Better visibility of color labels in lighttable

[pozix604]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.

With large photo libraries, it is difficult to visually identify the color labels applied to photos. Even when the thumbnail overlays permanently show, the color label is only shown as a small dot. It's hardly visible.

It's possible to filter on color label, yes. But this does not help if I need to see the entire film roll contextually, and identify which photos have what color labels applied.

Describe the solution you'd like

A possible solution is to tint the border around a photo with the color(s). Currently, the border is always gray, hence providing no useful information. Tinted borders would make it very easy to identify what color label(s) are applied to photos.

Another: Larger dots.

Lots of different ways to do this, and lots of implementations in other software to look at. But need agreement that this is useful.

[HSUfineprint]

I won't vote for color frames. Maybe a bigger dot is enough...

[pozix604]

I won't vote for color frames. Maybe a bigger dot is enough...

Color frame just a suggestion. Goal is to have good visibility of color labels while in lighttable.

[elstoc]

I think the problem with both of these suggestions is that you can apply multiple colour labels to an image. This will not work at all with the frames (as they can definitely only support one at a time), and IMO the large dot will get a little too intrusive with multiple colours.

[pozix604]

you can apply multiple colour labels to an image

What do the usage statistics (are there any?) say about the how many people use multiple color labels?

[wpferguson]

@pozix604 what are using color labels for? Perhaps we could suggest better solutions if we understand the purpose.

[ptilopteri]

* wpferguson ***@***.***> [04-26-24 15:39]:

@pozix604 what are using color labels for? Perhaps we suggest better solutions if we understand the purpose.

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-- (paka)Patrick Shanahan Plainfield, Indiana, USA @ptilopteri http://en.opensuse.org openSUSE Community Member facebook/ptilopteri Photos: http://wahoo.no-ip.org/piwigo paka @ IRCnet oftc

[pozix604]

@pozix604 what are using color labels for? Perhaps we could suggest better solutions if we understand the purpose.

I am using color labels to identify images useful for multiple projects, one color per project. After identifying, I further process them and remove the color labels. So the colors are a transient, quick, easy way for me to go through a portfolio and triage.

I'm not working with "just the photos labelled green", or "just one image". But, I do want to easily see what color has been assigned to what image to get a sense of how many assigned, which ones, etc.

In a sea of colors that is an array of images, a small colored dot (or even a bigger one) here and there is basically invisible. Very poor usability.

Tags don't work. Stars are just as bad.

[elstoc]

What do the usage statistics (are there any?) say about the how many people use multiple color labels?

I don't know how we'd even begin to gather such information (without spying on our users). Feels like you're leading up to suggesting we only allow one colour per image, to improve visibility?

I wouldn't want to lose the ability to apply multiple colour labels. I use them to categorise images quickly. The purpose tends to change depending on what I'm doing but I have used more than one at the same time.

[pozix604]

Feels like you're leading up to suggesting we only allow one colour per image, to improve visibility?

Definitely not. I'm a proponent of following where the data leads. If many use multiple colors, then it is useful. But, we just don't know right now.

I don't see any reason why we cannot collect usage analytics. It would be anonymized. It would be usage-oriented. The intent would be to understand which features are used, when, how. It would need to be thoughtfully designed, but possible.

In my specific use, I use the colors simply because there are hotkeys attached, making it easy for me to triage images with color labels. I suspect this is a common use case (again, don't know) and hence this ticket.

[wpferguson]

I don't see any reason why we cannot collect usage analytics.

Cost

• someone has to figure out what to instrument and how to do it
• someone has to do the coding to instrument the code
• backend infrastructure (server to collect, hosting, ip, maintenance, etc).
• someone has to analyze the collected data
• and a whole lot more that I didn't think of off the top of my head