Author Topic: Feature request: List View  (Read 9791 times)

Offline syncrasy

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Feature request: List View
« on: April 30, 2019, 07:52:07 AM »
Feature request for List View with customizable view options.

This would be a spreadsheet-style list of image files with columns for a tiny thumbnail, file name, and associated metadata (user customizable). Useful for sorting and seeing metadata for all the images in a selection or folder more effectively than in a standard thumbnail grid view. This is one of the three core views in Media Pro: List, Thumbnail, Media. (Lightroom, which doesn't have a native list view, can be modified with a plug-in to add list view.) Perhaps in PM/PM+ it could be added as a subview/subtab of a Contact Sheet or the catalog's Browse View.

Functionality:
  • Can click column header to sort the entire list
  • Can edit metadata fields directly within the list
  • Columns/fields displayed are customizable by user (and can be saved as different view sets using list view options). In Media Pro, the number of fields is limited to 10.

Typical use cases:
1. To quickly sort the images by file name after adding new files to a folder.
2. To quickly see which images in a folder/selection are missing descriptions or other metadata (e.g., sort by column heading), so you can then select those images and annotate/edit them.
3. To set up, save and quickly recall different list view sets for different purposes (using view options), e.g. one list view set for image annotation metadata (e.g., title, caption, date), another for EXIF data (e.g., focal length, aperture, shutter speed).
4. To quickly edit metadata for an image or several images without having to open individual metadata panels.

Edit 5/2/19: I'm trying to refrain from posting too many screenshots from other DAMs, but sometimes a picture conveys the idea better than words alone...
« Last Edit: May 02, 2019, 05:04:18 PM by syncrasy »
-- Mark

Offline Mick O (Camera Bits)

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Re: Feature request: List View
« Reply #1 on: May 02, 2019, 11:05:16 AM »
This would be a useful feature, though I will point out that you can customize the Contact sheet to show various metadata fields along with the thumbnail, and that will accomplish at least part of what you are looking for. (Use case #2 for example)

And for others, some of this is also achievable by doing a text export of any Contact Sheet or selection where you can specify any metadata field you want. The manipulation capabilities of something like Google Sheets when looking at a large text array of metadata is likely to be more powerful than anything we could include inside PM.

Also, it should be possible to use Find to select all images in a Contact Sheet with empty fields that you specify, though we discovered this is not working at the moment so a bug report has been filed. Thank you for that :-)

But yes, I can see where a list view could also be quite useful in some cases.
Mick O
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Offline syncrasy

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Re: Feature request: List View
« Reply #2 on: May 02, 2019, 11:13:55 AM »
Thanks for considering it, Mick.

I imagine PM's Contact Sheet customization is similar to Media Pro's Thumbnail view customization. Very useful, but (I'm assuming) there are only so many metadata fields you would want to display in a grid due to limited space. And it's not quickly sortable.

Text export is not the goal. The goal is simply to provide a more granular browsable and manipulable view of my image files and certain metadata (akin to the full "columns" view in a Mac Finder or Windows Explorer, or "Songs" view in iTunes). Why not simply leverage PM's database to display a list in the app's browser? You're right that too many fields can be cumbersome or taxing on the app, so the number of visible metadata fields should be restricted to avoid overload. I believe the limit is 10 in Media Pro. I updated my functionality list above to indicate this.
« Last Edit: May 02, 2019, 05:03:27 PM by syncrasy »
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Offline RobertE

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Re: Feature request: List View
« Reply #3 on: May 02, 2019, 11:39:45 PM »
+1 for a list view. Lightroom does it via a plug-in.

Offline syncrasy

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Re: Feature request: List View
« Reply #4 on: May 03, 2019, 08:13:36 AM »
I think we can agree that a native List View is preferable to a third party plug-in. I just hope the PM+ beta architecture and design isn't so "baked in" that Camera Bits won't be able (and willing) to make some modifications.
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Offline Kirk Baker

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Re: Feature request: List View
« Reply #5 on: May 03, 2019, 08:39:25 AM »
I think we can agree that a native List View is preferable to a third party plug-in. I just hope the PM+ beta architecture and design isn't so "baked in" that Camera Bits won't be able (and willing) to make some modifications.

Adding a List View to Photo Mechanic Plus is not something that we're planning to implement at this time, nor is a plugin architecture that would enable such a thing to be created.  We may decide to do this in the future, but not before Photo Mechanic Plus ships.  That said, we're very much willing to make other kinds of changes to suit the needs of our users as long as they fit in with our current architecture.

-Kirk

Offline timesnaps

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Re: Feature request: List View
« Reply #6 on: May 13, 2019, 09:16:56 PM »
Yes, +1 more for this list view (without the thumbnail even). Super useful when looking for different sizes of the same pic --> sort by dimensions, voila!

("No" to plug-ins, export lists and other convoluted ways)

Offline esambo

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Re: Feature request: List View
« Reply #7 on: May 14, 2019, 07:23:36 PM »
Yes, being able to customize what metadata to show below a thumbnail (or in a list view) would be very helpful. And Media Pro with it's 10 fields was extremely flexible, helpful and nice.
I guess it could be similar to the current Menu: Edit: Settings: Set Info Text..., although it would be nice to have scrippting language support to do more advanced text formatting & layout than just the simple {tab} (which renders as different amount of spaces depending where it is being displayed)

Offline syncrasy

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Re: Feature request: List View
« Reply #8 on: May 14, 2019, 08:33:13 PM »
Yes, being able to customize what metadata to show below a thumbnail (or in a list view) would be very helpful. And Media Pro with it's 10 fields was extremely flexible, helpful and nice.
I guess it could be similar to the current Menu: Edit: Settings: Set Info Text..., although it would be nice to have scrippting language support to do more advanced text formatting & layout than just the simple {tab} (which renders as different amount of spaces depending where it is being displayed)

Judging from Mick's comment above, I believe PM/PM+ already allows for customization of labels in its thumbnail view (Contact Sheet). In Preferences: Contact Sheet: Labels, you can adjust which labels appear using PM variables (e.g., "{mnn3} {day} {year4} {time} S#:{snum:-3,3}").

The main point of my feature request is to have a List View to complement the current thumbnail view (Contact Sheet). Customizing fields would be an assumed function (since PM already has the architecture).
-- Mark

Offline EyeinHand

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Re: Feature request: List View
« Reply #9 on: June 03, 2019, 08:23:01 AM »
+1 for a List View. After the selection process in thumbnail Contact Sheet, the work moves to metadata processing. The list view lets you quickly scan to see what you have and what's missing, sort by photographer, project, etc., then fill in the missing data. Something not practical to do one image at a time, or using Find, or externally in a text file or spreadsheet. It's critical to our workflow.

We do export fields in text or Excel format, to modify and reimport for bulk processing, but that starts with a list view to quickly determine what's necessary, or if it is. Small batch changes are made directly within the list view using multi-selection edits.
« Last Edit: June 04, 2019, 07:06:28 AM by EyeinHand »

Offline bcarlsonphoto

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Re: Feature request: List View
« Reply #10 on: October 21, 2019, 05:54:03 AM »
+1 on list view

Offline phrank

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Re: Feature request: List View
« Reply #11 on: April 16, 2022, 12:19:56 AM »
3 years later, still no list view? Unfortunately I have to move from the my beloved Media Pro…
I use to work a lot with list view in Media pro an Aperture. In Capture One it's still basic with EXIF meta data only.

@Kirk any plans to add this useful feature any soon?

Offline Kirk Baker

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Re: Feature request: List View
« Reply #12 on: April 16, 2022, 08:25:52 AM »
@Kirk any plans to add this useful feature any soon?

No, not soon.  I'd like to add a list view in the next major release.

-Kirk

Offline phrank

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Re: Feature request: List View
« Reply #13 on: April 16, 2022, 12:55:53 PM »
@Kirk, thanks for your fast reply. It's great to get fast honest responses here – compared to other forums. Makes me confident to use Photo Mechanic in the future.

As said i some other posts here, I really need to switch to another Digital Asset Management software. So far, compared to my other used DAM software, there are a few missing/always used features I really need for my workflow.

Photo Mechanic is great for the fast import and culling work, but in Digital Asset Management…
Looking forward for the major update. I will still test it and try to give some input. Happy easter.