion about behavior of the lighttable view:
Let’s say I set up a few collect rules (folder: X && tag: Y) to find a specific image. I find the image I am looking for and click on it, so it’s selected. Then I remove one of those rules so many more images are now displayed (remove the condition tag: Y). Upon removal of the rule my selected image is no longer in view, instead it has moved way down such that I have to scroll to find it again.
QUESTION: Is there a way that I can have the lighttable view immediately scroll to the position of the selected image?
The use case is as follows: I have a few hundred photos in a folder, which I reviewed, edited, and ranked/tagged years ago. I’m in a mood to re-review the photos and try re-editing some particular favorites. I can easily find my past favorites by collecting based on tag or rank, but I then want to be able to see all the other shots around this image, that may be similar and good candidates for new edits (maybe a shot I dismissed previously catches my eye now…). To be able to see these other, non-ranked/tagged images I remove the collect rule that narrowed things down for me initially. When I do so I just get lost in the hundreds of images again, not really saving me any time.
Or another example, I have an image run through enfuse, and tagged with “enfuse”. I collect based on that tag, find the enfused image, but now I want to see the 3 or 5 source photos for that image. Removing the filter for tag:
enfuse" gets me lost in a jumble of hundreds of photos again where I have to scroll through to find the images/
FEATURE REQUEST: In my opinion it would be desirable for the selected image to stay “in view” when a filter is removed from the collect module. This should be achievable by adjusting the scroll bar’s location accordingly when a filter is removed.
If others feel the behavior described above is desirable then I will submit a redmine feature request.
There are a number of instances where the basic tagging does not solve an immediate need … you have outlined a typical one. There is a simple solution … use the color label so that secondary sorting will keep all of your initial selection in the topmost position. It is easy to apply to every item shown and just as easy to delete en-mass if no longer needed.
@BzKevin
I’m with you.
Even without complex selection the selected image very often gets out the screen, for example when I switch between view “all” and view “all expect rejected”.
The absence of scroll bar doesn’t help neither to find back the selected image.
Keeping the selected image in the visible window would be welcome.
@davidvj I’m afraid I do not understand how this helps. Please help me understand better. To be clear here is a hypothetical situations that happens to me very often:
I have a folder of about 500 images.
There is a bracketed sequence of 5 images starting around image 250 (half way through)
I have previously run enfuse on this image and tagged the enfused image with “enfuse”
I want to re-attempt HDR processing on this image, to do so I need to find the 5 source images
I collect based on tag “enfuse” and find the image mentioned above (out of maybe 20 images shown when filtered on “enfuse”)
I click on that image so it is selected
At this point I would like to disable the collect criteria tag: “enfuse” so that all source images are visible (because they do not contain the “enfuse” tag, so I cannot see them with that filter enabled), I would like for my selected “enfuse” image to retain focus, such that when I turn off the collect filter I am shown all 500 images, with my scroll bar approximately halfway down. Immediately next to my selected “enfuse” image I see the source files, which I can then select and export for further editing as desired.
What actually happens is that when I remove the filter I am shown images very near the top of my 500 image collection, and I have to scroll down halfway to find my selected image, and ultimately the 5 images I really cared to find.
Please spell out for me how you suggest I use color labels to alleviate this, as I don’t understand your original comment, sorry.
My proposal would be as follows: Use the ‘color’ label on any images that you may later need in addition to the tags. You may have several different images with future needs within the large image set, so you can use different color labels.
For instance there may be images that later you may wish to use for HDR, or for some other specific reason, provide them with a color label so that when you ‘release’ all the tags the label remains in place and then all of the labeled images can be grouped together at the top of any large set and easily usable for further processing.
I use color labels a lot for temporary ‘place markers’ … export to web, print, rework later, and so on … they are useful for me as an interim processing tool.
I hope that this helps.
@BzKevin why not tag the source images when you generate an image with enfuse? You could use a sequence like source-file|enfuse|enfuse file name then when you find the enfuse image you want, you could just add an or to the collect module and use the associated tag. Using source-file|enfuse|… then lets us do source-file|hugin|…, source-file|hdrmerge|…, etc. You could make source tagging an option, or just do it.
Further explanation of what I was trying to get at with this conversation, assume I am out photographing and have my camera set to take 3-shot brackets and I take 5 sequences as below (Where X.1 vs X.2 just means a minor compositional change, and A vs B vs C means major compositional changes but still of the same overall subject):
A.1
A.2
B.1
C.1
C.2
During my first editing session I may decide I want to move forward with making and editing a merge of the A.2 shots. A year later I might decide I like how that merge turned out but wonder if any of my other compositions may actually be better. Remember that all 5 of these sequences are taken immediately back-to-back so when viewing the files with no filters enabled they are all right next to each other, however, there may be hundreds of other files both above and below them in the lighttable view. This makes scrolling to them in an unfiltered view very tedious.
I am able to create a collect filter which would narrow things down such that I can find the A.2 Merge very, very quickly. I then turn off the filter after selecting the merge of A.2. This is the point where I feel DTs behavior is frustrating and un-useful to most users. Instead of sptting me out of the filter such that the image I previously selected is still displayed within my view, I get spit out in some wildly different location within all the other photos. Essentially, I feel as though when you turn a filter off you should still be viewing the selected image within the new set of collected images (be that more or less images overall than when you selected the image). DT does not behave that way. If it did then after turning off the filter I would now be taken to a view of all images, but still focused on the A.2 merge I previously selected, and therefore I would be right where all the other similar compositions reside for easy review of similar, previously overlooked potential merges.
So an easy and quick workflow to review source files for other potential merges (given a previously completed merge) would be:
setup filters to quickly find a prior merge (for me this normally narrows down 1000+ images down to 50 or so, making it a breeze to find the image I have in mind)
turn the filter off (this is where DT diverges from my desired/expected behavior)
review surrounding images to see if there are any other prospective merges that got overlooked before. Does that make sense?
I understand that the DT devs should not/need not cater to each individual’s preferred program operation. However, I would note that the behavior when turning off collect filters as-is cannot really be useful to anyone because it spits you out at a relatively random spot every time. It does not always spit you out at the top, nor always at the bottom, nor ever on the selected image (unless you have very few images or the image you selected during the filter is near the very top). The scenario I listed above is a common scenario I find myself in, however I would argue that in general it would be preferred behavior by most users that regardless of what filters you activate/de-activate your selected image remain visible within the lighttable view (assuming any filters you activate don’t filter-out the selected image, in which case you should be taken to the top, IMO)
One further and possibly more clear-cut example:
I have images 1 through 1000. I want to look at image 501 and I just so happen to know that image 500 has a star ranking. I filter on star ranking and select image 500. I then turn off the filter and SHOULD be taken to a view that includes all images, but is scrolled such that my selected image 500 is still visible without a need to scroll. That way I can just look at the next image which is 501, the image I originally desired to view. This is easier/quicker than having to scroll the 500 images to get down to image 501.