XnView Software

We had these days some requests about improving the navigation and cropping in our Batch Processing engine.

IMHO these request can be very elegantly handled together and more, enhancing a lot the batch cropping feature making the best in class solution for digitizing companies and for any other user who have a lot of images (usually from scanner) who need cropping. Yes, I know - we did a lot of these, both in cooperation with big companies and by ourselves.

The GUI should look something like this:
...With the appropriate tooling to batch apply the crop box to the selected photos, to all photos, "from Current Photo till Begin/End" etc.

As you see, is very easy to do it, in fact just a relocation of the existing screen widgets from separate tabs together and a link between them.

Internally the program will have in the list of files two fields: Filename (a string - field which already exists) and CropBox (a structure of 5 numbers: 4 integers describing the cropping rectangle and a float for the rotation angle). Of course, when CropBox is (0,0,0,0,0) means No Crop.

Also, the crop box should be used not only for cropping but also it will act like a mask for different filters.

The right way to start a good job. Yeah!

A dialog box similar to batch convert only for cropping??

xnview wrote:A dialog box similar to batch convert only for cropping??

Maybe a new/modified version of actual crop action and preview area.

xnview wrote:A dialog box similar to batch convert only for cropping??

Nope. Exactly in the same engine.

Let's take it step by step.

What's happening when the user wants to do a Batch Convert?

1. Selects 123 photos.
2. Goes to Tools | Batch Convert...

And then the program does like this:

2.a. Builds a list of 123 TmyFileEntry objects containing the file names and thumbnails of the selection from the step 1.
2.b. Show the Batch Convert dialog with the 1st tab filled with thumbnails based on the list generated at step 2.a.

At this point I propose the following changes:

2.b.1 Move all the widgets from the Batch Convert's tab "Input:" on the bottom of the second tab ("Actions"). We'll have a layout quite similar with the Compare window. The main reason of this move is to enhance the navigation for the Before/After views in the "Actions" tab.. Of course, when the user clicks on a thumbnail, the corresponding image will be shown in the Before/After pane.

2.b.2 For each entry (object) in the list generated at the step 2.a. add a new property (struct) with 5 numbers (4 integers + one float) to hold the crop information. Initialize this to (0,0,0,0,0) - no cropping information

Till now we have a much better navigation in the Batch Convert window and a struct for each file object doing nothing.

Next step is to add the crop box support:

3. Allow the user to drag a box on the After view in exactly the same manner we can do it today in View mode.
4. Store this info in the struct defined at step 2.b.2

5. The critical part: In the Crop action, besides options "( ) from position" and "( ) from edge" add another one: "( ) use crop information (box)"
If the latter option is used then read the struct filled with data at step 4 and crop accordingly.

6. (optional, but highly recommended) Add at all filter actions from Actions menu a check-box saying "Use crop information". Then the crop box will act like a mask. Exactly like in View mode.

7. Add a tooling button (see the position of the button in the mockup in my original post). This is very important because in the case of scanned books / documents etc. the crop area is nearly the same on many documents and hence a way to "copy" the coordinates of the crop box on many photos is very necessary and gives us with this simple tool the state of the art in batch cropping.

cicciobello wrote:

xnview wrote:A dialog box similar to batch convert only for cropping??

Maybe a new/modified version of actual crop action and preview area.

Yes. A updated version of actual code. See my prev post. And the modifications are minimal and upward compatible. If the user doesn't want to use the crop box is his choice. No problem.

xnview wrote:A dialog box similar to batch convert only for cropping??

No. Multiple virtually-identical dialogs just confuse the user.

Instead, embed the feature in the existing batch convert dialog crop action (still disabled as of v0.64) as presented by m.Th in this thread.

However, sometimes it is good to expose a popular "hidden" feature (for example: batch crop) at the top of the UI hierarchy, such as on a toolbar button or in the main menu. A separate menu item ("Batch crop") or toolbar button command should respond to the user by displaying the existing batch convert dialog with the crop action already added and focused.

This method of automatically adding the appropriate action to the dialog for the user adds considerable UI flexibility. One way to generalize this approach would be to implement a command + parameter schema for the toolbar buttons and menus:

cmd_BatchConvert @crop
cmd_BatchConvert @rename
cmd_BatchConvert @resize
cms_BatchConvert @DPI

etc.

I suppose that adding a crop widget to the crop action within the batch tool would be very welcome.
I understand that the goal of your proposal is to optimize a multi cropping worflow, so I suppose individual crop data (as you suggested) would need to be attached to each object.
I also have no objection about having the possibility to display the input list/thumbs within the same window than the Before/After views to enhance the navigation.

but I think that your proposal for using this crop data as a mask for other action (point 6.) raises many question/issues:

• When you say exactly like in view mode...Did you notice how you can't actually predict how the selection area influence any of the actions/tools within the viewer ?
• That crop box will be irrelevant for many actions and confusing or complexifying a few other actions (ie: resize, rotate)
• Being able to have some actions use the crop information and some other not use it will just be a headache (for both a programming and user perspective)
• from a ux perspective the user will need to keep track of what actions within the stack are using the crop information and which are not.
• If you use the "use crop information" option within the crop action then the "use crop information" option for all other action becomes confusing/useless
• Basically any action that messes with the dimensions of the picture (resize, rotate, ...) will potentially break your cropbox
• etc...

m.Th. wrote: 2.b.1 Move all the widgets from the Batch Convert's tab "Input:" on the bottom of the second tab ("Actions"). We'll have a layout quite similar with the Compare window. The main reason of this move is to enhance the navigation for the Before/After views in the "Actions" tab.. Of course, when the user clicks on a thumbnail, the corresponding image will be shown in the Before/After pane.

Here, i disagree. All feedback that i have, is that XnConvert has clean UI.

Ok, so if i understand, it's to have the possibility to crop each file in a different way, right?

xnview wrote:

m.Th. wrote: 2.b.1 Move all the widgets from the Batch Convert's tab "Input:" on the bottom of the second tab ("Actions"). We'll have a layout quite similar with the Compare window. The main reason of this move is to enhance the navigation for the Before/After views in the "Actions" tab.. Of course, when the user clicks on a thumbnail, the corresponding image will be shown in the Before/After pane.

Here, i disagree. All feedback that i have, is that XnConvert has clean UI.

Nobody disputes that. However, there are navigational problems if there are many files to process. My proposal is an improvement which doesn't imply that the actual layout is wrong. But we can do better by adding a thumbs strip at the bottom.

See some of the posts above, and also this one: http://newsgroup.xnview.com/viewtopic.php?f=60&t=29414

Ok, so if i understand, it's to have the possibility to crop each file in a different way, right?

Yes. But with the very important feature of "copying"/"fill"/"inherit"/"propagate" etc. (tell it as you like) the crop box from one photo to many and after that to slightly modify this template.

...And btw, IMHO the Crop box should be in 'Before' view not in the 'After' view.

... Maybe it's better, and more easy to have the ability to create a "generic mask" first from the mouse square selection, into the view mode ?

... So after into "batch Convert" (already available): "Add Mask" + "Automatic Crop"