Feature - crop & straighten tools

[janrif]

Chris, I know Tools | Proofs has resizing, cropping dialogs but I'm wondering if you have given any thought to adding visual tools for straightening & cropping to BB tool box? Thanks.

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Jan Rifkinson
Ridgefield, CT USA

[DavidB]

Chris, I know Tools | Proofs has resizing, cropping dialogs but I'm wondering if you have given any thought to adding visual tools for straightening & cropping to BB tool box?


Chris will have his own views as to how easy this would be and whether it improves the marketability of his product. From a user perspective, I wonder whether adding editing capabilities to BB Pro, which is pre-eminently a workflow tool, is altogether sensible.

BB Pro is good because it is (a) relatively quick and (b) makes batch operations of various kinds straightforward, and I'd be worried by anything which compromised these virtues. There are loads of workflow tools which have these editing features but do not do the basic job as well as BB Pro. For me, cropping and straightening are best done in an editor (pre-eminently but not necessarily Photoshop), because they are things you do on an image-by-image basis (Ctrl+D from BB Pro).

If I had any suggestions for additional features (I haven't at the moment), they would be for batch operations, rather than the manipulation of individual images. That said, I would not wish to object to any addition which did not compromise the essential strengths of the BB Pro.

[janrif]

Chris will have his own views as to how easy this would be and whether it improves the marketability of his product. From a user perspective, I wonder whether adding editing capabilities to BB Pro, which is pre-eminently a workflow tool, is altogether sensible.

BB Pro is good because it is (a) relatively quick and (b) makes batch operations of various kinds straightforward,If I had any suggestions for additional features (I haven't at the moment), they would be for batch operations, rather than the manipulation of individual images.
Not to be arguementative as I happen to agree w you about the beauty of BBpro but it seemed to me that these tools are relatively fast & exist in different forms already in BBpro.

For exmaple, user can rotate images 90/180 degrees, why not arbitrary degrees? Look @ Bibble Pro for a good example of a simple/fast leveling tool.

As for cropping, I've just noticed that it already exists very nicely in the convert image dialog. Whether user can preset several image crops for batch processing I don't know yet. Geeez, I hope I didn't miss a leveling tool as well.. That would make me a complete idiot for posting before thoroughly checking first. :o

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Jan Rifkinson
Ridgefield, CT USA

[DavidB]

We clearly agree about the essentials. My concern is that I have yet to find a program that, in my view, does all of image viewing, image management and image editing well. A number manage 2 out of 3. BB Pro wisely only attempts 2. I like it that way.

As regards the individual functions, Crop also exists in Proofs, where it is useful for people like me who like to crop copies rather than originals. It is for changing the aspect ratio of the image rather than 'artistic' purposes; arbitrary cropping really has to be done on an image-by-image basis, using a mask. That takes us into image editing territory.

Rotation is done by changing the EXIF tag wherever possible, and is provided to support changes in orientation. Arbitrary rotation takes things a significant step further, and again, in my view, is more of an editing tool. The same can be said of straightening, which is actually a specialised form of arbitrary rotation. BTW, I haven't myself had much luck with the automated straighteners you get in some programs; the best straightener I know is in Photoshop, where you define the new horizontal (or vertical) direction, and the image is rotated accordingly. Again, that is an editing tool.

Of course, if Chris were to prove me wrong and add a neat little editor to BB Pro without compromising its other virtues, I could hardly complain. It's just that I'm not holding my breath.

[Chris Breeze]

I'm not planning to add a straighten tool at the moment but may add it in a future release.

I've always felt that it is preferable to use a full image editor for detailed editing of images rather than try to include simple editing functions in BBPro.

[janrif]

I'm not planning to add a straighten tool at the moment but may add it in a future release.

I've always felt that it is preferable to use a full image editor for detailed editing of images rather than try to include simple editing functions in BBPro.
Not to be argumentative but so I understand: in your thinking, what's the difference between a crop & a straighten tool? Your logic would seem to refute the existence for a crop tool as well.

On my side of the ledger I feel it is sometimes better to be able to convert smaller files if there are shots that clerly require a few 'gross' adjustments. And that's where crop/straighten enter the picture

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Jan Rifkinson
Ridgefield, CT USA

[DavidB]

Not to be argumentative but so I understand: in your thinking, what's the difference between a crop & a straighten tool? Your logic would seem to refute the existence for a crop tool as well.

As I pointed out in my last, there is a distinction to be made between cropping to a set aspect ratio (provided in BB Pro), and 'arbitrary' cropping. My own view is that the latter and straightening belong in an image editor rather than a workflow application.

For me, the distinction is between facilities that can sensibly be used in batch mode, and those that cannot. You can usefully crop a batch of images to a set aspect ratio (for example, prior to printing), but both cropping to a mask and straightening need to be done on an image-by-image basis. Anything I can easily do from BB Pro with a quick Ctrl+D into Photoshop or whatever probably won't feature in my wish list for BB Pro itself.