This evening, I ended up having a play with that "Lightcraft" repo floating around. I figured it would be good to at least grab it and tinker / examine it for ideas (and also to evaluate how close it comes to serving as the basis for my own efforts to build out my own personal tool for this kind of thing), lest it suddenly vanishes for whatever reason...
https://github.com/storytold/lightcraft
First impressions (UI + Build Process):
* I'm very impressed that it actually compiled straight out of the box with no extra or tricky dependency downloads / compilation steps, and did so relatively quickly
* Running it, it's a mix of stuff that makes a lot of sense at first brush, but also annoyances that mean I'd have to do a big bunch of hacking to solve...
(But, at least it's reasonably zippy all around for all the really important stuff)
Chief annoyances right now:
1) Defaults to photo mode not grid view
2) It's still very much a "folder by folder" type grid view (even after enabling the "include subfolders" checkbox).
Also, I'm definitely "holding it wrong", but I think the whole folder importing / etc. workflow stuff will need some work to fit with my workflow...
3) Cropping stuff is a separate tool pane, instead of one of the basic edits (i.e. I prefer a simple button to click-drag a crop region, then a slider preferably in-view + live preview to adjust the tilt, and/or maybe do broad 90-deg flipping). The worst part here is that you get no preview of the effects of your manipulations until it's all done and you've exited the cropping tool mode. Then again, much of that is negated if you just use the "straighten" tool to draw out your intended horizon line, and have it figure out the angle instead.
4) Some of the UI stuff is clunky (especially some of the pickers) - and I wish there were more "reset defaults for this setting / these settings)
5) That "reading folder" progressbar really needs to be in the middle of the gridview (as I missed it initially)
6) Batch mode: Can only do in fixed increments for selected images (+ cannot preserve that "sequence / editing batch for repeat edits"), as the sliders only operate on the last selected image, and not the whole range.
7) "Fill Light" capabilities anemic / weak. (Still have to see if it has something as good as my fav Darktable color/sharpness adjust modules)
8) Ugh... that tiny scrollbar/divider flicker on the right side of the grid! Argh!
9) The histogram thing is not interactive like the Darktable one is. Being able to click-drag that to do quick edits was very fun + something I quite like about that tool
* That said, it does look like a promising basis for maybe hacking together the replacement photo management tool I'd starting taking baby steps towards starting to implement already
Code-wise though:
Yeah, for typical AI-produced slop, the code-style isn't too appealing to deal with.
Very much a "compact + dense" style, with lots of multi-part stuff crammed onto single lines.
The folder organisation is also kinda weird.
Overall Verdict:
Very interesting! Worth some more tinkering + investigation in the days ahead to see what can be made of this!
Among other things I gotta try eventually is to hack in my Picasa-adapter bridge stuff, and then see how it handles! In that sense, this project showed up at the right time, as just last week, I was starting tentative work tinkering with trying to implement up a photo grid (to start building out all the stuff I wanted) for a personal tool.
(Worst case: I just end up parting out the agreeable parts, and hack up my own UI, which I was gonna do anyway with the Darktable code as a base instead. If this gets me there quicker, then so be it!)
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