Digikam/GSoC2012/CameraUserInterfaceRevamp

Digikam GSoC 2012 Camera User Interface Revamp

This page is meant to gather information about the GSoC 2012 Idea, Camera User Interface Revamp.

Summary

DigiKam features a graphical interface to access and download pictures from digital cameras. Code is rather old, using Qt3Support classes for the icon view, the UI code intermangled deeply with backend code, and has not seen very much care and love for some years.

This project would involve taking the old code apart, rewriting a clean code base backend and front-end, but also adding user interface elements to make the most important everyday task as easy as possible.

More Details

In more detail: Write a model listing images on a camera (There are two backends, USB mass storage cameras, which are basically files on disk, and GPhoto2 cameras, which require access through a library). Take the existing digikam icon view and delegate classes, which are prepared for code re-use, and put together an icon view for the model. Cleanly separate the code that does the actual work (downloading, converting, renaming) from the UI. Wrap that in the main window.

User Interface design: the current one is powerful, exposing many options. We want to preserve that. But at the same time, there are three very common actions:

a) Download all new files to the last used album

b) Download all new files to a new album

c) Download all new files to an existing album.

It should be possible to carry out task (a) with one click, task (b) and (c) with two or three clicks, without opening a dialog. Friendly to the new user, preserving access to all options for the poweruser.

Creation Date	14-February-2012
Status	Proposal
Maintainers	Gilles Caulier - Development	Marcel Wiesweg - Development	Islam Wazery - Development

Description & Related Work

Introduction

Camera interface is the name of the GUI that opens when user try to import some photos from different places like cameras, hard disk folders, USB storage devices, scanners, remote computers, or even from web services like Facebook or Picasa. So this Interface is used in a generic manner to import photos, and I find it better to change its name from Camera Interface to Import Interface which apparently fits it usage better.

This project aims to port the Camera Interface which currently using Qt3support classes into Qt Model/View, The goal of model-view port is to be able to:

1. Factorize a lots of code shared with album GUI.
2. Remove Qt3 dependency.
3. Create more powerful icon-view for import interface, with advanced filtering option, group of items (RAW+JPEG), pre-tags options, etc...
4. To be able to use preview mode in camera interface (image + video), as in albumgui.

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Functionality Listing

1. Download to (new, last, existing) album
2. Pause importing
3. Cancel importing
4. Hide imported photos
5. Upload photos
6. Toggle Lock
7. Mark as downloaded
8. Select/Filter type of files to be shown
9. Select (all, none, locked items, new Items)
10. Invert selection
11. Thumbnails
12. View Image
13. Delete (new, selected, all)
14. Show History
15. Full screen mode
16. Close

Design

There are two proposed ways to launch the Camera Interface.

1. First is the current used one from Import > Add files, which opens a dialog to select the files which you want to add.
2. Second is to launch the camera interface from Import menu without specifying anything and the Camera Interface will be empty with a line "Click import button to begin" which lightroom uses.

UI/UX Design For the First Proposed Way

Mockup for album view in import interface.

Download options.

Pause option.

Video preview in import interface which fixes bug 216491.

Assigning tags while importing which fixes bug 158437.

Photo grouping which fixes bug 121310.

UI/UX Design For the Second Proposed Way

Import interface launched with the first proposed way.

No photos are presented because there is no import path or device set, it prints “Click import button to begin” and the import button will be enabled in the toolbar.

Import interface with icon view.

After setting the import path or device, the photos in it will be viewed in album view, there will be some options available.

Download photos with import interface.

Implementation

Project repository: [1]

Affected Modules

Primary Modules

Name of module	Description of changes
cameraiconitem.h	This module is depending on iconitem class which needs to be revamped and make use of the existing icon-view classes in digikam core.
cameraiconview.h	This module currently depending on some parent classes (iconview) which is based on Q3ScrollView.

Secondary Modules

Name of module	Description of changes
cameraiconviewtooltip.h

Relevant Bugs

URL	Name of Bug
121310	Allow to have a group of pictures.
126149	Camera stores both jpeg and raw (nef), handle both as one.
158437	Add ability to create/assign tags to pictures while importing.
216491	Camera interface view does not work to preview movies.

Project Timeline

TODO

Here is a technical TODO list relevant of this project.

Milestone name	Milestone description	Assigned to	Status
		Islam Wazery	In Progress

Completed

Milestone name	Milestone description	Assigned to	Status

Note

Please use the talk page to discuss this proposal.