Fast panorama editor very cumbersome to use

[Bicyclops]

I want to suggest a few changes to the Fast Panorama Editor's interface which will vastly improve usability and shorten time spent working in it. Some parts of Hugin today in 2014 look like they've been designed either many years ago and bits and pieces were kept being added on without much concern for the overall appearance, or like it was designed to run on a small-screen phone. Luckily this can all be quickly fixed without much coding, just rearranging existing things.

Currently there are six tabs in the Fast Panorama Editor, and clicking through them is a waste of time. Let's fix this:
Assistant: input image control (projection, focal, sensor scale multiplier)
Preview: a bunch of preview settings.
Layout: it's a whole tab when in fact it is exactly one slider. A whole tab for a slider!
Projection: output image control (projection, FOV, guides).
Move/Drag: synonyms in the tab's name, y/p/r, again guides, center/fit/straighten.
Crop: manual, auto, again guides.

AT THE VERY LEAST let us move the images from the same tab we can change projection and crop from!

To properly fix this, delete the tabs, they're a bad idea, they waste screen space like crazy, and merge things.

Unified Fast Panorama Editor (UFPE).
Consists of three main elements: the image control panels (two of them, one for input, one for output), the preview, and the preview controls.

The first element, input/output image controls. Two panels (frames? not sure of the nomenclature in QT) at the top or on the left of the UFPE (depends on your screen aspect ratio, let them float so the user can choose), keep things small, don't waste space.
First panel is your source image panel:
  [+] to load images (no need for a 100 pixel long button!), [-] to remove currently selected image (click on it on the preview to select it).
  Source image projection selector combobox.
  Source image focal inputbox.
  Source image sensor size multiplier inputbox.
Second panel is your output image panel:
  Projection selector combobox.
  Projection parameters if any are needed (sliders for e.g. Panini)
  [Straighten] button.
  Yaw/pitch/roll numerical inputboxes of currently selected image or whole pano if none selected.
  Crop sub-panel
    [Fit inside] auto-crop button (i.e. no black edges).
    [Fit outside] auto-crop button (i.e. with black edges).
    Crop numerical inputboxes.

Second element, the main panorama preview. Click on an image to select it. Click+drag to... drag it. Right-click for a context menu if needed. ZOOM IN/OUT USING THE MOUSE; using the sliders as is currently needed is highly inefficient :] Add [+][-] buttons

Third element, at the bottom of the window, is the preview control:
Exposure, photometrics, show CPs, identify, blabla, guides, grid, scale.

Everything on one screen, everything fits even on 1024x768, panels can be detached and floated. Less than a day's work for someone familiar with that window, because there is not much code to be written, just a bunch of things to be moved and a whole bunch of code to delete.

[Bruno Postle (brunopostle)]

Hi, thanks for your comments, Hugin is still a work in progress and not perfect.

What would be really useful would be mockup images of how you see a better layout. This doesn't need to be a lot of work, either rough sketches or rearranged screenshots might be enough to start a productive discussion.

[tmodes (tmodes)]

Set to incomplete because there is no feedback from the initial reporter for a long time.
Set the status to open if you have more information.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for Hugin because there has been no activity for 60 days.]