EOG statubar

I heard very often that there are some EXIF info that users are really interest in having easy/quick access to. EXIF presentation was really improved as I already reported before. EOG’s statusbar could be used to show really common EXIF values like date and exposure values. I wanted to do this in a way that not much noise is added to statubar. Here’s the result:


Statubar showing most common EXIF info: date and exposure values.

I haven’t commited this yet because I’d like to get some feedback first. Some additional related issues:

  • Is there a way to show exposure values in a non-photographer-friendly way? I’m thinking in adding a GConf key to optionally enable something like “exposure info in statubar”. End-users would free from those evil info then.
  • Should the time reside on statusbar?
  • Show simplified date/time (“23/12/2007, 12:48”) or a full descriptive one (“23 December 2007, 12:48”)?
  • What do you think is missing in statusbar?


Comments?

Published by

lucasr

Lucas Rocha is just a brazilian guy who loves hacking and music. He lives in the frozen lands of Finland with his lovely wife Carol. He works for Nokia in the development of Hildon and Maemo. In his free time, he's a happy GNOME contributor. He has a mustache, a beard and big smile in his face.

26 thoughts on “EOG statubar”

  1. Wow, this is very nice!

    1. Non-prographers don’t care about exposure, but if it takes so little space in the status bar, I wouldn’t even put an option to hide it. It’s harmless info, just like when your camera displays it right before taking the picture.

    2. Yes.

    3. Simplified.

    4. Nothing. It’s beautiful the way you presented it. Maybe show the uncompressed size – graphic arts nerds like to see that.

  2. 1. same as federico
    2. if not there, where?
    3. get de locale info of format time it could be the best i18n friendly way ;)
    4. in status bar nothing :)

  3. I found that i would alot of the time go and check the dimentions of pictures, many other apps display the size there and its much less of a hassle.

    as for the exif values they are good but the position looks weird to me, most end users wouldnt care about the information because they probably have a point and shoot with little manual settings, but for some people it would be very useful.

  4. @Sam, the screenshot is available now.

    @Casey, weird position? What do you mean? I think the exif values should be separated from the general info in some way to reduce the visual noise and not confuse the user.

  5. I like it! How about making the statusbar content click able, like a context menu, for quick customization.

  6. Perfect, i just hope you have an option to turn it off in view (view -> Exif Data). I also hope this is turned off by default since most users don’t need/understand this.

  7. Being able to turn it off would just be a pointless extra preference. Users see this information when they use their cameras and if they don’t know what it means it’s harmless. They’ll probably figure out what the date is, and the rest can be briefly explained in the eog help system if they get really curious.

    It’s just empty space on the status bar anyway, I don’t think it’s going to seriously confuse anybody to death.

  8. What’s missing? How about the Lat-Long coordinates as well as heading when the picture was taken? ;) One can only hope. Once the OpenMoko phone gets released with a camera, we plan on putting that in the EXIF info. Maemo should have something similar.

    Can you make it such that clicking on the status bar would pop up additional EXIF information? Like if I click on the exposure summary, the rest of the picture conditions would appear?

  9. Great, that’s something I’m often looking at! The focal length would be the cherry on the cake :) With all those information, you have basically all the settings chosen to take the photo. that’s very useful for poor photographers like me who tries to understand how a pic was taken.

    And please stop with your samples, last time your wife, now a dessert she probably prepares for you, do you REALLY want us all jealous? Are you happy now? ;)

  10. I think the statusbar looks great. The space was already there, so I do not think it is neccessary to add an option to enable/disable the additional information.

    Something that would be very nice though, would be to make it possible to add a recursive view to eog. Example: My photos are organized like this: ~/Photos/$year/$month/$date. In combination with the new collection pane, I think this could be really useful.

  11. I think the statusbar looks great. The space was already available in the statusbar, and it therefore does not require any additional space in the eog window, which is a good thing. I do not think it is neccessary to add an option to enable/disable the additional information. It is very discrete, and I can not believe that anybody would find it annoying if they are not interested in the information.

    On thing though, that would be nice, is if eog was able to recursivly view photos. Example: My photos are stored like this: ~/Photos/$year/$month/$date. Combined with the new collection pane, I think this would be very useful.

  12. Another vote for Focal Length in the status bar. Probably best to display 35mm-equivalent focal lengths (rather than true focal lengths) for fixed-length cameras (where available – on my camera it’s called “FocalLengthIn35mmFilm”) because the conversion varies between different cameras, and true focal length for SLR cameras (exif tag “FocalLength”). Something quick and dirty like:
    if (haveExif(FocalLengthIn35mmFilm))
    {
    if (FocalLengthIn35mmFilm/FocalLength ~= 1.0 1.3 1.5 1.6)
    {display(FocalLength)}
    else {display(FocalLengthIn35mmFilm)}
    }
    else {display(FocalLength)}

    (pardon my psuedo-psuedocode).

    The reason for this is that DSLR users think in absolute focal lengths, and non-DSLR users typically think in 35mm-equivalent focal lengths (probably because the UI on their cameras probably doesn’t tell them what absolute focal length they are using).

    If you want to discus this further, email me).

    Keep up the excellent work! Thanks!!

  13. The statusbar in the screenshot is perfect, this is THE feature eog was missing. I think the technical photo info should stay as in the screenshot, would be more confusing to have an extra config option than just to keep all info.

    Realy thanks for all your work in eog.

  14. I like it, but I would like to push for having the date in ISO standard format, ie 2007-01-20, the month/day/year notation is very confusing for many of us (which is the reason for the ISO standard, after all).

  15. Hi,

    it looks very nice. If the statusbar would show the camera model (maybe optional) too, it would be perfect.

    Mike

  16. I’d love to have this! Maybe (if these Numbers are too frightening), everything but the date could be hidden and displayed only via a “imaphotographer” gconf option?

    One possibility to make this stuff “easier” would be
    to display icons for long exposure (“camera shake warning”)
    or high iso (noise/grain warning).

    I, too would love to have the focal length (focal length,
    iso and shutter speed are the parameters that interest me personally, as on my small compact the aperture does not really do too much DOF-wise).

  17. Ah, and flash fired/not fired could be displayed as an icon too. This I am also often looking at, though most of the time
    in other people’s EXIF data.

  18. Very nice!

    If you decide to display focal length, do display the real focal length. I believe many small cameras add a second field for the “35mm equivalent”; you could optionally show that field too if it is available:

    Focal length: 12mm (50mm equiv.)

    Oh, and for aperture and other settings, anyone who’s actually interested in viewing them will want to have them printed in the standard format – the one you use in the screenshot. Keep it like that.

  19. displaying much information in one row is a bad idea IMHO, since it would takes to long to identify the key:value pairs.

    I would not add more information to the status bar than it already contains.

    If you want to display some metadata in the same window, I would suggest an toggleable overlay or something.
    idea: http://uploader.polorix.net//files/140/idea.jpg

  20. Lucas, for the date please go for the full version. I speak italian, but I usually keep my gnome speaking english. A full descriptive date will prevent any misinterpretation of day/month fields.

  21. looks sweet. does eog also read the proprietary maker-notes in nikon cameras? the interesting stuff is buried in there on nikons

  22. Really nice!

    Adding more details could clutter the statusbar and i think you have really given sane defaults here. The focal length or any other advanced parameter, in my opinion, could stay in the image details window.

    Again, nice work!

  23. Here is yet another vote for the focal length. I prefer the real focal length instead of the 35mm-equivalent.

    Personally, here are the fields that I check the most often on my photos (in decreasing order):
    1. date & time,
    2. exposure time / shutter speed,
    3. focal length,
    4. sensitivity / ISO equiv.,
    5. aperture / f number,
    6. flash used (yes/no),
    7. exposure bias,
    8. camera make & model,
    9. color space.

    Having the first 4 or 5 items in EOG’s statusbar would be very nice.

    As mentioned above by Stoffe, having the date in international format (2007-02-05) would be the best default option if you do not get the format from the current locale.

Comments are closed.

Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0
This work is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0.