XnView Software

By accident I've stumbled over the new export function (File > Export...). What a great new feature! When exporting you can see a preview of the image and the expected file size when saving, just what you need when exporting images.

Some things that I have found:

- The preview areas are a small, they should be larger.

- The icons used for 1:1 Zoom and fit to page are not clear

- There should be tooltips for the icons

- Title "Export" wizard should be renamed to just "Export".

- Button positions of "Save", "Refresh" and "Cancel" are not good.

- Progress bar should be at bottom of dialog.

- There should be something like a "< Back" and "Next >". On second wizard page, there should be possibility to choose filename and directory.

- Auto Refresh is good, but it should cancel as soon as there is new interaction. Alternative: Auto refresh could wait 1-2 seconds before refreshing.

- Mouse wheel on preview should zoom in/out.

- Current zoom level is not shown.

XnView 1.90 <x>

The function is great! I hope it will have a default button in the buttonbar at the top. Users should see it as an alt. to save. Actually, I could easily live without save and only use export, but thats just me...

Some things that I have found:

- The preview areas are a small, they should be larger.

I disagree. Any larger and they wouldn't fit on any resolution screen lower than 1024x768. What the export window needs is an "apply to image" button/option, which will apply the changes to the image in the main viewer window instead of only in the little preview window, the same way most of the filters in the program have an "apply to image" checkbox.

Drahken wrote:I disagree. Any larger and they wouldn't fit on any resolution screen lower than 1024x768.

I don't quite understand. Currently the dialog "Export" is 576x513 in size.

Drahken wrote:What the export window needs is an "apply to image" button/option, which will apply the changes to the image in the main viewer window instead of only in the little preview window, the same way most of the filters in the program have an "apply to image" checkbox.

Right, rather than enlarging the export dialog it's a very good idea to use the main window area as optional preview. The one and only reason against this is that users might think that the original image is affected, which is not the case, here.

If we do use the main window as preview, we should have a checkbox "Show preview" which switches the preview in the dialog on/off (similar to dialog "Image > Adjust > Brigthness/Contrast/...".

helmut wrote:

Drahken wrote:I disagree. Any larger and they wouldn't fit on any resolution screen lower than 1024x768.

I don't quite understand. Currently the dialog "Export" is 576x513 in size.

...Which just barely fits on 800x600. It could be enlarged slightly, and overlap the titlebar and/or status bar, but that really wouldn't be enough to make a noticeable difference in the preview window.
http://allspark.net/cypherswipe/export-preview.jpg <-how much of the screen the export window currently consumes on 800x600.

I agree wih Helmut, what about users with 1600x1200 or even more? If buttons on the right will be moved below, it will be not so bad.

- Zoom level should be saved IMHO, or automatically zoomed to .. 400%??

Minor cosmetic issue: Checking Progressive should grey out Optimize, since it's implied.

Bug: It always switches back to 16m color when it's set to something else, but TIFF doesn't know, and enables the b&w compression modes instead of the full-color ones.

I don't suppose it'd be possible to include a lurawave jp2 tab? It's just so hard to find a compression preview of any sort for jp2 compressors. [Edit: Now realize that it supports jasper j2k, that's enough for me, didn't realize I didn't have the plugin.]

Otherwise, agreeing with the larger size group, but it's quite cool to have as is.

If it gets much larger than it already is, 800x600 and less won't be able to use it, and may not even be able to close it if the buttons go too far off screen.
Applying the preview to the image in the main window would avoid all these issues.

helmut wrote: - The icons used for 1:1 Zoom and fit to page are not clear
- Button positions of "Save", "Refresh" and "Cancel" are not good.

- Progress bar should be at bottom of dialog.

The first two, I strongly agree. The refresh button may be over the preview image, as the button will cause action in the preview, so they are semantically connected. And Save/Cancel create a lot of wasted space, as most of the rightmost "column" is not used. As the buttons are quite wide, but not high, place them in a row, not in a column.

The lower one I disagree. The progress relates to the image shown top-right, so the progress bar shall be nearby - I's prefer it even INSIDE the preview (or replacing the refresh button): When changing settings, I will look at the preview which still shows the old settings, so it'd be natural to see the progress bar "censoring" the outdated preview, and when the bar disappears I know "that's my new settings". As long as we do not offer 3 variants (what I'd love to have - at least as option), I'd prefer the progress bar (inside preview) to be quite small so I see several details of the picture and can focus on the change.

Dreamer wrote:I agree wih Helmut, what about users with 1600x1200 or even more? If buttons on the right will be moved below, it will be not so bad.

Well, what's with a rotated screen? I use portrait modus every now and then...

Very basic question: Why is the dialog not resizable and saves it's size, just like XnView itself does? I'd expect all controls to be of constant size and the two preview panes to become bigger/smaller. This way, all users can optimize the export dialog to their wishes and screen sizes.

My 2 cents. /Georg

Thank you for your valuable feedback and support, Georg.

I have thought about the progress bar, again. The progress bar indicates that the preview is recalculated. That's fine, but I wonder whether a progress bar that large and using that much space is the right choice. Perhaps just the mouse cursor could change to a cursor with a small sand watch during preview update.

helmut wrote:Perhaps just the mouse cursor could change to a cursor with a small sand watch during preview update.

Personally, I prefer to see the progress. And depending on what you export (panoramas may have some 50-100 megapixels with ease, PS can be pretty complex,...) it can take a while to compute the result. Hence: I'd like a progress bar - and if it's as small as a mouse cursor

The status of export dialog box seems to be still the same...

I found a new issue very simple to solve: XnViews shows 2 little images. What are they showing? Probably, right image is preview of exported image, left one current viewed image - s simple title text would help.