Major Full Screen Preview Issue with Cropping and Saving to Same Folder

[jkm]

Hello,

I'm a new iMac 2019 user and Photo Mechanic 6 purchaser. I have one very confusing (and frustrating time-wasting) issue with PM6 that I can't seem to resolve, as well as one feature request that would be very nice.

Scenario:

I'm going through memory cards of event photos, and whenever I find one to use, I have to crop it, rotate it, and scale it to between 25-50% of its original resolution for web use. In each folder of about 1,000 photos there are about 200 photos to crop, and all of the crops need to be saved to the original folder using the default naming suffixes of A, B, C, etc.

Issue:

As shown in the attached screenshot, in the Save dialog box, the option to "Open destination as a Contact sheet" is grayed out and pre-selected when the "Destination / Original Folder" option is selected. This causes full-screen preview mode to vanish and PM6 to go back to the contact sheet every time a crop of an image is saved, thus preventing full-screen preview mode from being available as would normally be strongly desired as the ideal culling method.

This has a terrible unfortunate side-effect when trying to use PM6 in full-screen preview mode. What happens is that 200 times during culling each folder PM6 effectively sends me back to ground zero. I have to scroll down through several hundred photos, pick up where I left off, etc.

Eventually, I realized that the preview window was still there but in another "space" or something like that and I found out I could go to the Window menu bar and get back to where I left off. But this issue is still a massive time-waster.

Correct behavior / solution to the problem:

The solution to the problem would be for PM6 to behave the same as it does when the preview window is not full screen. When the preview window is not full screen, absolutely nothing changes after saving the image, and when I simply continue on with the right arrow key after saving, PM6 simply moves to the cropped image so I can see the result, and then I can still left arrow to go back and make a different crop too if another aspect ratio is needed. I cannot imagine any scenario after saving the image crop when I would want the preview window that I'm working in to basically close / disappear and go back to the beginning of the contact thumbnail sheet. I don't understand why this is happening when the preview window is full screen. It seems like a showstopper bug, at least for me, especially because this does not happen in any other case except when the preview window is full screen (meaning I have clicked the big green button).

Full screen preview is really the only type of culling that makes sense anyway, so this issue is urgently important. And the only option that seems like it would be able to make the issue go away is grayed out. I think that you intended to design PM6 so that someone could keep this from happening by unchecking the box that says "Open destination as a Contact sheet" yet this option isn't available when saving to the current folder. The current folder seems like the most likely destination someone would use when making several cropped images available for web use along with the original masters within the same folder.

So this seems like a showstopper bug for me. I did finally find out the keyboard shortcut Control + left/right Arrow key to get back to the full screen preview "space" more easily after each time it disappears, but this still interrupts my flow, and it seems randomly to fluctuate between being a left arrow vs. right arrow, so there is not any consistency.

The only workaround for it now is to open the preview window in non-full screen mode, as I mentioned above. But that would interfere with the quality of the culling process and mean that I wasted all the extra money I spent on the larger display option for my iMac.

The bottom line is to do my best quality culling I need to see the images in full screen, not less than full screen, so this is a pretty urgent issue since it wastes so much of my time in what would otherwise be an almost totally awesome full-screen Photo Mechanic 6 experience.

This "almost totally awesome" caveat naturally brings me to my second question, which is a feature request.

Feature request:

As you are surely aware, monitors are wider than they are taller, and so horizontal images get a much higher quality and easier-to-see preview for culling than vertical images do. So it's super important for vertical images to have nothing above them or below them reducing their size even further during the culling process.

Thankfully, in full screen preview mode the toolbars above and below collapse... but the problem is I can't simply get rid of them. I immediately set up the Preferences to do rating with the number keys 1-5, and so I would never need the rating bar the bottom nor the strange gray bar at the top that doesn't have anything in it. Both of them are about 20-25 pixels tall out of 1440 pixels total, or 40-50 pixels tall in the unscaled 5K resolution mode which I don't use, so roughly 40-50 or 90-100 pixels wasted out of 1440 to 2880 total vertical pixels available. Let's just say 45 out of 1440 is being wasted as the frame of reference since percent being wasted is invariant with respect to scaling.

Doing the math, noting that the image has to be scaled down in two dimensions in order to fit within the vertical constraint, we will get an image that is ((1440-45)/1440)^2 = 93.8% of its ideal size compared to its full ideal size rendered from top to bottom of the full screen. So these gray bars are eliminating about 6.2% of what could be a usable vertical image for culling. I would rather use that six percent of the expensive screen to do culling with rather than to be grayed out, especially for the vertical pictures.

So my feature request is to have a way to have nothing above or below the image preview in full screen, particularly for vertical pictures.

Thank you so much.

I am loving Photo Mechanic overall other than this issue and this feature request.

[Kirk Baker]

The reason the checkbox is disabled is that in order to save to the current contact sheet folder you must already have it open and opening it again would do nothing at all, thus the checkbox is disabled.

Feature request:

As you are surely aware, monitors are wider than they are taller, and so horizontal images get a much higher quality and easier-to-see preview for culling than vertical images do. So it's super important for vertical images to have nothing above them or below them reducing their size even further during the culling process.

Thankfully, in full screen preview mode the toolbars above and below collapse...

What toolbar is on the bottom?  There is only one toolbar in the Preview window.

but the problem is I can't simply get rid of them. I immediately set up the Preferences to do rating with the number keys 1-5, and so I would never need the rating bar the bottom nor the strange gray bar at the top that doesn't have anything in it.

What is this 'strange gray bar at the top that doesn't have anything in it'?

Perhaps you could screen grab the display and annotate it, showing the parts you're concerned with?

Use the 'Attachments and other options' link when you're composing your reply to this message and there you'll be able to upload your JPEG format screenshot.

Thanks,

-Kirk

[Kirk Baker]

As far as your workflow goes, it would likely be far better to do your crops and not save.  Then at the end, select the cropped photos and process them all at once in bulk.  So much less button clicking.

As for the window leaving full screen mode, I believe that the next build of PM6 on macOS will solve that problem.

-Kirk

[jkm]

The reason the checkbox is disabled is that in order to save to the current contact sheet folder you must already have it open and opening it again would do nothing at all, thus the checkbox is disabled.

This makes sense, and you are right that it doesn't do anything if the Preview window is not full screen. But it does do something if the Preview window is full screen. It kicks you out of the Preview window and takes you back to the thumbnail view. If you could just make it do nothing even in full-screen Preview, that would be absolutely perfect and exactly what I would make my workflow perfect.

[jkm]

As far as your workflow goes, it would likely be far better to do your crops and not save.  Then at the end, select the cropped photos and process them all at once in bulk.  So much less button clicking.

As for the window leaving full screen mode, I believe that the next build of PM6 on macOS will solve that problem.

-Kirk

Yes, that does seem like it would be more efficient, and I'll consider using that some of the time as a shortcut.

However, as often as not I do more than one crop, and in that case it helps me to know whether I need another crop or not by being able to scroll through the ones I just made. Seeing the crops is part of the process in a sense, not just something that happens after the end of the process.

[jkm]

What is this 'strange gray bar at the top that doesn't have anything in it'?

Perhaps you could screen grab the display and annotate it, showing the parts you're concerned with?

Use the 'Attachments and other options' link when you're composing your reply to this message and there you'll be able to upload your JPEG format screenshot.

Thanks,

-Kirk

First attachment is the strange gray bar at the top. I'm only including the left 10% of it. The rest of it is blank with nothing in it. I'm not sure exactly what the two tiny things are in the left corner... update, the tool tip says they are "show all thumbnails" and "show selected thumbnails". Anyway, my feature request is to be able to hide this bar, maybe a checkmark in the view menu that can be unchecked to not show this gray bar above the full-screen preview.

Second attachment is the gray bar at the bottom of the full-screen preview. The only thing in it is tiny rating stars which are so far down and so small they're basically unusable. It would be hard and error-prone to use them to rate images. Personally, I'm using the number keys to rate, so they're redundant for me and so I would rather get rid of this bottom gray bar as well, and have the space to see the vertical images larger.

Both of these bars are always there in full screen preview and there is no way to get rid of them further, at least not anywhere that I can find.

If there is, please let me know!

Thank you so much! I'm really impressed to have a reply already on a Friday evening! What awesome customer service and support! Thank you!

[jkm]

What is this 'strange gray bar at the top that doesn't have anything in it'?

Perhaps you could screen grab the display and annotate it, showing the parts you're concerned with?

Use the 'Attachments and other options' link when you're composing your reply to this message and there you'll be able to upload your JPEG format screenshot.

Thanks,

-Kirk

First attachment is the strange gray bar at the top. I'm only including the left 10% of it. The rest of it is blank with nothing in it. I'm not sure exactly what the two tiny things are in the left corner... update, the tool tip says they are "show all thumbnails" and "show selected thumbnails". Anyway, my feature request is to be able to hide this bar, maybe a checkmark in the view menu that can be unchecked to not show this gray bar above the full-screen preview.

Second attachment is the gray bar at the bottom of the full-screen preview. The only thing in it is tiny rating stars which are so far down and so small they're basically unusable. It would be hard and error-prone to use them to rate images. Personally, I'm using the number keys to rate, so they're redundant for me and so I would rather get rid of this bottom gray bar as well, and have the space to see the vertical images larger.

Both of these bars are always there in full screen preview and there is no way to get rid of them further, at least not anywhere that I can find.

If there is, please let me know!

Thank you so much! I'm really impressed to have a reply already on a Friday evening! What awesome customer service and support! Thank you!

Update: I just tried out the "show all thumbnails" and "show selected thumbnails" buttons.

When I click "show all thumbnails" nothing changes and nothing happens.

But when I clicked "show selected thumbnails," that's when I got really confused.

Apparently, the "show selected thumbnails" button disables the culling process by clearing out all other photos except the current one from the vertical thumbnail pane on the left of the full screen preview, and then freezing the current image on the screen and making the back/forward arrows disabled. I can't preview or cull anything else, just look at the same picture.

So one button in the small gray bar does nothing and the other disables everything.

Unless I'm misunderstanding their purpose?

Is there anything else either of these buttons do that I am not noticing?

Are these gray bars and the buttons in them so essential that they need to be non-removable in a full screen preview no matter what, or would it be make sense to please add a feature to PM6 and make them optional so that the preview of vertical images can be bigger and better?

Thank you!

[jkm]

The reason the checkbox is disabled is that in order to save to the current contact sheet folder you must already have it open and opening it again would do nothing at all, thus the checkbox is disabled.

For clarification, are you saying that the behavior that I am observing is a bug because PM is actually supposed to be doing nothing at all?

Right now when saving to the current folder PM6 is aborting the full screen preview and jumping back to the contact sheet folder thumbnails, rather than doing nothing.

(When doing a non-full screen preview, then it is working correctly and doing nothing as you have described that it should do.)

If this is a bug, then is there a bug reporting system like Bugzilla for Firefox where I can report the bug?

[Kirk Baker]

As far as your workflow goes, it would likely be far better to do your crops and not save.  Then at the end, select the cropped photos and process them all at once in bulk.  So much less button clicking.

As for the window leaving full screen mode, I believe that the next build of PM6 on macOS will solve that problem.

-Kirk

Yes, that does seem like it would be more efficient, and I'll consider using that some of the time as a shortcut.

However, as often as not I do more than one crop, and in that case it helps me to know whether I need another crop or not by being able to scroll through the ones I just made. Seeing the crops is part of the process in a sense, not just something that happens after the end of the process.

If you need something to let you know what needs further processing, you could tag, rate, or color class your images in such a way as makes sense to you.  Then at the end you could for instance, Select Tagged, and then do the Save as operation.

-Kirk

[Kirk Baker]

What is this 'strange gray bar at the top that doesn't have anything in it'?

Perhaps you could screen grab the display and annotate it, showing the parts you're concerned with?

Use the 'Attachments and other options' link when you're composing your reply to this message and there you'll be able to upload your JPEG format screenshot.

First attachment is the strange gray bar at the top. I'm only including the left 10% of it. The rest of it is blank with nothing in it. I'm not sure exactly what the two tiny things are in the left corner... update, the tool tip says they are "show all thumbnails" and "show selected thumbnails". Anyway, my feature request is to be able to hide this bar, maybe a checkmark in the view menu that can be unchecked to not show this gray bar above the full-screen preview.

Those two buttons control the two views of the thumbstrip.  If you hide the thumbstrip, they should be hidden as well.  You can press the 'f' key to hide the various panes.

Second attachment is the gray bar at the bottom of the full-screen preview. The only thing in it is tiny rating stars which are so far down and so small they're basically unusable. It would be hard and error-prone to use them to rate images. Personally, I'm using the number keys to rate, so they're redundant for me and so I would rather get rid of this bottom gray bar as well, and have the space to see the vertical images larger.

They do give visual feedback as to what the rating currently is (in the case of the widget you posted), or the color class (that you didn't post).  If we made them larger then some users would complain that they're too big.  But they don't take away from the vertical space.  They will happily draw on top of your image should your image intersect them.

I think it would be more useful for me to get a full screen image showing where you think we could save vertical space.  The Preview application on your Mac will allow you to place annotations on images and then save the image with the annotations applied.  Feel free to illustrate as much as you deem necessary.

-Kirk

[Kirk Baker]

Update: I just tried out the "show all thumbnails" and "show selected thumbnails" buttons.

When I click "show all thumbnails" nothing changes and nothing happens.

But when I clicked "show selected thumbnails," that's when I got really confused.

Apparently, the "show selected thumbnails" button disables the culling process by clearing out all other photos except the current one from the vertical thumbnail pane on the left of the full screen preview, and then freezing the current image on the screen and making the back/forward arrows disabled. I can't preview or cull anything else, just look at the same picture.

So one button in the small gray bar does nothing and the other disables everything.

Unless I'm misunderstanding their purpose?

That's because you only have a single item selected.  Select a number of images before you go into the Preview and then that view will make much more sense.

Are these gray bars and the buttons in them so essential that they need to be non-removable in a full screen preview no matter what, or would it be make sense to please add a feature to PM6 and make them optional so that the preview of vertical images can be bigger and better?

Like I said in another post, if you hide the thumbstrip, it won't interfere with your space, and moreover, you can put the thumbstrip on the left side (vertically) and then it won't (in general) take any space from portrait images.  And the various soft-edit widgets (tag, rating, color class, audio playback button) don't prevent the image from being its tallest anyway.

-Kirk

[jkm]

You can press the 'f' key to hide the various panes.

This is perfect! Absolutely what I was hoping for with my second question!! I can now hide the all the bars and then unhide the bar on the left which shows the current photo and its existing rating, the panel on the right with the photo data that I need to see, while eliminating the bars above and below the image completely.

Thank you for this solution to my second question!! And for all of your other help!!

[jkm]

You already have programmed an awesome complete perfect solution to my secondary feature request regarding the top and bottom gray bars being hidden in full screen preview, by using the f key to hide panels in full screen preview, and so now this only leaves me with the main issue.

I have taken time to read carefully through your suggestions above, but still with every single save from within full screen preview, PM still bombs me out of the full screen preview and back to the thumbnails. Thankfully, with all the practice, I've reduced my time to get back into the full screen preview down to a few seconds by now, but multiply that by 200+, and with every folder that still adds up to about 20 minutes of time wasted.

I've tried everything I can find, but nothing seems to stop this behavior. Unfortunately, bulk saving them at the end is not an option. I need to be able to save the crops individually while culling photos. It's a chronological issue, mental continuity issue, captioning issue, etc., as well as the other issue I mentioned yesterday that as often as not I have to make multiple different crops of the same photo, and as far as I know there is no way to add more than one crop to the same photo without getting rid of the first one. So I can't save them all at the end anyway because as far as I know I can't add multiple crops to the same photo while going through them. (If there is a way to add multiple crops to a photo simultaneously, then I would love to hear how to do that! Although I would still need to save the crops individually while going through the pictures, it would make my long-term work flow much more efficient if all the different crops were still there on each photo instead of just the most recent one. Right now I have to clear one crop from a photo in order to make the next, different one.)

Thank you!

[Kirk Baker]

I have taken time to read carefully through your suggestions above, but still with every single save from within full screen preview, PM still bombs me out of the full screen preview and back to the thumbnails. Thankfully, with all the practice, I've reduced my time to get back into the full screen preview down to a few seconds by now, but multiply that by 200+, and with every folder that still adds up to about 20 minutes of time wasted.

I posted this yesterday:

As for the window leaving full screen mode, I believe that the next build of PM6 on macOS will solve that problem.

I've tried everything I can find, but nothing seems to stop this behavior. Unfortunately, bulk saving them at the end is not an option. I need to be able to save the crops individually while culling photos. It's a chronological issue, mental continuity issue, captioning issue, etc., as well as the other issue I mentioned yesterday that as often as not I have to make multiple different crops of the same photo, and as far as I know there is no way to add more than one crop to the same photo without getting rid of the first one. So I can't save them all at the end anyway because as far as I know I can't add multiple crops to the same photo while going through them. (If there is a way to add multiple crops to a photo simultaneously, then I would love to hear how to do that! Although I would still need to save the crops individually while going through the pictures, it would make my long-term work flow much more efficient if all the different crops were still there on each photo instead of just the most recent one. Right now I have to clear one crop from a photo in order to make the next, different one.)

The cropping standard that we use (Adobe-compatible crops) only allow for a single crop.  I did not realize that you needed to crop the same image multiple times, producing a new file after each crop.

If you're willing to test a build that is not fully-vetted by our Q/A team, I'll make one and post it here.  You can then test it and tell me if it solves your problem with saving from full screen mode.

-Kirk

[jkm]

Thank you so much!!

How often are the new versions released? I am happy to wait if it will be available in a few days.

You are serving so many other people, so I would rather not take advantage of your time to provide a build just for me.

If I lose an hour of time over the next couple of days while waiting for the new version, that is probably better than your losing an hour of time to make an extra download just for me.

Once again, I really, really appreciate it! I can't think of any time with better customer service for a software product.