I’ve finally managed to finalize the next PhotoFlow release, which is now available as source code from github.
This new version bring several improvements and few new features. In particular, I’ve been working on the local contrast tool, which is directly inspired from @patdavid’s tutorial about clarity in GIMP. It is now possible to choose between gaussian and bilateral blur methods. Shortly speaking, the first method gives a stronger effect while the second a more subtle and realistic one.
Other improvements include a shadows/highlights clipping warning in the preview image, a mouse-assisted rotation tool with automatic cropping, and a better color scheme for the tool controls widgets.
It would be great if people from this community could help me spread out this announcement, so that I can reach out the maximum number of potentially interested users!
I remember looking into this around the start of the year, but having trouble compiling it for Debian 7. I’m very interested in trying PhotoFlow out, so hopefully compiling won’t give those same issues (which may have been my fault in the first place) in Debian 8.
Thank you for the update and all the work you’ve done. Where do you prefer feedback?
Good point! Something to be definitely added in next version. For now, if your zoom buttons are icon-based and you have the shadows/highlights warning buttons next to them, then you are up-to-date on 0.2.1
@Laserbreath lots of things have changed since the beginning of the year! For compiling photoflow from sources, I’m providing an helper script called build_all.sh under the build folder. This should fetch and build VIPS for you, as well as PhotoFlow. Maybe you can start from this and eventually post here your compilation errors if it does’t work, I’ll be glad to help you!
Concerning feedback, for bug reports and feature requests I definitely prefer the issue tracker on GitHub, as it makes easier to track the progresses even after few months.
For what concernes compilation troubles, or questions like “how does this work”, “how can I do that”, “I found this awesome tutorial, how can I reproduce it in photoflow” and similar, you can either continue the discussion here or open a discussion topic in the G+ community, as I check both sites quite frequently.
Since you mention them… the zoom buttons are something of the past. The app should really zoom on Control-mousewheel like every other app. Scale/Rotate would also benefit a lot from direct interaction (click-drag).
I don’t even remember the last time I used a zoom button voluntarily (but I do remember being mad the last time it was the only way to zoom - embedded maps do this sometimes)…
@Ofnuts, thanks for the suggestions!
Personally I really like the way RawTherapee implements the double-click in the preview area: zoom to 100% if not already at 100%, otherwise zoom-to-fit.
I think that fit and 100% are the two zoom levels anyone uses 90% of the time, so this kind of shortcut is really handy! So I’ll most likely start by reproducing this behaviour in photoflow, at least to have a concrete and achievable goal for next version.
Concerning rotation, I have now implemented straight-line-rotation in a way similar to what exists in RawTherapee and Darktable. You can click in the preview to define a first point, then click again to define the second point of the segment that should be made straight, and then eventually drag the two points if they need to be re-adjusted. Is this what you mean by click-and-drag?
It seems that an up-to-date VIPS package is available for Arch. Then it should be possible to compile PhotoFlow without much trouble. On the other hand, I could not find any pre-compiled Arch package for photoflow…
Zoom-to-fit and zoom-to-100% are necessary but not sufficient. In Gimp I often zoom to 200-400% when doing a cutout path, or to some intermediate value to check out details. Once you have it, zoom-to-fit should be the default level when loading a picture.
For me click and drag is how the rotation tool works in Gimp. I click on any point of the image and moving the mouse rotates the image to follow the mouse. The rotation center can of course be adjusted.
Corrective rotation to make a line vertical/horizontal is useful (another can’t-miss for a photo editor) but somewhat different, but this is more a correction than a creative editing.
@Ofnuts: intermediate values between fit and 100% are available through the zoom buttons, now I have to see how to implement zooming with the mouse wheel… maybe I’ll make this a configurable option: mouse wheel to zoom in/out or to scroll up/down.
For what concerns the rotation tool, one can imagine two user-selectable, mutually exclusive interactive modes: click&drag or reference line. The two cannot coexist at the same time, because a mouse click would be used either to start a dragging operation or to add/adjust a control point of the reference line…
@Dario_M That would be really great! Just let me know if you succeed, and I’ll then add Arch-specific instructions in the documentation.
I think you covered everything and then some. Thank you for being so helpful and thorough. I’m not on G+ but will definitely share my thoughts here, and anything I come across on GitHub.
To install via PKGBUILD, download the file in a directory, open a terminal in the same directory and do “makepkg -i” to download via git, compile and install the package.
If you have the compiled package just double-click (if in Manjaro) or open a terminal in the same directory and do “#pacman -U photoflow-git-0.2.1-1-any.pkg.tar.xz” (if in Archlinux)
Thank you for being so helpful and thorough. I’m not on G+ but will definitely share my thoughts here, and anything I come across on GitHub.
