[ANNOUNCE] Ansel-A: Digital Darkroom for the N900
 

http://ansela.garage.maemo.org/images/About.png

After 2.5 long months; Powerful Image Editing has finally(1) come to maemo!


Ansel-A: The Digital Darkroom for the Nokia N900
Features:

• Filtered-Black-&-White-Conversion
• RGB-Color-Correction
• Brightness, Saturation, Contrast and Sharpening
• Pixel-level-Cropping (Portrait is still a little fishy)
• Tonal Shadows/Highlights
• Kinetic Photo Browser
• 360-Degree-Precision-Rotation
• EXIF-Browser-with-maps
• Unlimited-Visual-Undo
• Multi-Platform (Qt4.6, PyQt)
• a Gratuitous YouTube Video [link]
• An active developer taking reasonable feature requests

and all this cool stuff is Fully Open Source.


http://ansela.garage.maemo.org/images/promo.png

EDIT: Changed from v0.9-1 to v0.9-5
v0.9-5 Released to Extras-Testing [link]

Brave souls please enjoy and offer critique (I'm ready to get coding again on all the bugs that I'm sure will creep up.)
Alternatively, you can comment on my Blog about this application if you're not the bug submitting type.


Support Questions [link]

Bug Tracking [link]


Installing Version v0.9-5

New Users: The easiest way to install:
if you have Extras-devel/Extras-Testing active go to AppManager->Graphics->Ansel-A and click install.

Previous Users: I now first suggest either AppManager->Uninstall->Ansel-A or


If for some reason you're downloading (wget) the deb directly and are installing with dpkg:
run dpkg -i ansela_0.9-5_all.deb and then apt-get -f install to get the depends.

For some of the alpha testers (blizzard & debernardis) noted that earlier versions from extras-devel, especially the temporary v0.8-1 version have caused problematic installs. I/They suggest the simple purge method above before a reinstall for those users, there were some structural changes, that could cause a conflict.




Shout-Outs:
Thank you all who have helped me over the past 2 months getting this released in time for the Calling All Innovators Contest, But especially:
achipa / attila77 for past work, fast answers, unreal patience to us noobs and of course PyQt4.7
noobmonkey you asked all the hard questions a month before me, so I just had to read the forums/irc
xvxxig guess who knows enough Linux now?
jgh for telling me what functions we really needed to have.
baconlt & tavaura20 my awesomely critical beta-testers, photographers and soundboards
mangoconleche & hunter30-06 You two know why, thanks to you the most :)


-lostinmirkwood


(1) well, without Easy Debian ... sorry qole

Re: [ANNOUNCE] Ansel-A: Digital Darkroom for the N900
 

Doesn't start on my N900 (PR1.2).
When called from xterm as /opt/anselA/ansela.py issues an ImportError: cannot import name QtWebKit

Is there some dependency to install?

Re: [ANNOUNCE] Ansel-A: Digital Darkroom for the N900
 

did you load it from the extras-devel Repo? It's still being pushed to Extras-Testing. Did you install from the command line withIf so a simple usually fixes these problems.

otherwise to get to a clean slate for alpha testers, now mentioned above:
If you have Extras-Testing installed, Just wait for the update, v0.9 and all needed depends will come down automatically (but I'll look into it)

edit: looked into it and edited this post

Re: [ANNOUNCE] Ansel-A: Digital Darkroom for the N900
 

I have both extra-testing and extra-devel enabled. The installed version is 0.8-1. It appears that the version in extra-testing is 0.9-1. Seems I was too much in a rush ;)
Now deinstalling and trying to get the right one

Edit: OK solved. Thanks

Re: [ANNOUNCE] Ansel-A: Digital Darkroom for the N900
 

Ha ha, good :D
To that point, I just purged python2.5-qt4-* from my device and SDK, and reinstalled on both with (apt-get install ansela) and it worked as expected, I have to admit you had me a bit worried there.

I Think I should mention in the announce that it's version 0.9-1.
0.8-* were severely chaotic development versions; as I migrated dependencies and optimized the code over the last 3 days.

If you have any questions please post away... I've been waiting for new uesers for quite some time.

Re: [ANNOUNCE] Ansel-A: Digital Darkroom for the N900
 

How did I not know this was in development?! How exciting! Please have your blog added to Planet Maemo.

http://maemo.org/news/planet-maemo/aggregate_your_blog/

Re: [ANNOUNCE] Ansel-A: Digital Darkroom for the N900
 

Looks nice. We always need this kind of quality software. Kudos....

Re: [ANNOUNCE] Ansel-A: Digital Darkroom for the N900
 

I am missing a simple paint function.. or did i miss something? If that is added this would be a killer app. Like the flow and user friendliness.

Re: [ANNOUNCE] Ansel-A: Digital Darkroom for the N900
 

I sent an email to planet at maemo.org a few weeks ago, but I'd be honored to be added.

Re: [ANNOUNCE] Ansel-A: Digital Darkroom for the N900
 

I'd like to add a burn/dodge tool for this purpose. Have a look too at MyPaint It runs fantastic on the N900.

Re: [ANNOUNCE] Ansel-A: Digital Darkroom for the N900
 

Would love to try this app, had the same issues as bernardis but solved it by removing and installing with -f.
But now I get a black-ish screen with a black square on it and some menus but it's non responsive.
When I start it from xterm I get these messages:
Error: FileImageOpen: /root/ui/resources/Ansel-A-Default.jpg
Error: Init Fail

Any ideas?

Re: [ANNOUNCE] Ansel-A: Digital Darkroom for the N900
 

I've been looking forward to your release on this ;) Tried it out in the early stages, but it was to chubby and no safe option, so uninstalled it. But thats history now and i will try it out :D

Good job lostinmirkwood ;)

Re: [ANNOUNCE] Ansel-A: Digital Darkroom for the N900
 

Could you tell me how you're installing it? Ergh, This seems to be becoming an issue.

I'm re-re-editing my initial post with install instructions.

Edit:
I think you running as root and then running the ansela.py file directly, with python ansela.py?!

ui/resources/Ansel-A-Default.jpg is a default image, (the black-eyed-susan photo), that exists so that if you have no photos you can load something. It by default lives in /opt/ansela/ui/resources/Ansel-A-Default.jpg and far as the system sees it's a relative path of ui/resources. (to find that file, I use the python call os.getcwd()+"/ui/resources/")

If you are running as root then your getcwd directory would be /root not /opt/ansel/ as set by the .desktop file.

I'm not sure why you're running from the command line, but try cd /opt/ansel and run from there.

otherwise just click on it in the menu/shortcut

Re: [ANNOUNCE] Ansel-A: Digital Darkroom for the N900
 

Good Job lostinmirkwood..I really like this application..!!!

I feel I should buy you a beer..!!!

Only one small issue I face...when I start the Ansel-a application, it sometimes shows my desktop screen and after some time Ansel-a launches...Initially I thought it crashed, hence I again clicked the same, but later on I was having two instances of Ansel-A running...

I guess this is not Ansel-A problem..This I have obseved after PR 1.2 upgrade ..not only for Ansel-A but for few of other applications too..!!!

Re: [ANNOUNCE] Ansel-A: Digital Darkroom for the N900
 

mikec blubbi and attila77 debated this at length in this thread, it's a startup issue of PyQt, this wiki shows there's ways around it, I just haven't gotten that far yet.

The beers sounds good though, I'm having a few myself right now to celebrate.

Re: [ANNOUNCE] Ansel-A: Digital Darkroom for the N900
 

@lostinmirkwood installed it from extras-testing and i've had no problems with the app, it works just fine ;)

Very nice looking app you have build here and works really good to :D

Re: [ANNOUNCE] Ansel-A: Digital Darkroom for the N900
 

I have done exactly the same thing!!:D (and i solved it too)

Re: [ANNOUNCE] Ansel-A: Digital Darkroom for the N900
 

I haven't tried MyPaint. I mostly use Gimp through Easy Debian which is awesom but not native. You notice that by the UI which sometimes not work good on this small screen.

Ansel-A has a great UI why i was thinking a basic paint/edit function would ad a lot. Still it is a fantastic program what it got already.

Re: [ANNOUNCE] Ansel-A: Digital Darkroom for the N900
 

I have just tested it. This app is awsome and exactly what i was looking for, THANKS A LOT!!!!!!!!!!!

Re: [ANNOUNCE] Ansel-A: Digital Darkroom for the N900
 

sounds like a good idea, feel free to add a feature request here

Re: [ANNOUNCE] Ansel-A: Digital Darkroom for the N900
 

wow.
Developers are really moving along now with this and mypaint just 2 of the incredible applications being developed for the N900.
Taking a peek at what is in Devo and extras bodes well for our phone!
A huge thanks to all our developers.
This looks to be an amazing application

Re: [ANNOUNCE] Ansel-A: Digital Darkroom for the N900
 

Yeah I was running as root, did try run it as a normal user and got the same error message, except /root/ was /home/

The reason I ran it from xterm was to see if I got any error messages, because it behaves the same when I launch it from programs.

Installed it via apt-get.

So I got it to work, have to cd into /opt/anselA and run it from there.
Program shortcut leaves me with the said black screen.

I don't have any photos on the onboard memory, maybe this is causing the issue.

Re: [ANNOUNCE] Ansel-A: Digital Darkroom for the N900
 

Great app! I was just wondering if there was some explanation of the features. In particular the atomium screen. Seems to do some conversions to black and white but the differences between the bulbs and everything is not quite clear to me...

Re: [ANNOUNCE] Ansel-A: Digital Darkroom for the N900
 

I've just tried it, amazing work thank you.

I noticed sometimes when i increase the brightness it decreases it, the same for contrast and saturation.

Other than that, everything is almost perfect.

Re: [ANNOUNCE] Ansel-A: Digital Darkroom for the N900
 

great programm . .i was waiting for it!!!
i guess there is a bug when i tray to savw the photo in a different format?
is it for everyone like that??

Re: [ANNOUNCE] Ansel-A: Digital Darkroom for the N900
 

yeah there's a help section next to the exit button. but I haven't really described what the B&W filter does.

Essentially, that screen is to be viewed as filters placed in front of a lens shooting B&W film. It extracts the tonal data (decomposed RGB) of that color and re-creates the photo using only that tonal content. For instance if you have a photo of a red car and a green tree, click on the red button the tree will fade away into some bland gray, but the car should pop out (the way it would with a red filter) if you do the opposite and click on the green you'll see the tonal variations of the tree and the car will be "under-played". Using the correct filter can make crappy images at night or elsewhere really pop and become usable.

At least that's the intent.


Ha I just got that joke, I've never been to Brussels

Re: [ANNOUNCE] Ansel-A: Digital Darkroom for the N900
 

Opps. Never even tested that. I'll submit that bug tomorrow.

Re: [ANNOUNCE] Ansel-A: Digital Darkroom for the N900
 

If you go to the photo browser/full screen there's a "+" symbol that'll let you load a photo from anywhere on you device.

Secondly one tab over from the photo browser there's a setting tab. you can search the memory card as well, currently saving these settings isn't enabled.

Re: [ANNOUNCE] Ansel-A: Digital Darkroom for the N900
 

The cropping of vertically shot images ("portrait") is broken. You see on the screen the image in its right orientation, but the cropping happens as if the image was rotated in "landscape" view.
Also, when you undo the cropping and revert to the original image, and you try to crop again, you find that the cropping window remembers the previous cropping attempt, and can't be reset to the full image.

Re: [ANNOUNCE] Ansel-A: Digital Darkroom for the N900
 

Yeah I noticed that to I couldn't reproduce it while running on my desktop, but on the device It seems to happen. it's a combination of moving from the "0" state with the slider or with the buttons.

They fire dependently, the buttons update the slider and slider updates the thumbnail of the image. For some reason there are times where I don't get a signal for example
on_QSlider_valueChanged might not get signaled, but the slider has changed.

there's also on_QSlider_Moved which I don't trigger on that may recieve the signal. Something To look into, I'm irritated to know It's not just me.

Re: [ANNOUNCE] Ansel-A: Digital Darkroom for the N900
 

To get this to extras you need to change the bugtracker url to, for example,
and the description in the control file should be something like this:
Short and long descriptions are then generated properly.

Re: [ANNOUNCE] Ansel-A: Digital Darkroom for the N900
 

Thanks for the suggestion.. added a post.

Re: [ANNOUNCE] Ansel-A: Digital Darkroom for the N900
 

This is unfortunately a known bug, Haven't quite figured out the math transposition between the thumbnail and the rotated portrait (90CW 90CCW) images. Thanks for spotting it. ( I was hopping it would slip by for at least the weekend. :)

Undo has some strange issues with crop/rotate where the thumbnail isn't correctly updated before or afterwards. It'll also cause a miscount in your undo steps so that instead of going back to the selected undo point it ends up at your current point with the intermediary steps deleted. The thumbnail seems to be able to directly access the current image and not the thumbnail copy. (which it shouldn't be able to do, nor is that the intent). I'll have to look deeper into python.Imaging/CImg to see it during Crop or Rotate the actual image is manipulated and not a copy/deepcopy of the image.

When my head programmer gets in tomorrow I'll ask him, err... that's me, I'm looking into it. ;)

Re: [ANNOUNCE] Ansel-A: Digital Darkroom for the N900
 

wait I just saved a photo in pdf fotmat .. I'm impressed!!!!:D

Re: [ANNOUNCE] Ansel-A: Digital Darkroom for the N900
 

I know NOW why they call it Extras-TESTING, It's been 3 hours and the community has found, confirmed and reported back more bugs then I'd stumbled across in a week.

This is so beneficial, who am kidding? This is freaking awesome! Thanks so much guys.

Just an open question, since it's headed on 4am here in NJ, at what point do the amount of bug/issues make someone retract a release? (I'm not going to, I think honestly it works sort of well) or do I carry on as I have in -devel and fix-release++? and try to get a new version into -testing as fast as possible and vote down this one?

There is no intent at all of getting this version into Extras, I just needed to get out of -devel and have some fresh eyes see the issues.

Re: [ANNOUNCE] Ansel-A: Digital Darkroom for the N900
 

Well done!

What a great app - easy to use and very polished you should be proud of yourself.

Especially as an initial release.

Is it also possible to run this on a "normal" desktop computer?

Re: [ANNOUNCE] Ansel-A: Digital Darkroom for the N900
 

oops, my bad, I deleted my version and left the commented version, strangely enough the button that links to it in my code is correct.

As far as the description, I have that. but It seems I have it wrong. it populates the incorrect field when you install. I just need to look at someone else's files to get the right text, I've based mine off of the py2deb examples.

Also for the past 8 releases, I've been constantly editing the changeloginformation with each release but I never see it in control file

Re: [ANNOUNCE] Ansel-A: Digital Darkroom for the N900
 

I do on my machine, but the deb won't install due to specific maemo5 depends. but there's nothing funny here, as long as you have >PyQt4.6 and >Python2.5 and Python-Image you should be set and can run from /src.

Re: [ANNOUNCE] Ansel-A: Digital Darkroom for the N900
 

I think the program itself seems stable enough though. You can promote stuff to extras with know bugs as long as they are minor and don't crash the application. For difficult bugs you can disable the feature if there is no quick workaround (mention this in description). That way the N900 gets a great app, and you can then take the time to work out the rest of the bugs, and then post an update.

Re: [ANNOUNCE] Ansel-A: Digital Darkroom for the N900
 

the description in the source of 0.9-1 is all on one line, so that must have gone wrong. you can edit the control file directly, the lines after the first description line need a space in the beginning, like my example.

I usually do
dch -i
to increment version and add changelog entry. And that does not and should not do anything to the control file. Only changelog.

to create the files for extras i do a
dpkg-buildpackage -sn -S

(I don't know how you build your packages, just thought I'd mention how I do mine, in case it helps)