[Under Consideration] Make N900 a better photo viewer - maemo.org

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	benny1967	2010-03-06 , 15:40
	Posts: 3,790 \| Thanked: 5,718 times \| Joined on Mar 2006 @ Vienna, Austria	#1

After the corresponding enhancement request didn't lead anywhere, here's an attempt for a brainstorm:

The N900 comes with a generic image viewer that does a decent job for many use cases. Some scenarios are not well covered, though:

Because of the N900s high resolution, photos smaller than 800x480 (usually received by mail, bluetooth or MMS) don't use the full physical display size, which makes them less pleasant to view than would be possible. Also, when attached to a TV via TV-out cable, the display doesn't adapt to the aspect ratio/size of the TV set (which is technically possible; the Media Player plays 4:3-videos full screen on a 4:3 TV set).

So we have two use cases that need improvement:

1) George uses the N900 to show photos of his children to his parents. Some of the photos he took himself with the N900, others were taken by his wife and got re-sized to 352×288 (CIF-format) before they ended up on the N900. George's parents have a hard time viewing these small 352x288-pictures on the 3.5" screen. They think there's something wrong with the N900 because it shows some pictures full-size, while others appear to be scaled down.

2) As his parents get tired of the tiny photos, George uses TV-out and connects the N900 to the TV in the kitchen. Again, none of the photos he shows uses the full display size. There's black borders on the top and on the bottom because the N900's aspect ratio is different from the 4:3 aspect ratio on the kitchen TV. Annoyingly, the black borders are visible even if the image shown is 4:3.

Both of these problems make for an inconsistent and sometimes very disappointing user experience.

I'll attach some pics so it's more clear what this is about at what it could lead to.
The enhancement request I filed before at least gave me one good feedback: Implementing all of this in the default image viewer application might not be a good idea: Scaling small company logos, icons etc. isn't what we want. This is why I restricted this proposal to photo viewing (not image viewing in general).

Attached Images

Last edited by benny1967; 2010-09-25 at 11:43. Reason: Status

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	jaeezzy	2010-03-06 , 15:54
	Posts: 664 \| Thanked: 160 times \| Joined on Jul 2008 @ Australia	#2

if this can be achieved without affecting image quality (without making it look stretched), it definitely should be implemented otherwise it will look ungly instead or I guess an option to view either fullscreen or actual size should be there.

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	benny1967	2010-03-09 , 18:35
	Posts: 3,790 \| Thanked: 5,718 times \| Joined on Mar 2006 @ Vienna, Austria	#3

Found that is (almost?) available for Maemo 5 and would be a good starting point for an image viewer that does just what I want (needs the TV-out trick, though). Added solution#3 about "Porting EOG".

Last edited by benny1967; 2010-03-09 at 18:38.

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	JohnLF	2010-03-09 , 18:43
	Posts: 551 \| Thanked: 507 times \| Joined on Feb 2010 @ North West England	#4

If the system-wide controls for zoom, pan etc were implemented, this would not be an issue.

Double-tap would alternate between actual size and making the image fill the screen, circling or volume keys to zoom in and out, dragging the image to scroll.

This could perhaps be implemented now by forcing the micro-b browser to show each image. Some form of scripting to show the image and navigate to prev/next image could be implemented perhaps?

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	benny1967	2010-03-09 , 19:01
	Posts: 3,790 \| Thanked: 5,718 times \| Joined on Mar 2006 @ Vienna, Austria	#5

Originally Posted by JohnLF

If the system-wide controls for zoom, pan etc were implemented, this would not be an issue.

Double-tap would alternate between actual size and making the image fill the screen, circling or volume keys to zoom in and out, dragging the image to scroll.

You can easily zoom in the image viewer now. (I even find zooming with the hardware keys easier than the tapping stuff.)

There's 2 problems with zooming:

One is that it doesn't provide the 'perfect' zoom factor for the image displayed. There's fixed zoom factors, and it will most likely happen that zoom factor a isn't enough, but zoom factor b is too much and cuts off some of the image content.
Your proposal ("Double-tap would alternate between actual size and making the image fill the screen") would solve this one perfectly, yes.

The other one is that if you look at a number of images of different size, you'd need to re-adjust the zoom factor with each new image. That's not what you want. (Think of the situation when you start a slide show on the TV, the N900 is next to your TV and you're on the couch.) - The point is that photos should automatically adjust. They do when they're too large (the N900 scales them down), so why not scale them up when they're too small?