Darktable: Make image fill the whole (or the most of the) screen in file manager

[codingdave]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
When I Shift-scroll in the FileManager to only see one image, the image does not fill the whole screen. @aurelienpierre told me its because the requirement was to always have square items in the file manager. However, here it is really annoying because the image has the same size as each of the 2 images that I can see when I Shift-Scroll in the other direction by one go.

Describe the solution you'd like
Be able to make the image much larger, whatever still works fine.

[elstoc]

Alternative would be to use the preview mode but I agree: keeping it square doesn't really make sense when it's no longer a grid.

[michalfapso]

In lighttable, I was used to hide all panels (Tab key) and zoom to a single image filling the whole screen for reviewing photos. In the new version 3.2.1 it is possible only by using the "Preview" mode (holding the "W" key), as @elstoc pointed out.

Could you please consider zooming photos to fit the whole window area in Litghttable also in the new version?

[esm7]

Even if there's solid logic behind this change and we now need Preview Mode to review images full-screen before grading/rejecting/labeling them, beyond the visual annoyance there's an important flow that was broken here.
It now became impossible to review a series of image by selecting the first one and navigating with the right arrow.
I now need to select the first image, review images (and label/reject/grade), press right on the keyboard, and then when I get to the end of the row... What do I do? Press left-arrow all the way and the down...? This makes no sense to me.
At least to me, the "light table" analogy on which the images are sorted on a big virtual rectangle always felt a reasonable choice to quickly zoom in and out within a collection, but the real central flow was always about reviewing images one by one and doing actions on them. Not sure if intentionally or not, but the support for this flow is completely gone now.
EDIT: I forgot to mention I'm referring to the "zoomable light table" mode. Culling mode still works the way I expect.

[helloworld1]

It is fast and very intuitive to scroll mouse wheel to zoom in to single image full screen in zoomable light table in darktable 3.0. But on 3.2.1, I feel the experience of zoomable light table much much worse. Needing to press W is not smooth and unintuitive.

[AlicVB]

As pointed by many, lighttable, zoomable or not is not designed to do one-by-one image culling. For that, you have either the sticky preview mode (alt-w) or the culling mode. In tis modes, you'll even gain the possibility to use filmstrip when you need it, to zoom inside the image, etc...

It now became impossible to review a series of image by selecting the first one and navigating with the right arrow.
I now need to select the first image, review images (and label/reject/grade), press right on the keyboard, and then when I get to the end of the row... What do I do? Press left-arrow all the way and the down...? This makes no sense to me.

can you elaborate, are you speaking with the use of preview mode ? sticky or not ? in filemanager with zoom == 1, in zoomable lightable ?

It is fast and very intuitive to scroll mouse wheel to zoom in to single image full screen in zoomable light table in darktable 3.0. But on 3.2.1, I feel the experience of zoomable light table much much worse

Considering the full rewrite and the fact that zoomable lightable is not used intensively but any dev around, there's more glitch in this area. I'll try to take care of them !

[michalfapso]

Thanks, @AlicVB, for the insight. I didn't know about the "sticky preview mode" when I tried lighttable for the first time. It was most natural to me just to Ctrl+mouse scroll to zoom in the filmstrip, which worked well for the "one-by-one image culling".

Is the sticky preview mode visible anywhere in the lighttable window? Or just in the list of keyborad shortcuts? It would be great to show it to users, so they know it exists at the first sight. For me, this one-by-one culling is about 95% of my lighttable usage.

[johnny-bit]

sticky preview - just use [Alt]+W. press H to get help about available keys and modes. There's aslo focus detection preview and many more. Exposing them in GUI as buttons would cram up the interface.

[michalfapso]

I see your point, @johnny-bit. I didn't know about the H key either. Of course there can't be a GUI button for every action, but it would be really nice to find a way to communicate it somehow to users who just want to give darktable a try, they run it for the first time and just look at the GUI for what the possibilities it provides.

Maybe this preview mode would even deserve its own button as it is quite an important mode in lighttable. Maybe in the top toolbar on the right side next to the "collapse grouped images", ..., "settings" buttons. Then it would be needed to add another button to switch from the sticky preview mode back to the filmstrip mode. Maybe in the preview mode, there could be a "exit preview mode" button above / under the rating buttons in the top left corner.

[maboleth]

But can we have similar functionality like in 3.02 for zoomable mode?

There we used scroll mouse button, hovered above the image and just zoomed it straight to the center. In and out. Selected image was always perfectly aligned to the screen.
Now it's off and zooms wherever you're pointing it at. Sometimes it's the edge of the image or worse. You have to be careful to point your mouse exactly in the center to zoom it that way.

[Nilvus]

@michalfapso: Isuggest you to read 3.0 and 3.2 articles on darktable.org/blog. These articles will learn you some good features about darktable. And will save you time.

[michalfapso]

Thanks, @Nilvus. Now I know most of the stuff I needed. Keyboard shortcuts are perfect for me, I don't need buttons. I just thought, that the user experience of new users could be enhanced by showing the preview mode more visibly (e.g. as a button).

[Nilvus]

Preview feature is here since few years. It's not a recent feature. And it's hard to choose which button to add or not. Some others could be added but would overload the UI, as @johnny-bit said.

Anyway, as preview mode is near culling one in some ways, maybe could it be add on dropdown menu like culling, filemanager, etc. Just an idea. @AlicVB (and others), what do you think about that?

[michalfapso]

Yes, @Nilvus, such a dropdown menu would be really helpful. I've been using darktable for about 3 years, but didn't know about the preview mode at all. I always just zoomed in to a single image till it covered whole window and used Tab to hide other panels and went through my photos using arrow keys. But in 3.2.1, I can't zoom so close anymore, so I started looking at the issues list here and found out the preview mode :)

[AlicVB]

@Nilvus : you're perfectly right : preview and culling share almost all same code.
Now about your proposition, the tricky part is that preview (sticky or not) is a mode on top of other modes : you can enter preview from filemanager, zoomable and culling, and return to that mode once you exit preview...

[Nilvus]

@Nilvus : you're perfectly right : preview and culling share almost all same code.
Now about your proposition, the tricky part is that preview (sticky or not) is a mode on top of other modes : you can enter preview from filemanager, zoomable and culling, and return to that mode once you exit preview...

Culling mode is also on top of filemanager and zoomable view, so the tricky part is quite the same for culling and preview ones, regardless of filemanager and zoomable modes. Having preview on dropdown menu is so the same as having culling one, except that preview could also be on top of culling. So, if adding preview on dropdown menu, it would be at the end (on top of all others).

[esm7]

Sorry for the late reply, I was away for a few days.

As pointed by many, lighttable, zoomable or not is not designed to do one-by-one image culling. For that, you have either the sticky preview mode (alt-w) or the culling mode. In tis modes, you'll even gain the possibility to use filmstrip when you need it, to zoom inside the image, etc...

I think that's essentially the key here. I was using zoomable mode the way that it was seemingly not designed to. The flow I was using the past years is now broken, but perhaps it was never meant to work in the first place.

It now became impossible to review a series of image by selecting the first one and navigating with the right arrow.
I now need to select the first image, review images (and label/reject/grade), press right on the keyboard, and then when I get to the end of the row... What do I do? Press left-arrow all the way and the down...? This makes no sense to me.

can you elaborate, are you speaking with the use of preview mode ? sticky or not ? in filemanager with zoom == 1, in zoomable lightable ?

I was referring to how I (and seemingly also some other users) was using the zoomable mode. I was actually never aware of the other modes till this broke in 3.2.1 and I started digging the forums and bug reports. I always zoomed where I wanted to start reviewing (to zoom == 1 image), the image filled the screen, and from there I started rating images, rejecting, editing and coming back to lighttable etc., pressing Right on the keyboard until I was done with all the images.
This flow is now broken in two ways: 1) images don't fill the screen anymore and preview mode or culling is needed for that, and 2) even if I insist on zoomable and keep pressing right, it won't wrap past the end of a row in the light table.

Suggestion: since there was an overlap between the old behavior of zoomable and the relatively new culling mode, maybe there can be some continuity between them? e.g. maybe if a user zooms all the way into an image, Darktable will switch to culling mode with this image, and if she zooms out in culling mode, it will switch to zoomable?
The way I see it, the advantages of this behavior are:

1. It's consistent with what most users probably expect to happen when zooming all the way into an image (they probably want to review a series of images, and don't care about the arbitrary division to rows).
2. It makes culling mode much more discoverable.
3. It's consistent with the old behavior.

[Nilvus]

Sorry for the late reply, I was away for a few days.

As pointed by many, lighttable, zoomable or not is not designed to do one-by-one image culling. For that, you have either the sticky preview mode (alt-w) or the culling mode. In tis modes, you'll even gain the possibility to use filmstrip when you need it, to zoom inside the image, etc...

I think that's essentially the key here. I was using zoomable mode the way that it was seemingly not designed to. The flow I was using the past years is now broken, but perhaps it was never meant to work in the first place.

That's the key: zoomable mode was indeed never designed for that.

I was referring to how I (and seemingly also some other users) was using the zoomable mode. I was actually never aware of the other modes till this broke in 3.2.1 and I started digging the forums and bug reports. I always zoomed where I wanted to start reviewing (to zoom == 1 image), the image filled the screen, and from there I started rating images, rejecting, editing and coming back to lighttable etc., pressing Right on the keyboard until I was done with all the images.

The way you do doesn't mean the way it was design for nor the way most users use it. Other modes exist since few versions now, especially something like preview that is quite old. Culling and preview modes, design for what you want allow to navigate with left/right arrows (as well as mouse wheel)..

This flow is now broken in two ways: 1) images don't fill the screen anymore and preview mode or culling is needed for that, and 2) even if I insist on zoomable and keep pressing right, it won't wrap past the end of a row in the light table.

So it's not a darktable issue as it was never design for your flow. And you have better tools for that.

Suggestion: since there was an overlap between the old behavior of zoomable and the relatively new culling mode, maybe there can be some continuity between them? e.g. maybe if a user zooms all the way into an image, Darktable will switch to culling mode with this image, and if she zooms out in culling mode, it will switch to zoomable?

Culling mode is not new (not on darktable 3.2.1. It was a new feature in darktable 3.0, asked by most users (like me) to have a better possibility to compare images. You can even compare not following images in your film roll.

The way I see it, the advantages of this behavior are:

1. It's consistent with what most users probably expect to happen when zooming all the way into an image (they probably want to review a series of images, and don't care about the arbitrary division to rows).

2. It makes culling mode much more discoverable.

3. It's consistent with the old behavior.

What you describe is culling mode. Nothing has to be consistent has it was not designed for.

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[quovadit]

I would also suggest to have a gui element for the great 'sticky-preview' feature.
Extending the drop-down list seems quite logical for me.
(by the way: does anyone use the zoomable light table, or can this option be removed instead?)