Minor Problems and Suggestions

[dentblanche]

Minor problems and suggestions

-Assign-tags mode can be annoying.

-Upside-down photos at 100% magnification don’t drag correctly

-Show All and Stay Put Command.

-Thicker separation line in thumbs display.

-Daminion suddenly wanted to connect to the server.

I’m using Daminion 0.9.8(716)

 

1. Assign-tags mode can be annoying. The “Assign-Tags”mode is powerful and quite convenient – when it’s needed. However, I’ve found that there are extended situations in which having the “Assign Tags” mode come suddenly into effect can be quite annoying. At the annoying end of the spectrum, one has to constantly click on “Return to Filter Mode” all the time. At the disruptive end of the spectrum, one can inadvertently assign tags to multiple unknown photos because one isn’t expecting “Assign Tags” mode to be there. Not to mention that I, for one, have been known to make the unexpected/unwanted click somewhere random in the tags frame,just because my trigger finger is itchy.

 

I would really like to have a switch, say in the Preferences, that allows me to shut off the “Assign Tags” mode for a while, until I want it on again.

 

2. Upside-down photos at 100% magnification don’t drag correctly. One photo that had already been rotated 90 degrees in the catalog I just finished was of someone across from me at a restaurant who had an open menu in front of them on the table, the menu being upside-down in the photo. I decided I wanted to see if I could read the menu. So I rotated the photo 180 degrees and bumped the magnification to 100%. At 100% the photo is way bigger than the monitor screen, and so I tried to drag the photo lower so that I could view the menu, which was now at the top of the photo.

 

But it was impossible to do so, because as soon as I had dragged it a short way in any direction, the photo would suddenly jump back or back to the opposite edge. I tried this with a couple of other photos, with the same result. It also doesn’t matter which way you get to 100% magnification, either. I tried closing the program and restarting it, with the same result. It also doesn’t matter whether one uses the 180 degree rotation or two 90 degree rotations. This happen at some magnifications lower than 100%. I checked this in other catalogs and the same thing happens. And it happens with photos that haven’t been first rotated at all, i.e, are still horizontal, and then are rotated 180 degrees. But if the photo is displayed in its original orientation, it can be dragged around the screen at 100% magnification just fine. I am using a 19” (diagonal) monitor.

 

3. A "Show All and Stay Put" Command. There have been several times when I’ve been working on a photo and realized that, in order to be sure of what I was seeing, I needed to see one or more photos that were taken just before or just after the current photo, where the photos are sorted by either filename or creation date/time. I have accomplished this one way by displaying all the photos and then scrolling down to where the photo I was looking at is. But it might be nice to have a command available to cause the program immediately to display the, say 3 or n, photos on each side of the photo in question, according to the current sort.

 

Perhaps better might be a command to do a Show All, where the display doesn’t go back to the start, but rather centers itself around the current photo (i.e., Show All and Stay Put).

 

4. Thicker separation line in thumbs display. The display of thumbs shows a row of photos, a row of Thumbnail Captions, and then another row of photos. The row of captions has a darker gray background. I’m wondering if the display might be more immediately readable if the thin black separation line between the captions row and the photos of the row below was made slightly thicker, to emphasize the distinction between one row of photos with their information and the next row. If the Titles of the photos are displayed above the photo and if the Description for the previous row of thumbs is there, but empty, and in other situations, it can sometimes seem as if the lower caption lines might refer to the photos below, rather than above.

 

5. Daminion suddenly wanted to connect to the server. I was busy with tags and rotations, when suddenly an error message appeared on the screen, saying, “Unable to connect to the server!” followed by a list of things to check. The problem is that I am using Daminion without the server program and I didn't open a shared catalog. I believe that I had just clicked on a thumb so that I could rotate it. I was hurrying through some boring tasks and so I might have not clicked correctly on the photo, I don’t know.

 

In addition to getting this error message, was the fact that there was no way to get out of it. Clicking on either Yes or No in the error message box caused another window to appear which said “Please wait”. Clicking on Cancel in the latter caused me to go back to the original error message. Clicking on the X in the upper right of the main window wouldn’t work because there was a response wanted from me. In the end I had to use the Task Manager to just kill the program. When I started the program up again, everything was fine. I’m sorry I can’t be more informative about the context, although I did take a screen shot so that I could remember the error message.

 

[Murat]

Thanks for the detailed feedback! I'll write a response to your message later. Please once the “Unable to connect to the server!” error message appears again, send me the server logs (Admin Panel > Help > Show Logs > Logs.txt)

[dentblanche]

Thanks for the detailed feedback! I'll write a response to your message later. Please once the “Unable to connect to the server!” error message appears again, send me the server logs (Admin Panel > Help > Show Logs > Logs.txt)

 

I'm afraid I don't have or use the server. Are there logs elsewhere?

[Uwe]

Hi Debugger,

 

please start the client with parameter -log_enable to get the log files. By pressing CTRL-F12 you jump into the log folder.

 

Regards, Uwe

[Murat]

please start the client with parameter -log_enable to get the log files. By pressing CTRL-F12 you jump into the log folder.

 

These are the client logs, but I need the server logs.

 

Debugger, please launch the Daminion Server Administration panel, open the "Help" menu and navigate to "Show Logs..." option. I need the folder with logs right after an error appears again!

 

EDIT: This is my fault, I was in a hurry and didn't read the complete topic just the sentence about connection problem. I'll try to reproduce this issue, but if you have a chance to reproduce it with -log_enable parameter, as Uwe suggested above, it will be very helpful for us.

[Murat]

1. Assign-tags mode can be annoying.

 

Hmm... We've added green colors to visually distinguish the modes.

Does the issue will be solved by adding a hotkey to switch to the Filter Mode? For example by Escape key. And the message on the button will be "Return to Filter Mode (Esc)"

 

 

2. Upside-down photos at 100% magnification don’t drag correctly.

 

There is a "Fit Image" view mode that probably should be identified more clearly. It can be activated by pressing the "*" key. And pressing the "-" or "+" keys will leaves the "Fit Image" mode, and you can move your image by mouse.

 

But if you'll record me a short video by FSCapture I could be sure that we are talking about the same issue.

 

 

3. A "Show All and Stay Put" Command.

 

I guess that upcoming Stacks feature might better helps you. Because it allows you to group the similar picture (usually taken by a burst) into stack that could be displayed a single item.

 

Am I correctly understood you?:

- I have a query result different than "Show All", for example I see all images marked by Green color label

- Then I scroll down to the middle of the thumbnail area

- Select an item

- And press the "Show All and Stay Put" button

Should the Daminion show all the photos after that, locate and select the previously selected photo?

 

 

4. Thicker separation line in thumbs display.

 

We'll think about this... Thank you!

 

5. Daminion suddenly wanted to connect to the server.

 

Finally I was able reproduced the issue. Thanks for the information!

Will be fixed soon.

[ybo117]

"Assign-tags mode can be annoying."

 

I don't know if it is possible (from software programming) but my idea is :

 

If you select 'switch to assign mode', you have to select/click 'return to filter mode', as it is now (or esc).

 

But if you use 'assign/remove tag to selected files' you should automatically go back to filter mode.

 

Best regards,

 

Yves

[dentblanche]

Hmm... We've added green colors to visually distinguish the modes.

Does the issue will be solved by adding a hotkey to switch to the Filter Mode? For example by Escape key. And the message on the button will be "Return to Filter Mode (Esc)"

 

Well, I readily admit that maybe I'm the only one who might be annoyed at this. But the thing about it is that I forget that the "Assign Tags" mode turns on as a result of doing so many different things, or at least that's what it seems like. I forget that it's there, even though there are green warnings all over. Note that I still haven't been able to break myself of the habit of clicking on the name of a tag in the tags frame, rather than clicking in the radio button, and this is part of the problem. So I inevitably just highlight the name of the tag and then realize I have to click on the radio button to invoke the filter. But I'm am getting better at remembering.

 

The problem with "Assign Tags" mode is that I inadvertently end up doing things that cannot be undone, and this is too easy to do, because one can click on virtually anything in the tags frame and the little click mark will appear.

 

Consider this scenario: I am displaying via the filters a subset of the photos, say 10% of which are marked with Tag B, and I do a Select All, or have a number of photos selected. Then I do something that causes "Assign Tags" mode to commence, but which I don't manage to pay attention to. Then I click on Tag B, intending to filter only those photos being marked with Tag B. But since "Assign Tags" mode is in effect, I have inadvertently tagged all the photos which are selected to be marked with Tag B.

 

But how do I undo this? I can't just unclick the check mark next to Tag B in the tags frame, because that would also un-tag the photos that legitimately were marked with tag B before. If I could have shut off any appearance of "Assign Tags" mode, then the worst thing that could have happened would be that I display the wrong photos, if I click on the wrong tag.

 

At least with the above scenario I could go back through, one by one, all the photos that had been selected, maybe by using the tray, and check to see if Tag B was merited by each one. And I guess I could restore from the previous night's backup. And I could shut off Sync Mode, so that when I catch myself, the metadata hasn't yet been written to the files. But now that I trust Sync Mode, I would prefer to use it.

 

In the end, ESC wouldn't really solve this, because I would have to not forget to notice that the UI has changed to "Assign Tags" mode. It just seems dangerous to me, especially since there isn't an "undo" function like in, say, Word, or a windows that comes up and asked if I really want to assign the tags. ( And I do understand that "undo" isn't practical here, and that such a little window would be even more annoying than "Assign Tags" mode.)

 

Although a setting in the Preferences would be nice, I guess I could live with ESC. However, the most dangerous aspect of "Assign Tags" mode is that one can assign a tag just by clicking on its name, i.e., where the tag name becomes highlighted. In filter mode, on has to cick on the radio button. I realize that there has to be room for the little check mark, and so there is no room for the radio button in "Assign Tags" mode. But one can even now still click in that blank (green) area, where the radio button used to be, to assign the tag, and can click on the little check mark to get rid of the tag. So, in my humble opinion, it would make the feature a lot less dangerous if, say, there were a thin-lined, hollow, dark green square, where now there is just a blank green area. Then when one clicked in the green square, the square would disappear and the check mark would disappear. And one wouldn't be able to assign a tag by clicking on the name of the tag.

 

I'm explaining this at length just to make sure were on the same wavelength. I am assuming that I can just get used to it.

[dentblanche]

2. Upside-down photos at 100% magnification don’t drag correctly.

 

There is a "Fit Image" view mode that probably should be identified more clearly. It can be activated by pressing the "*" key. And pressing the "-" or "+" keys will leaves the "Fit Image" mode, and you can move your image by mouse.

 

But if you'll record me a short video by FSCapture I could be sure that we are talking about the same issue.

 

I think I can describe what is happening, now that I've played with the problem for a bit.

 

With any photo that is in its "native" orientation, horizontal or having been rotated 90 degrees to show the photo correctly,one can double-click on it and have the photo display, usually in "Fit Image" mode. If there is something in the photo that one would like to zoom in on, one can click-and-hold the cursor on the location of interest in the photo, and the photo will zoom to 100%, with the part of the photo that was of interest displaying. One can also move the photo around the screen while still holding the left mouse button down. If one sets the photo size to 100%, then one can move the photo around on the screen to reveal different parts of it, without having the photo revert to fitted image size when one stops holding the left button down.

 

The problem comes when the certain photos have been previously rotated 180 degrees. Now, one can still double-click on the photo and have it display, upside-down, at "Fit Image" mode. However, if one wants to then zoom in on a particularly interesting spot on the photo by doing a click-and-hold, one is in for a surprise: one sees for only a fleeting instant the correct zoomed image, i.e., the zoomed portion of the photo. And then immediately the image switches to a different zoomed image, as follows: If the location of the zoomed spot that one clicked on is X% down from the top of the monitor display, then what gets displayed is the the zoomed image of a spot X% up from the bottom of the monitor display.

 

Making things worse is the fact that if one does a click-and-hold and then slowly moves the cursor, to get a better look by moving the enlarged photo around the screen, the image flashes back and for between the two images mentioned above. If one moves the cursor a bit more briskly, the correct zoomed image will be dragged without flashing, but as soon as your stop the drag, the image switches back to the image corresponding to X% of the way from the opposite side of the monitor display.

 

This happens also if you set the image magnification to 100%, or, I believe, to another magnification that would cause the photo to be too large to be displayed completely on the monitor.

 

Strangely enough, this doesn't happen to every photo, even ones that are vertically orientated. Somewhere between 20% and 50% of the photos in the particular catalog I was working on exhibited this problem. If I rotate such a photo 180 degrees back to its original orientation, the problem goes away.

[dentblanche]

3. A "Show All and Stay Put" Command.

 

I guess that upcoming Stacks feature might better helps you. Because it allows you to group the similar picture (usually taken by a burst) into stack that could be displayed a single item.

 

Am I correctly understood you?:

- I have a query result different than "Show All", for example I see all images marked by Green color label

- Then I scroll down to the middle of the thumbnail area

- Select an item

- And press the "Show All and Stay Put" button

Should the Daminion show all the photos after that, locate and select the previously selected photo?

 

 

The feature I was thinking about would, with one click, do the equivalent of the following: If I have one photo currently selected, then carry out a Show All and then scroll down to the photo that had been selected. This would provide a quick way to view all the photos on either side of the photo that was selected, assuming that there is some kind of sort order in effect. That order might be creation time, filename (useful in certain catalogs), or even in the original unsorted order. If the photo in question could be selected at the end of the Show All and Scroll functions, then so much the better.

 

The reason I mention this, is that I was recently in a situation were the creation times of some photos were wrong because the creation time had been reset to the camera default value because the battery case had been opened. At the same time, some photos had incorrect filenames, although the creation times were correct. To make matters worse, some of the photos were taken in Europe, and the camera time hadn't been set to local time. In trying to straighten out this mess, I found myself having to Show All and then Scroll down to the photo in question, so that I cold see where it sat in the order and how the other photos and the various times-of-day related to it.

 

Now that the photos have their keywords in place, I don't know that I'll need the "Show All and Stay Put" command all that much. But it's possible others might have a use for it. It may be that the Stack command that you mention is all that I might have needed.

[dentblanche]

5. Daminion suddenly wanted to connect to the server.

 

Finally I was able reproduced the issue. Thanks for the information!

Will be fixed soon.

 

Wow! I take my hat off to you! You had very little to go on, and still found it.

 

I had assumed that that was a bug that would only occur after a random number of different commands and wouldn't be able to be addressed until it happened to someone again.

 

I confess, though, that I'm curious what one would have to do to reproduce the error message, but I realize that you're very busy, too.

[Mammut]

Hi,

 

1. The Esc is a very good idea, at least, if I assign only 1 tag, I have to turn off the assign mode twice, because there is the catalog tags tab and the Folders tab.

 

Then I do something that causes "Assign Tags" mode to commence, but which I don't manage to pay attention to. Then I click on Tag B, intending to filter only those photos being marked with Tag B. But since "Assign Tags" mode is in effect, I have inadvertently tagged all the photos which are selected to be marked with Tag B.

 

Yeah, similar happened to me, but fortunatelly I synced the files a few days before that, so I deleted and reimported the files (or used the read tags from file feature? I can't remember, but it doesn't matter). Of course, it could be a very big work to fix it without the sync. Since then I'm always paying attention (especially because I'm not syncing the files every day). But maybe an Undo feature would be more useful.

 

Regards,

mammut

[kalain]

4. Thicker separation line in thumbs display. The display of thumbs shows a row of photos, a row of Thumbnail Captions, and then another row of photos. The row of captions has a darker gray background. I’m wondering if the display might be more immediately readable if the thin black separation line between the captions row and the photos of the row below was made slightly thicker, to emphasize the distinction between one row of photos with their information and the next row. If the Titles of the photos are displayed above the photo and if the Description for the previous row of thumbs is there, but empty, and in other situations, it can sometimes seem as if the lower caption lines might refer to the photos below, rather than above.

 

Something like this : https://daminion.net/user-forum/index.php?/topic/741-ergonomic-improvement-2/

[dentblanche]

2. Upside-down photos at 100% magnification don’t drag correctly.

 

 

OK, here is a video made with Faststone. I show that dragging a photo at 100% enlargement works fine. Then I rotate it 180 degrees and drag it around at 100% magnification and the video shows that it flashes back and forth between images based on opposite sides of the photo. Then I rotate it 180 degrees again to its original orientation, and show that it drags correctly, just as it did before the first rotation.

 

I believe I've explained what is happening in a reply above to you, although clearly not why it is so.

 

Please let me know what else I can do.

[dentblanche]

OK, here is a video made with Faststone. I show that dragging a photo at 100% enlargement works fine. Then I rotate it 180 degrees and drag it around at 100% magnification and the video shows that it flashes back and forth between images based on opposite sides of the photo. Then I rotate it 180 degrees again to its original orientation, and show that it drags correctly, just as it did before the first rotation.

 

I believe I've explained what is happening in a reply above to you, although clearly not why it is so.

 

Please let me know what else I can do.

 

Opps! I forgot to attach the video. Sorry about that. Here goes.

 

Boy! Trying to create a video under 2MB is tough. I wasn't able to show you everything, but it should be enough.

Video_2013-02-10_224725.wmv

[Murat]

Strangely enough, this doesn't happen to every photo, even ones that are vertically orientated. Somewhere between 20% and 50% of the photos in the particular catalog I was working on exhibited this problem. If I rotate such a photo 180 degrees back to its original orientation, the problem goes away.

 

Can you please import the "problematic" photo to a newly created local catalog and check whether the problem is still there. If yes, could you please send me this image?

[dentblanche]

Can you please import the "problematic" photo to a newly created local catalog and check whether the problem is still there. If yes, could you please send me this image?

 

I installed 0.9.9.728 three days ago and found that it had fixed the problem. I had assumed that you had solved it.

 

I will reinstall the previous version and carry out your request, if you feel it is still worth it.

[Murat]

Thanks for the info.

 

731 version is available to download.