[miguel89to]

What is it about the native Pictures app that you dislike?

And yes, isn't it great having such a joke worthy last name?

Hahahahah sucks man...

I hate the disorder feel to it... I wanna open the app and be able to choose how I want it to look, either folders I made in my SD card, pics taken from recent to older in that order, etc... I cannot seem to find anything

Posted via CB10 app with my trusty Z10

[bb10_fan]

What is it about the native Pictures app that you dislike?

I think many would agree that it's too limited Several good suggestions were already mentioned, but my wish list for Picture app replacement would be (unordered):

- being able to see some basic info about file (name, size, date) in list mode (I couldn't find this simple option in Pictures app)
- apply different sorting to files (name, size, date - for simple, place, people, etc - for advanced mode)
- being able to see real folders where I store my images (maybe also have an option to deselect some of them to be indexed)
- ability to have slideshow with transition effects and ability to see images on TV (using WiFi direct or Miracast or DLNA)
- ability to upload multiple images to DropBox or any other cloud service (or even auto sync some folders with certain rules to choose file for sync)
- possibility to search by image using Google or any other search engine which has this functionality (what I mean here is, say you made a photo of some interesting and possibly famous building during your vacations and months later you want to read about it, but you probably already forgot the name of it. In that case search by image may help to speedup the information retrieval)
- maybe a possibility to find duplicates

This is just a small list I would like to see in Pictures app, but once it's there I definitely will get other functionality wishes My suggestion of focusing on Pictures app replacement first was based on the fact that we do have selection of photo editors (even if someone is not happy about them due to lack of knowledge), but we have no choice in Pictures apps department From a business perspective it's a better start point, get financial support and continue evolve your app towards other areas, like photo editing and painting. You could even split your app in 3 semi-independent modules and sell each of them separately such that everyone gets what he/she needs and not one huge app (probably also too expensive for functionality needed).

@Omnitech,

I do admit that English is not my first language and maybe it's the reason you don't fully understand what I write. Let me translate for you my previous post.

"hmm, do we talk about the same Effetica? Filters are not silly if you know how and when to use them"
translates as

"hmm, do we talk about the same Effetica because it seem you stack in the first version of it? Effetica has the largest selection of editing tools to correct color balance, brightness, contrast, etc. Latest update also brought exposure correction and white balance to the list. Filters are not silly if you know how and when to use them. Try to avoid call people who use filters to edit their photos dumbs - that what you indirectly implied by saying "silly filter" - your personal preferences are not the gold standard everyone has to adhere."

"It's nice to be a critique especially if you have something constructive to propose..."

translates as

"It's nice to be a critique especially if you have something constructive to propose... If you have any complains/wishes/feature requests you could easily post them on Effetica's thread. Many people did this and developer implemented many of requested features within week-two after request"

Does this translation makes it easier to understand what I've written?

And just to update you on the latest features of Effetica in case you'll pretend you use it:
- Effetica supports multiple step undo/redo (from version one)
- Effetica supports precise value setting of a slider (use side labels of the slider to change the value, in Compact theme they introduced -/+ labels to make it more clear)
- Effetica supports custom saving location. Also you can choose to save in the same folder where original image is located. You can choose filename between DateTime or original_Edited templates. And you can save your image in any folder using SaveAs function (does it ring a bell?). Try to explore a bit Setting screen next time

[Omnitech]

Does this translation makes it easier to understand what I've written?

No, you are simply digging yourself deeper into a hole of your own making.

Not to mention, your constant flag-waving for a competitor's app in another app developer's thread is extremely tacky.

[bb10_fan]

No, you are simply digging yourself deeper into a hole of your own making.

Not to mention, your constant flag-waving for a competitor's app in another app developer's thread is extremely tacky.

Thank you for you valuable comments and discussion.

[bb10_fan]

@danielbigham, do you plan to release beta version of the app in BlackBerry Beta Zone or will you release just a final version (if you have any ETA)? Thanks

[danielbigham]

Personally, my most common frustration with it is how it organizes images and makes it hard to drill down into desired folders without a lot of extra work.

I'm not yet appreciating how it's hard to drill down into desired folders. The "Albums" screen displays the albums (folders), including the name, and touching the album opens it.

When you say "how it organizes", in terms of your frustration, what do you mean more specifically?

For example, it does not show filenames at all in list or viewing mode - kind of an amazing omission. You have to go into "properties" separately on each image to see the filename.

Interesting point. Usually when I'm looking at photos I don't have any desire to know the filename, and I'd actually be extremely disappointed if the Pictures app overlayed the filename on every file in the grid view, because for me it would violate the "content is king" design philosophy of BB10 where you want to show off the content as well and as unencumbered as possible. But I suppose if you were really wanting to see the filenames (for some reason that I'm not appreciating at the moment), then I can see how this would feel like a limitation. The file browser app might be a better tool in that case, right? It shows both the thumbnail and filename, if I'm thinking straight?

The usual - CMY levels, CMY gamma, brightness/contrast/saturation/hue/black level etc... but done with a UI that makes it easy to change and revert the changes. (Multi-level undo would be fab.) Since to me some of the major challenges are the small screen size and small controls, which often (for me) result in "over shooting" a setting, because the sliders are so hard to control. Or they interact in ways that makes it more time-consuming to get the result you want.

CYM: I use these all the time in Photoshop, although that's typically when I'm creating graphics. Rarely do I use these controls for actual photographs. Do you use CYM adjustments on your photos?

Very interesting thought wrt multi-level undo. I can see how that would be useful if and when experimenting with multiple adjustments.

I'm not quite following the "over shooting" thought -- I find the BB10 slider a pretty nice control with lots of precision as you move your finger to the left or right.

Something which for example popped up a "magnified dial" or something when adjusting a setting, which allowed more fine control than a small slider would be one idea. Having the ability to adjust multiple interrelated parameters in a 2-dimensional control surface might be another. Batch processing would be another great feature. Oftentimes you have non-ideal camera or lighting characteristics that you can effectively correct afterwards but not without a lot of tweaking. But if it takes me 5 minutes to adjust all the controls just right, and I then have 10 more images taken at the same time in the same place with the same correction needs, I'd be inclined to jump off a cliff if I had to spend 5 minutes on each of those 10 images just to try to replicate those same adjustments 10 times.

I really like your "2-dimensional control surface" thought. I think I know what you're getting at. I always end up adjusting photos in two ways: 1) I increase the brightness, but that washes the photo, so then 2) I increase the contrast. Brightness and contrast are seemingly tied together, and so you can rarely adjust the one without adjusting the other. Something that I've done in my app, but which needs more testing, is having the main adjustment be a combination of brightness and contrast, to try and avoid having to adjust both of them manually. If I can pull it off, I think it could be a very nice UI for improving your photo. (if it works in most cases)

In the old days, simple image editing programs resized images by clipping or doubling the pixels. Perhaps this is not an issue with modern image editing apps (or zooming on the screen in general nowadays), but you really have to re-sample at the destination pixel density in order for the image quality to look decent. I may be showing my age here.

Yeah: I think the image resizing done nowadays is pretty decent, especially when you're dealing with an image with so many lines of resolution.

Handy for making Memes/Lolcats/etc. Maybe even some "serious" things.

Ah, right. I notice that OSBB labs recently released an app named "MockIt", I think. It does a pretty nice job of making Memes, etc.

There's a freebie app I have tried called "Painter", but it's so rudimentary as to be hardly useful to me. (IE it has 2.. count 'em... 2 tools: simple drawing brush, and eraser. Oh boy! ) Among other things, I could really use a select/copy/paste transparent brush feature, where I can select part of an image and then paste it into another image. (Though this starts to get into territory that one might want to just use a desktop computer. )

Other features: flood fill, different types of brushes (ie "spraycan", "crayon", etc.), text overlay, fine rotation, "stretching" or "perspective stretching", etc.

Right... gotcha. Ok, so "Paint" features is a whole area unto its own. The idea of having a mini photo shop built into your photo app. My sense is that this would be a good standalone app in addition to the native (or replacement) pictures app, but could also be integrated.

Ideally, all of it. But at the very least things like image creator details, image parameters, geolocation data, camera metadata and so on. Among other things, people need to be able to know what kind of potentially personal/confidential data they are shipping around inside a JPEG whenever they share it somewhere, and be able to strip it out if desired. Or add copyright data, etc.

Gotcha. Interesting point about adding copyright data. In that case, you'd probably want to have a "template" modification that you could efficiently apply to 1 or more photos. For example, to add copyright data to all of your images. (without having to manually type it in to every photo!)

Animated GIFS are very trendy these days, they are the "poor man's video" and used for things like memes, social network avatars (including in BBM), blog posts, and so on.

I don't know if I'd want to do a lot of creating (though probably some), but I want to be able to at the very least see the animation in an app without having to load it into a browser or something, and look at individual frames if I want to see what is actually there on each frame.

Ah, gotcha. Yes, I've seen animated GIFs in comments on The Verge (etc)... quite funny, actually. But yes, good point that if you're a person who has a bunch of them on their device, it would of course be ideal to be able to see them in the app.

Yes. Effetica for example has a "default save folder" setting, which in reality means "ONLY save folder". If I want the edited image to be somewhere else (yanno, like, for example the folder the original was in???), I have to keep moving edited files out of the "save folder". I'd like the ability to specify the destination folder when I save an image if I want. (Or at LEAST some other options like "save in original folder" or something.) Worse, I cannot control the filename in Effectica so half the time I feel like I'm spending more time renaming and moving files after the fact than I actually spent editing it in Effetica.

AH, now I see what you're saying. Yeah, to only have a single folder that you're able to save to, and for that to not be the original photo's folder -- I could see how that could be extremely limiting, especially if most of the time you're either wanting to modify the original, or if you're wanting to save it elsewhere with a custom filename.

I think that's fine as option. But as your faux stereotypical computer-geek OCD type, I oftentimes like to have personal control over all those things, and love to have options.

I hear you. Good for me to consider, re: making that kind of thing an option.

[danielbigham]

@danielbigham, do you plan to release beta version of the app in BlackBerry Beta Zone or will you release just a final version (if you have any ETA)? Thanks

I definitely want to have beta versions of it to get people's feedback and to try and work the kinks out. I've never done betas before though, so I'll need to see if I can figure that out. Is "BlackBerry Beta Zone" what it's called? Is that just for apps released by BlackBerry, or also devs?

[bb10_fan]

I definitely want to have beta versions of it to get people's feedback and to try and work the kinks out. I've never done betas before though, so I'll need to see if I can figure that out. Is "BlackBerry Beta Zone" what it's called? Is that just for apps released by BlackBerry, or also devs?

Latest news are that BlackBerry opened it for all BlackBerry developers (3d party developers). I'm not developer myself and cannot provide much more info on this, sorry

[danielbigham]

I think many would agree that it's too limited Several good suggestions were already mentioned, but my wish list for Picture app replacement would be (unordered):

- being able to see some basic info about file (name, size, date) in list mode (I couldn't find this simple option in Pictures app)

Right, yes... sounds like people would appreciate a list mode with various attributes shown. Ok.

- apply different sorting to files (name, size, date - for simple, place, people, etc - for advanced mode)

Very good point. The Pictures app allows grouping / sorting by date, but a person could also want to sort/group by other things, like you suggest. Thanks.

- being able to see real folders where I store my images (maybe also have an option to deselect some of them to be indexed)

The Pictures app shows you "Albums" which are folders, as far as I know. How would "real folders" be different? You're just wanting more of a file browser appearance for one of the ways to navigate? Also, what is meant by "deselect them to be indexed"?

- ability to have slideshow with transition effects and ability to see images on TV (using WiFi direct or Miracast or DLNA)

Good point. I'll add to that the ability to select a song or artist or playlist from the music library to play alongside the slideshow.

As for WiFi direct or Miracast or DLNA... isn't that what the "Play On" feature of the Pictures app is for? (I haven't actually tried it)

- ability to upload multiple images to DropBox or any other cloud service (or even auto sync some folders with certain rules to choose file for sync)

Yup, good.

- possibility to search by image using Google or any other search engine which has this functionality (what I mean here is, say you made a photo of some interesting and possibly famous building during your vacations and months later you want to read about it, but you probably already forgot the name of it. In that case search by image may help to speedup the information retrieval)

Interesting idea.

- maybe a possibility to find duplicates

Also an interesting throught. We all love duplicates, now don't we. So yes, having a feature like that could be very handy... thanks.

This is just a small list I would like to see in Pictures app, but once it's there I definitely will get other functionality wishes My suggestion of focusing on Pictures app replacement first was based on the fact that we do have selection of photo editors (even if someone is not happy about them due to lack of knowledge), but we have no choice in Pictures apps department From a business perspective it's a better start point, get financial support and continue evolve your app towards other areas, like photo editing and painting. You could even split your app in 3 semi-independent modules and sell each of them separately such that everyone gets what he/she needs and not one huge app (probably also too expensive for functionality needed).

Good thoughts!

[bb10_fan]

The Pictures app shows you "Albums" which are folders, as far as I know. How would "real folders" be different? You're just wanting more of a file browser appearance for one of the ways to navigate? Also, what is meant by "deselect them to be indexed"?

Yes, albums are folders, but you loose hierarchy of those folders. I may have several subfolders with the same name located in different places (device, SD card). Pictures app just show them in one level all.

By deselect or remove from indexing I meant app won't try to list images in certain folders. Try to put image files in Downloads, Documents or any other public folder and Pictures app will show them all. And when you have many non-photo graphical files it's a bit irritating to go through that mess in Pictures app

[danielbigham]

Yes, albums are folders, but you loose hierarchy of those folders. I may have several subfolders with the same name located in different places (device, SD card). Pictures app just show them in one level all.

By deselect or remove from indexing I meant app won't try to list images in certain folders. Try to put image files in Downloads, Documents or any other public folder and Pictures app will show them all. And when you have many non-photo graphical files it's a bit irritating to go through that mess in Pictures app

Ah, got it. Yes, that makes perfect sense. Thanks.

[miguel89to]

What is it about the native Pictures app that you dislike?

And yes, isn't it great having such a joke worthy last name?

Eww so your ham IS big?? Lol

Posted via CB10 app with my trusty Z10

[Omnitech]

I'm not yet appreciating how it's hard to drill down into desired folders. The "Albums" screen displays the albums (folders), including the name, and touching the album opens it.

When you say "how it organizes", in terms of your frustration, what do you mean more specifically?[...]


Interesting point. Usually when I'm looking at photos I don't have any desire to know the filename, and I'd actually be extremely disappointed if the Pictures app overlayed the filename on every file in the grid view, because for me it would violate the "content is king" design philosophy of BB10 where you want to show off the content as well and as unencumbered as possible. But I suppose if you were really wanting to see the filenames (for some reason that I'm not appreciating at the moment), then I can see how this would feel like a limitation. The file browser app might be a better tool in that case, right? It shows both the thumbnail and filename, if I'm thinking straight?

Someone else here expanded on that somewhat.

Common example: I have several images that look virtually identical visually, but have different characteristics that cannot be determined from the Pictures app, requiring me to go into "properties" on every single one to figure out which is which, or use a File Manager or similiar utility, whereupon I lose the ability to, for example, swipe directly from one image to the next.

I might have created a smaller version of an image for emailing or website usage but I can't tell from the little thumbnail which is which. Or I've got one in PNG format and another in JPEG format and need to figure out which is which. Or I've got duplicates and I want to remove them but I do not know which is the "original" (based on a shorter filename without appended characters) so I have to tediously go into each file's properties page one-by-one to determine this.

CYM: I use these all the time in Photoshop, although that's typically when I'm creating graphics. Rarely do I use these controls for actual photographs. Do you use CYM adjustments on your photos?

Yes I do, depends on what the image needs. Sometimes I cannot get the desired result with simple "Hue" adjustments, for example. And just to be clear: I'm not Mr. Photoshop Ninja, more often than not I use simple free tools to do this - ie IrfanView. (Or in the old days - Lview)

Maybe it's not something I would be doing on a smartphone - that's quite possible. Hard to beat a large screen for seeing what you are doing with an image.

Very interesting thought wrt multi-level undo. I can see how that would be useful if and when experimenting with multiple adjustments.

Yep - in a nutshell, if you are making a series of adjustments, it can be very handy to roll a few of the recent ones back without reverting all of them since the last time an image was saved.

I'm not quite following the "over shooting" thought -- I find the BB10 slider a pretty nice control with lots of precision as you move your finger to the left or right.

I just think there are precision limits on any touch interface using a small surface area, I don't think that BB10 is especially crippled in that way or something.

I really like your "2-dimensional control surface" thought. I think I know what you're getting at. I always end up adjusting photos in two ways: 1) I increase the brightness, but that washes the photo, so then 2) I increase the contrast. Brightness and contrast are seemingly tied together, and so you can rarely adjust the one without adjusting the other. Something that I've done in my app, but which needs more testing, is having the main adjustment be a combination of brightness and contrast, to try and avoid having to adjust both of them manually. If I can pull it off, I think it could be a very nice UI for improving your photo. (if it works in most cases)

Yep, that's the basic idea. Could do this with gamma and blacklevel too, or color controls.

Ah, right. I notice that OSBB labs recently released an app named "MockIt", I think. It does a pretty nice job of making Memes, etc.

It's good, but sometimes it's handy to use one app for several tasks, in part because you get used to its UI quirks and where it likes to save images and how you move around in it and so on.

Right... gotcha. Ok, so "Paint" features is a whole area unto its own. The idea of having a mini photo shop built into your photo app.

Not really, Photoshop isn't a paint app. Adobe has a separate application specifically for that. (Adobe Illustrator)

Gotcha. Interesting point about adding copyright data. In that case, you'd probably want to have a "template" modification that you could efficiently apply to 1 or more photos. For example, to add copyright data to all of your images. (without having to manually type it in to every photo!)

That's definitely one use-case.

Ah, gotcha. Yes, I've seen animated GIFs in comments on The Verge (etc)... quite funny, actually. But yes, good point that if you're a person who has a bunch of them on their device, it would of course be ideal to be able to see them in the app.

One of the most common problems I have found for years now is that many apps that can display pictures in general can only display a single frame in a multi-frame GIF image. For years I was forced (in Windows) to open such images in a web browser if I wanted to see the animation. Quite ridiculous.

[BKillar]

How this. I am at a birthday party taking photos. I take the photo and give it a name - Katy Birthday - and it saves that photo as Katy Birthday 1. The next photo auto saves as Katy Birthday 02 etc. This would eliminate the current file name structure that BBOS uses now.
Now when I want to view photos from an event - I search Katy Birthday and there they are. No need for folders etc - just filter by event.
I guess another approach would be to select a default folder - I could make a folder called Katy Birthday - and choose this and then all the photos are saved to that folder until I change it.....
All I know is having file names like 12132103929.img is not user friendly and it would be nice to find a way to make the file name associated with the event. Something along those lines would be very useful IMO. All digital images are stored this way for digital cameras - there has to be a better way.

[BKillar]

How this. I am at a birthday party taking photos. I take the photo and give it a name - Katy Birthday - and it saves that photo as Katy Birthday 1. The next photo auto saves as Katy Birthday 02 etc. This would eliminate the current file name structure that BBOS uses now.
Now when I want to view photos from an event - I search Katy Birthday and there they are. No need for folders etc - just filter by event.
I guess another approach would be to select a default folder - I could make a folder called Katy Birthday - and choose this and then all the photos are saved to that folder until I change it.....
All I know is having file names like 12132103929.img is not user friendly and it would be nice to find a way to make the file name associated with the event. Something along those lines would be very useful IMO. All digital images are stored this way for digital cameras - there has to be a better way.

[BKillar]

Here a link to this request from long ago - http://forums.crackberry.com/playboo...ra-app-734902/

[danielbigham]

How this. I am at a birthday party taking photos. I take the photo and give it a name - Katy Birthday - and it saves that photo as Katy Birthday 1. The next photo auto saves as Katy Birthday 02 etc. This would eliminate the current file name structure that BBOS uses now.
Now when I want to view photos from an event - I search Katy Birthday and there they are. No need for folders etc - just filter by event.
I guess another approach would be to select a default folder - I could make a folder called Katy Birthday - and choose this and then all the photos are saved to that folder until I change it.....
All I know is having file names like 12132103929.img is not user friendly and it would be nice to find a way to make the file name associated with the event. Something along those lines would be very useful IMO. All digital images are stored this way for digital cameras - there has to be a better way.

You raise a very interesting point about photo filenames. Good thoughts. Another take on this would be to tell the camera to tag all photos with "Katy Birthday", which would likewise give you the ability later on to easily see all photos with that tag. (Tags are very similar to folders, except they give you more power wrt multiple tags, whereas you can't really have multiple folders without duplicating the image)

But regardless, it does make a lot of sense to name the file according to the main event title.

My app isn't yet a "camera app", but for reasons like the above, it would be very advantageous to also have a good camera mode.

[QXS]

Not sure if this has come up, but how about sorting images by geographic location from the geotag data?

[QXS]

Tagging photos based on calendar event titles.

[Omnitech]

My app isn't yet a "camera app", but for reasons like the above, it would be very advantageous to also have a good camera mode.

I actually wouldn't mind if someone wrote a full-fledged camera app for BB10, because IMHO that is one of the weak points in BB10, a below-par camera app.

But to improve on the default app would require a lot of special expertise, perhaps even access to patented technology. The areas where the camera app are weak in my opinion are autofocus sophistication, image processing for low-light images, color spectrum/white-balance and absence of manual controls. (I would love to have the ability to see and/or set f-stop/shutter speed or exposure compensation, for example.)

[danielbigham]

Not sure if this has come up, but how about sorting images by geographic location from the geotag data?

Yup, someone made that suggestion above. Good one.

[danielbigham]

Tagging photos based on calendar event titles.

What a clever idea! I hadn't thought of that... fascinating... very fascinating... something that I have been realizing more recently is that there are different "types" of tags.

1. Location tags (ex. "Home", "Cottage", "Florida Vacation 2014", etc.)
2. People tags

... and I think what you're proposing here could be thought of as another type of tag called a "Calendar event tag". Right, and so if the user wanted, they could choose for a calendar event tag to be created any time they take a photo during a calendar event, and that tag would be applied automatically to those photos. So if you had an event in your calendar "Eli's 5th Birthday Party", it would create a new tag of that name and apply it to photos you took during that event.

A couple challenges might be:

1. The default name for some events in the calendar might be a bit "untidy"... what I'm getting at is that the name of the event you entered into your calendar might be somewhat different (or a lot different) than the name you might have chosen for a tag if you were to have created the tag in the photo app yourself.

2. This could conceivably result in a lot of tags in the app. The only issue with that is that the UI for tagging photos becomes more challenging the more tags there are. If you only have 10 tags, you can display them all on the screen for the user to choose. If they have 200 tags, then finding the tag you want to apply becomes potentially trickier.

Anyway... this is a great idea to consider. Thanks!

[danielbigham]

I actually wouldn't mind if someone wrote a full-fledged camera app for BB10, because IMHO that is one of the weak points in BB10, a below-par camera app.

But to improve on the default app would require a lot of special expertise, perhaps even access to patented technology. The areas where the camera app are weak in my opinion are autofocus sophistication, image processing for low-light images, color spectrum/white-balance and absence of manual controls. (I would love to have the ability to see and/or set f-stop/shutter speed or exposure compensation, for example.)

Writing a great camera app sounds challenging but also very rewarding. One of my struggles with this photo app is that the scope keeps growing, and growing, and growing... it's the classic software development conundrum, right? Scope creep! It can be difficult to know how to define the scope of a project; what is too big? What is too small? Anyway, good thoughts. Agreed that camera functionality is very valuable.

[BlackBerry USA]

I had my first experience today with Samsung Galaxy's ANIMATED PHOTOS. I was very impressed; friend took a picture of a beautiful scene with trees in a park and guess what? The leaves on the trees moved! It was still photo but the selected areas were live or animated.

Very Cool!

You can see more about it on Google, just search for Samsung Galaxy Animated photos.

Is there an app for this for the Blackberry 10?? We need that on the Blackberry!!

Posted via CB10

[adamlau]

Lossless transformations (rotate + vt/hz flip).
Ability to strip all metadata from image file.