A case for continued My Picture development

[ggshubin]

The poor My Picture feature seems to be the only feature on MP that doesn't get the attention it deserves, if any at all. Sure the TVServer is cool and listening to music or watching movies is more popular, but the My Picture feature could be just as cool if given a chance (Well, maybe not AS COOL as the TVserver, but you get the point). Now if I were a coder I would just jump in and fix the things that I feel need to be addressed with this feature, but alas I am not. So I and am now on a quest to appeal to you the good people in MP coding-land to focus some of your attention over for a few minutes to help me with this after-thought of a feature.

Here are a few items that I feel need to be addressed to really get things started:

1) Make the slideshow feature an option as a screensaver. This would be a great alternative to the visualizations feature in My Music. Yes, I know that you listen to music and view pictures at the same time right now. But this is very cumbersome the way it is designed right now. First you have to go into music and pick your playlist (or whatever) then you have to go out of that and then go into pictures and start a slide show there. Now if you want to change music you have to start the process all over again. Just make the slideshow a visualizations option.

2) Make music playlists available within this feature. Kinda the same idea as #1. It would be nice to be able to change music without having to reset the slideshow everytime.

3) Add manual and automatic options for image rotation.

4) Add a "no repeat" option to the random slideshow.

5) Add a "view pictures in subfolders" option the the slideshow. I've been told that this is already a feature built in, but I have never been able to get it to work.

6) Add the ability to import from subfolders.

6) Fix the "Ken Burns" effect. This is the coolest thing about the slideshows. But it is not coded very well. While the pictures do move and dissolve one into another, it is not very smooth. This is what happens: the picture FADES ON, then it MOVES, then STOPS MOVING, then DISSOLVES to another picture, the begins to MOVE again. The image should not stop moving while it is fading from one to another. It should be fluid.

7) Add a "rotation" option to the "Ken Burns" effect. Maybe something like 10 degrees of rotation. So when an image is zooming in or out it will also randomly rotate clockwise or counterclockwise but 10 degrees. Or whatever amount the user wants.

These are just a few items that I've thought of to really get this feature to be more that just a basic picture viewer that nobody ever uses.

Personally, I use this quite often. When the kids are home I put on the slideshow and some music and they can sit for hours sometimes watching this. It is much better than them watching Spongebob all day. It is great also for when we have friends and family over. It is almost always becomes a great conversation starter.

I apologize for the long post, but I really feel that this feature could and SHOULD be improved upon and if so, it could be one that a lot more people use more often.

Thanks for reading this and I hope that someone out there will take some time out of their busy coding schedules and address the items I've outlined for this feature.
I'd be so appreciative.

George Shubin

[Spragleknas]

The poor My Picture feature seems to be the only feature on MP that doesn't get the attention it deserves

No, this applies for (My) News as well. But I agree that some parts of MP are not up to the full potential ( <- strange sentence, but hey... )

[sleepycol]

I agree. My Pictures needs updating.

1) Also my pictures should include an OSD with EXIF info. Currently uses a different info button than my videos and drops you out of full screen to display it. Why not just overlay an OSD.

2) General comment: Standardise access to media info in my music - pressing info should bring an MP3 tag OSD and also in my videos where this currently is ok and displays an OSD with movie description. Ties music and movies in with 1 above so that where ever you are in MP you can press F3 for media info.

3) Add option to display IPTC caption info or EXIF comments during slideshow

4) In current picture info display, make EXIF comments scroll when too long.


Cheers,
Colin

[pollyplopp]

I also would like to see some improvements of My Pictures.
I fully support sleepycol requests and ggshubin #5.

Please also add:

-Possibility to configure which Exif tags to display (on an overlay OSD)

-Magnifying glass (smaller overlayed square with a 100% view). I often use this to preview sections of photos to see eg if eyes are sharp in focus.

-Copy to folder (with browse). Great when you found a favorite picture you want to email/print etc.

-BreezeBrowser is able to work with shortcuts. This is a very useful way to create "dublicates" in different directories without having to actually keep different versions.

[Spragleknas]

A "Picture Views" would also be great! (Like there is in "My Music" and "My Movies".

For instance getting pictures sorted in "Month", "Year" and "Size"

[mbuzina]

Originally Posted by Spragleknas

A "Picture Views" would also be great! (Like there is in "My Music" and "My Movies".

For instance getting pictures sorted in "Month", "Year" and "Size"

That is available (in SVN). I added a Switch View button to the my Pictures (3rd from above). Klick it to switch between Shares and Date View (Pictures have to be in the database for this). Start with year, month, day (if there are less than 500 pics per year / month they will show as files in the month view).

I would also like the following (if I had more time...):
1. Allow import of Pics from Cameras / Devices
2. Allow grouping pictures into sets / albums etc and either order prints or save to folder / cd / device for getting prints.
3. Combine features of Calendaring (automatically link pics from a given date to a calender entry), Maps Plugin and my Pictures.
4. Include the flickr plugin to my pics.
...

Originally Posted by ggshubin

3) Add manual and automatic options for image rotation.

If your camera provides rotation information (in the EXIF), MP will automatically show the pic in the right rotation (other than windows explorer). If you use Picasa, MP will use the rotation information from picasa. What other automatic rotation would you like? Press R for rotating manual (often Record on remotes (i know, very bad logic)).

[Spragleknas]

Originally Posted by mbuzina

That is available (in SVN). I added a Switch View button to the my Pictures (3rd from above). Klick it to switch between Shares and Date View (Pictures have to be in the database for this). fol

How can I add them to the database?

[mbuzina]

Just do a Thumbnail generation (it will do this in the background for all folders you visited, or from the context menu of a folder in my Pictures select Create thumbnails (incl. subfolders) ). All pics for which you can see the thumbnail are in the database.

There is no "PictureShareWatcher" plugin (yet).

[mzemina]

Have you guys seen AppleTV's slideshow? Very nice indeed, it would be so great to if MP would have similar look.

BTW - What freeware tool are you using that allows comments added to EXIF?

[fanoI]

Another useful function woul be the ability to read cbr and cbz archives that contains JPGs (for comics reading)...

Yes I can call Cdisplay with my Programs plugin but have integrated in MP will be the best... and
the My Pictures section is the ideal for this (are images, after all!).

fanoI