Thumbnails
Bibble had working thumbnails and ASP 1 had working thumbnails. Everything was fine there. Easy and predictable scrolling. I could see the filenames without hovering over the images. It was as good as it could be. The main task of the user interface is to give easy access and support to everything you need to get your job done. If it's working it's easy to keep track of your images and do the ajustments you need. Thumbnails are a central part of the image editing and organizing experience. In the previous version, the thumbnails had a fixed size so it was easy to see what images was shot horizontally or was shot in a vertical format, and you could see the filenames under each image. With many similiar images, it's sometimes important to look for the correct filenames when browsing. So far so good...
Then came ASP 2...
Filenames
Everything that had worked so fluently and assisted my work in the previous versions was gone. Now I have to first scroll and then hover over each thumbnail to see the #%&¤ filename. Extra work and less control. Love it...
Slow and buggy, and completely %&#¤ thumbnail scaling
Now here comes the really good part. Where the preview sizes was fixed in the previous versions, they are now all being scaled to full width in the scrolling area. Where I usually prefered to have the thumbnails horizontally above the images, it's now just and only vertical to the left of the main area. I haven't found where I can toggle between a hororizontal or vertical scroll layout. The really bad part is that that every image are scaled to fit the same width. It doesn't matter if they were shot horizontally or vertically. They all have to be scaled to fit the same &¤%# width. If I had exclusively only shot horizontal images that would have been fine. Maybe the UI design guys only had straight level images to work and test on? I don't know, but I really can't imagine how on earth they could have done such poor UI design job if they had vertical shot images in their test bin. They possibly couldn't.
So, what's wrong with the vertical image thumbnails? To make them fit full with, like the horizontal ones, they have to scale them up. So first of all, when you scroll through a range of images that were shot both horizontally and vertical, it looks awkward and goofy when some images in the series are small and some are magnified. And that is if and when they are rendered. Here comes the disfunctional buggy part; They don't. At least not in a predictable and consistant way.
All the horizontal thumbnails looks good, but as the vertical ones are scaled to full width, they still looks just like the horizontal ones. The vertical thumbnails are initially cropped into a horizontal looking thumbnail. Brilliant idea. So now when I'm in a hurry I can't see what's my horizontal ones or my vertical ones. And I can't see much of what I have in those images at all. The juicy parts are cropped away entirely in the previews. I must really admire the UI design team to come up with such a brilliant solution. And it's just getting better. Sometimes one or two of the vertical thumbnails do scale without cropping (all by itself and after some time) and fill a lot more of the real estate by pushing some of the other thumbnails out of view. Fantastic. Had it only happened in a consistent manner, but no. Sometimes they do, and sometimes they don't. Sometimes they loose their cropping and grow in size all by themselves and sometimes they do that only when I actually clicks on the image and open it for editing in the main window. But it doesn't always happen, even when I click on them. I have attached a screenview to show what I mean. This really sucks. Bigtime...
[Edit: When I click on a cropped vertical preview, the clicked thumbnail remains cropped while the other vertical ones in view instantly uncrops to full size...
]From a good, predictable and fully functioning thumbnail preview system, they have now made my user experience into a major headache. Everytime I open the software to find and edit my images I end up with a big frustration and irritation over this. On how it's possible to completely screw up something that was simple, efficient and well working. I really can't understand the benefit of scaling horizontal and vertical thumbnails at different scales. If I crop a vertical image to be more narrow this complete and utter idiocy gets even worse.
I have complained about the stupid deevolution of the user interface before, but it seems like the information has to be delivered by teaspoons...
Please put your acts together Corel and fix the stupid thumbnail problem you have created. It was working before. Please give us the old one back!!!
- Just an example of how the vertical thumnails behave. This is not an extreme case, it's like this all the time...