Feature request: zoom out

[rob]

It would be nice if you could zoom out when looking at a photo. You can zoom in just fine, and zoom out until you hit the original "fit to page" size, but then the zoom out control is disabled. Every other image viewer allows zoom out (GIMP, EOG, Geeqie, etc.), and it seems a bit silly to disable it for no good reason.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Lucas Beeler (lucas-yorba)]

Shotwell isn't an image viewer, it's a photo manager with an optional direct-editing mode targeted at touching up single photos quickly. If we were to allow zoom-out in Shotwell, the image would become progressively smaller, no longer filling the whole of the photo viewing canvas. What you'd end up with would be a small photo with a huge amount of blank space around it. What would be the use case for this? Just my two cents.

Lucas

[rob (rob-3732872)]

Yes, the whole point of zoom-out is for the image to get smaller and no longer fill the whole canvas. Under some circumstances, that is a good thing.

What is the use case? Sometimes you want to look at the photo without being distracted by various user interface widgets right next to it. Zooming out helps you to do this. Strange as it sounds, even though the photo is a little smaller, if it's got a little "breathing room" with no visual distractions near it, you can sometimes see it better. Fullscreen mode can do this sometimes, but it's not always the best approach.

Shotwell may not be a full-fledged image viewer, but part of a photo manager is deciding which photos to keep, and which to delete. The way you do that is to view the photos. If the viewer is really bad (hypothetical example: a horrible scaling algorithm, and displayed colors that are way off), then the user is making decisions with poor information, and will make poor decisions on what to keep or delete. If the viewer is average, then the user has better information, and will make better decisions. If the viewer is great, then the user has even better information, and their decisions will be that much better.

Yes, we are talking about an effect that is fairly small. A detail. But details add up, and lots of good details can really make a difference.

[Lucas Beeler (lucas-yorba)]

Hi Rob,

I don't think we're interested in implementing this functionality at this time. That said, if you'd like, feel free to open a ticket for it upstream at http://redmine.yorba.org. If you were to submit a patch attached to the ticket, we might consider it!

Thanks,
Lucas

[Jim Nelson (yorba-jim)]

rob, how much smaller than the viewport were you thinking the image could be reduced? With eog, it will reduce to 1% of normal size, which for a moderately-sized image is wa-aay too small to be useful. How far down do you think you would want to reduce an image?