Poor man's 'gallery view' in Screenshot Capture

[cranioscopical]

Often, I read comments on DC from people doing things that seem perfectly obvious to them and yet are enlightening to me.  So, while I expect that many do already what I describe below, this feature of SC is so useful that I thought I'd mention it.

I refer to the fact that by setting the icon size for the left panel to the standard 96x96 and making the panel wider I get a pretty good 'gallery view' of whatever I want to look through. (The new search bar is an additional convenience.)
 
Poor man's 'gallery view' in Screenshot Capture
 

[mouser]

Very cool, I'll bet very few people realize they can configure the thumbnail panel to show multiple columns.

I wonder if having a dedicated thumbnail viewing mode might also be useful..

[tomos]

That is very helpful (I didnt know it) thanks Chris

I wonder if having a dedicated thumbnail viewing mode might also be useful..

-mouser (September 06, 2013, 02:04 PM)

I'm interested - but I'm not sure what you mean there.

[mouser]

I'm interested - but I'm not sure what you mean there.

what i mean is a kind of Gallery mode that you could switch in and out of, which would basically just show a full page of thumbnails in a grid, for quick browsing, searching, deleting, etc.

[cranioscopical]

what i mean is a kind of Gallery mode that you could switch in and out of, which would basically just show a full page of thumbnails in a grid, for quick browsing, searching, deleting, etc.

-mouser (September 06, 2013, 03:02 PM)

Probably, if it has an option for enlargement of whichever thumbnail is made 'active' either when using arrow keys to scroll the thumbnails or by pointing with the mouse.

The tiny drawback with using thumbnails for a 'gallery' is that that one can't scroll through all of them continuously with the arrow keys — only through each row or column. Mouse scrolling, however, is great as one just has to click to see the main image (which is especially good with AutoFit checked).

In my view, since SC is already so good at yielding a pseudo-gallery view, spending lots of time on 'improving' it might result in a beautifully gilded lily.

What might be useful for the search bar would be the ability to search subfolders and display appropriate images all in the same view but that's asking rather a lot.
 
Anyway, thanks very much for the recent improvements, SC goes from strength to strength!
 
Now, if only you could placate those cross hairs... 
 

[mouser]

What might be useful for the search bar would be the ability to search subfolders and display appropriate images all in the same view but that's asking rather a lot.

yes, i was thinking this myself.  this is something a gallery view could be made to do.

[cranioscopical]

What might be useful for the search bar would be the ability to search subfolders and display appropriate images all in the same view but that's asking rather a lot.

yes, i was thinking this myself.  this is something a gallery view could be made to do.

-mouser (September 06, 2013, 04:37 PM)

In that case, try to have it ready by tomorrow afternoon, would you?       

[mouser]

I'm wondering if i add this if it should be basically an entirely independent new window that can be displayed.

The advantages of that would be:

• Better for users with multiple monitors, as it could be maximized on a separate monitor.
• Less complicated user-interface design work on my part.

Disadvantages:

• More annoying for single monitor users.
• Less intuitive.

[cranioscopical]

In my household we'd have one vote for each, I'm afraid     

[mouser]

So I've thought about this a bit more, some random thoughts:

• If I do it, i'd do it as a separate window, not shown within the main SC window.
• I might even do it as a standalone application that just knows how to tell SC to open an image and vice versa.
• Having said that, it's inconceivable that there aren't already good freeware image browser/searchers that are excellent and which people could use already with Screenshot Captor; it would be easy to configure this as a tool within SC.
• So, I guess i'm saying that with a little bit of work, one can already configure a free image gallery/browser/search tool to use with SC.  In fact I encourage people to find some good ones and we can make .sctool files for them to share make it trivial to use with SC.
• Having said that, there may still be some value in reinventing the wheel and creating a new minimalist image browser/search tool that comes bundled with SC, for convenience, and because it's not a hugely complicated task.

I welcome thoughts on existing free image browsers/searchers, and thoughts on whether it would be worth creating a new one.

As Cranioscopical said, a primary feature of this tool should be the ability to quickly see the recursive contents of folders and quickly search and filter, with rapidly adjustable thumbnail sizes and sort by different properties.  Another nice feature i was thinking might be nice would be the ability to specify a set of folders and have it show all thumbnails in all of those folders.  Any other features that would be useful for screenshot image browsing tool?

[cranioscopical]

So I've thought about this a bit more, some random thoughts:

with a little bit of work, one can already configure a free image gallery/browser/search tool to use with SC.  In fact I encourage people to find some good ones and we can make .sctool files for them to share make it trivial to use with SC.

I welcome thoughts on existing free image browsers/searchers, and thoughts on whether it would be worth creating a new one.

As Cranioscopical said, a primary feature of this tool should be the ability to quickly see the recursive contents of folders and quickly search and filter, with rapidly adjustable thumbnail sizes and sort by different properties.

-mouser (September 08, 2013, 10:21 AM)

Some good, free image viewers are mentioned in a review on Gizmo's freeware..

My own thoughts are these:

Stepping back a bit, SC is all about screenshots. They arrive in a single location, and they are in a limited set of formats. It's easy to get fired up about, and carried away by, thoughts of hunting through multiple drives, displaying RAW images, sorting, batch processing... etc. but most of us do have other image tools that can be set to handle SC's output. Having SC try to assume (any of) those tasks is a bit like putting the cart before the horse.

The more I think about it, the more I come to realize that SC already has *almost* everything that I would want for my selfish purpose. If SC itself could be induced (optionally) to search and display a flat view of the contents of its own sub-folders, that would pretty much do it for me. In combination with the existing ability to display multiple columns of thumbnails it would be just about perfect. Opening another window, or calling another application would detract from the appealing single-mindedness of what SC now offers.
 

[tomos]

If SC itself could be induced (optionally) to search and display a flat view of the contents of its own sub-folders, that would pretty much do it for me.

-cranioscopical (September 08, 2013, 02:06 PM)

yes, that would be a great feature.


Re using an external app with SC:
Possibly not an important point but I mention in case -
Trying to use image viewers as default 'openers' for images never played well with file managers in my experience. I would normally lose the sorting when viewing (manager would be sorted e.g. by date, viewer would cycle through images by name). Gave up in the end and stuck with Dopus's own viewer. Suspect that could be a problem with SC and external viewer too.

[mouser]

So i've been thinking a little more about a standalone/integrated little image browser tool to be useful with Screenshot Captor.

Key features I had in mind are:

1. Be able to show a single view of images found recursively in folders; perhaps a single view of thumbnails found in an arbitrary list of folders.
2. Quick search/filtering/sorting by name/date/etc.
3. Quick thumbnail size adjustments.

In other words, the focus would be on helping you find images in a large collection.

Now, the main question is still whether it makes sense to write such a tool when there are a bunch of powerful free image browsing/searching tools.

To me it comes down to the benefits of having one that bundles with and is made to integrate perfectly out of the box with SC, and being able to get it to work exactly as we want, vs the the folly of reinventing the wheel and spending time implementing something that already exists..

One thing that would be useful to know is what are the key features people use in such an image browser/finder.. And if there is a small enough essential feature set that this tool could replace some others without too much effort.  Even better would be if we could come up with some unique interesting functionality that would justify this tool's existence.


Having said all that, I just configured the (free for personal use) XnView as a tool in SC to browse the screenshot directory, and it does a very nice job.  Since you can drag+drop files from XnView into SC, it's hard to find a compelling reason to code another tool rather than just tell people to install XnView.  I'll add a default .sctool to the next Screenshot Captor release so that the XnView tool will show up automatically in your Screenshot Captor tool menu if you have XnView installed.  Ditto with IrfanView's thumbnail browser.

[dluby]

I like the idea of an integrated browser tool, it's not me who has to do the hard work in coding it!  However, I think the filter option was a great bonus and I use it frequently.

Is there a keyboard shortcut to toggle the Thumbnail Viewer as I can't seem to find one but it would be helpful to be able to toggle it with a shortcut.

Having said all that, I just configured the (free for personal use) XnView as a tool in SC to browse the screenshot directory, and it does a very nice job.  Since you can drag+drop files from XnView into SC, it's hard to find a compelling reason to code another tool rather than just tell people to install XnView.  I'll add a default .sctool to the next Screenshot Captor release so that the XnView tool will show up automatically in your Screenshot Captor tool menu if you have XnView installed.  Ditto with IrfanView's thumbnail browser.

Instead of waiting for the next release of SSC could you attach the .sctool files now?

Thanks

[mouser]

Is there a keyboard shortcut to toggle the Thumbnail Viewer

Ctrl+H

could you attach the .sctool files now?

Unpack these under your ScreenshotCaptor\Tools directory:

[cranioscopical]

Even better would be if we could come up with some unique interesting functionality that would justify this tool's existence.

-mouser (September 14, 2013, 01:53 PM)

I know this is outre but what's the possibility of being able to search for images based on colour content. E.g., show me anything that's predominantly blue/has at least 10% red/only b&w?