Evaluation Notes - Photo Realistic

Photo Realistic - creating high quality photo realistic

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Icons in the Toolbox

1. it is not easy (=quick) to recognise and identify each icon
2. should have strong contours, be good metaphors, differentiated by colours
3. pen and pencil have almost the same angle and colour, at least the colour should be different
4. better icons wich depict the actual effect, are needed for Dodge/burn tool and Eraser
5. Levels, Curves, Threshold are represented by an icon of their dialog window, not the its meaning & function
6. all the transformation tools look the same, the colour and blobby shape is the same, just the tiny details differ and show the function
7. Ink tool would be better represented by an icon of a nib, which is the essence of the tool;
8. Crop/resize icon is not enough differentiated from the background, and it’s difficult to know what it is; traditional two 'L's (like still used on mouse cursor) is better
9. Measure icon tool is too complicated, too many details; old one was better (look at www.docs.gimp.org )

Open Image Window

1. Disturbingly, it is not a native dialog;
2. Doesn’t show shortcuts/aliases/links to folders (under Windows).
3. favourites is a native dialog feature available (almost) all platforms.
4. a favourite folder should look like a folder
5. Maybe GIMP could remember that during one session within which folder we want to see the files in Open dialog sorted by time.

Conclusions

1. Open and Save dialogs should be implemented natively
2. If you have cross platform projects, adopt them to the platform. Do not compromise, so that one size fits all.

Acquire Scanner/Camera

1. To Scan you need to install SANE plugin. this can be traumatic experience
2. first sub-devide these devices according to device type (camera, scanner, webcam) and only when there are multiple devices of one type connected, differentiate these by device name.

Open Location

1. Technological solution, there is no user interface solution at all.
2. It’s usefulness is very limited to copy and paste of technical addresses.
3. Not acceptable is the fact that one has to type the whole "http://" part
4. Not forgiving. It does the job, but you are not allowed to make any mistake.
5. You should be able to go to a website and browse through the directories your way towards an image.
6. drag-and-drop images works for IE , but not for Firefox.

Conclusions

1. User has to adapt to machine! That’s wrong
2. both dragging and typing should be supported
3. Maybe there should be a small project to find the solution for a mini (ftp like) browser for Open location dialog.

Levels

1. for print-oriented users, it is useful to also show CMYK in Levels.
2. there is room for improvement in showing no only what happens to the extremes, but also make visible the the shift and expansion/compression of the tone ranges.
3. Levels could display all channels at the same time, with different, half transparent colours.

Colour Balance

1. It is good to have 3 different ranges to adjust (shadows, midtones, highlights).
2. Now we can only balance colour of shadows/midtones/highlights separately. We don’t like architecturally that you can’t color balance 2 or 3 different regions simultaneously.
3. idea: Replicate the 2 sliders for all 3 ranges and link the adjustment ranges by default.
4. Taking one of 3 eyedroppers and changing for ex. hue, regardless of value and saturation, should be possible.
5. Two dimensional solutions: specifying a location on the colour wheel with two sliders will deliver simplification of this process.

tool tips

1. Initial time-out for the tool tip should be twice as long. So that the tool tip would not show up when you know what you’re doing. Probable the tool tips should come after 2 sec.
2. There should be tool tips for all the tool parameters.

Healing tool

1. There are many modes, but do we need them? Do we need all of them?
2. Some of the parameters seems not relevant for this tool (hard edge, jitter).
3. Alignment- registered doesn’t work well. In general the tool doesn’t work the way we expected.

Sharpen tool

1. Water drop icon in toolbox is not a good icon for this tool.
2. Should have setting of radius, amount, threshold. aligns this tool with the plug-in.
3. Modes should be hidden, as well as some of the options like Apply jitter.
4. In general it should be possible to apply unsharp mask using all four basic brushes (pencil, ink, airbrush, brush).

Unsharp Mask filter

1. The name should be different, for ex. 'Power sharpen'. Present name makes people understand the work of a filter in a opposite way. Even if there are historic reasons for it.
2. We should get rid of the preview, the whole main window is the preview.
3. Make it more predictable what the parameters do. Maybe by image, other name? (however, people are very used to it)
4. Since radius = (output ppi / 30) * 0.2, we should take the PPI and calculate the default value of radius. Yet the name Radius should stay the same.

Lens Distortion Correction

1. Slider parameters are very technical. We should provide less and relevant sliders.
2. You should be able to set on the picture the point at what your focus was on.
3. With this filter we should be able to correct: Pincusion, Barrel distortion, Vignetting effect.
4. If we really need this x,y coordinates, then let the user set it directly on the preview, not in dialog textfields.

Perspective Tool

1. Names should be changed: Forward (Traditional), Backward (Corrective)
2. Clip Result (this option will clip the transformed image to the original image size) should have appropriate name like: keep image size. And it doesn’t really work well.
3. Why can’t it be simple, and let user draw it in the way that is natural for him.
4. There should be grid, to which you align your transformation, not a grid of transformations.
5. It would be useful to have constrains to keep the same height, like Shift when drawing straight line. also option for symmetry.
6. Please: no meaningless matrix and no apply buttons.The numbers don’t match the user goals. Instead of going to the window and clicking for transform you should be able to click-apply when transforming on the image.
7. No message at the bottom/tool tips.

Path tool

1. We know and appreciate that there are many functions in the path tool, for adding, deleting, moving, changing paths, segments, nodes, curves. (matrix of what can be done should be prepared before designing future solution)
2. Ideally there would be no modes and everything would be done by modifying keys. Leaving two modes would make modifying keys still available thou. Current Move mode is not so important to be separate mode at the moment. Two modes would support two different phases: building up almost perfect path, and then fine tuning it
3. There should be just one key to switch between the modes. Choosing one of the keys, would let Shift & Ctrl be available for modifying paths.
4. It would be natural for the user to mouse-trace object shape inside the picture you are working on. Then from this dragged path GIMP would calculate minimum number of nodes and it’s parameters to get it done. It would be like tracing around segments. You could add nodes just by clicking. You could also stop to play with handles.
5. There should be possibility to block just one Bezier handle for one control point. (suggestion from a photographer)
6. You should be able to scroll far enough to be able to reach the handle even if it gets out of the canvas.
7. When you design a path, and you want to have two separate path, you need to go to the Path Dialog to Add path. You can’t just create a new one within the Path tool.
8. Using and creating Paths are two different things.
9. Creating few paths- there has got to be a quick way to say: I’m finished with this path (after designing), stop and start the next one.
10. You could create selection by Return key.
11. It’s quite unclear what’s part of one path and what’s not.
12. Peter would like to have possibility to have two paths in one ‘slide’ of path. So that the person wouldn’t be obliged to store paths on different ‘slides’, because it depends on user, what paths mean to him - if he wants them to be on one ‘slide’ of path, it’s his choice.
13. User shouldn’t be obliged to give name, and set size for a new path.

Path Dialog

1. It’s good that they are stored, and that you can make them visible or not.
2. To chain a path means to chain it to layer, so that later a path will be scaled together with layer and will not keep its first designed shape. This type of chaining / anchoring is very powerful, but you need to get used to it. Also it works completely different than in Layers.
3. We see a big problem with paths that are linked with the image data under it and the global meaning of path. We need to find solution how do actually express this fact. We also know that paths are shared between different layers, and this also has to be expressed in some way.
4. We can think about having a separate stack of selections and paths for each layer. Then we could share the selections with other layers. But then what about the effects? Atomic concept: that you can copy & paste and move around.
5. ‘Create Selection from Path’ button is hold not be in Path tool dialog, that’s abuse of UI style and besides it exists in Menu Select> From Path. Also ‘Stroke Path’ button shouldn't be here.

Selection

1. There should also be Sections dialog, like a Path dialog. Channel dialog is not the best way to store Selections.
2. In polygonal shapes you have problems to edit selections, Quick mask doesn’t really work for this goal (paint approach) so you need to use Selection to Path. This quickly gets complicated.It would be easier to have Selection tool combing path drawing to selection
3. Selection can be feathered by Feather (in Select menu), or QM and Brush/Eraser or Blur tool (it works fine here as long as you can also use Airbrush).
4. We don’t need layer mask, if we have possibility to save and store the selections, that are easy to change.