- GraphicConverter 11 Collage Editor - Review + Improvements + Missing Features.png (365.63 KiB) Viewed 339 times
What is really great about it
1) Drag and drop directly onto placeholders on canvas from Finder or GC's browser or Collage Editor's file list 2) A lot of options for canvas size and background, layout grid and effects 3) Drag horizontal and/or vertical dividers to adapt the grid on the fly, very cool if you want to distribute space and attention differentiated 4) No loss of image assignment to spot position when changing layouts, as long as the number stays the same or grows. This really supports you well in "trying out different options" without needing to start all over each time.What could be improved
Ad 4) If you reduce the amount of images in the collage, the assignments of images to collage spot index numbers is lost for those falling out of the grid.- Would be cool to preserve it in memory.
- So that if your layout control tweaking increases the effective amount of image positions again, the newly gained positions are again filled up.
- Of course if in the course of all this you re-arrange it's your own fault and no undo can be expected.
- But merely option tweaking ideally is as lossless and effortless as possible.
- That way you could also very quickly dare do try out design iterations "Is a 2x2 enough, or shall it be a 3x3, let's just try fearlessly".
5) Button layout & labels could be clearer• No recommended order?
• At first glance unclear what's the difference between CLOSE & DONE
What I miss
10) Drag and drop multiple files onto collage which get auto assigned to the grid's position-index-numbers by their file attributes (name, filepath, creation, modification, aspect ratio) asc/desca) Technically each layout in memory provides some kind of internal image position order (in a grid most likely our normal Latin reading order, a zig zag from left to right, and then to next row)
b) Upon this index the files would get ordered by their chosen attribute
11) Zoom factor percentage info on bottom left like in normal GC windows — Because otherwise you have a hard time estimating this. 12) Zoom factor control, maybe - "Scale to fit" the work area is a very good default! But maybe you want to zoom in a bit to see something in detail, and then out again, or back to "Scale to fit" 13) Canvas preset options "Auto Size @72 DPI", "Auto Size @144 DPI", "Auto Size @custom DPI"a) Why? In the use case of Make an image grid collage of still frames from a movie I was a bit surprised.
- You set a fixed canvas size
- You set a grid and space (gutter) within that grid and an outer margin
- But wait: The images are not completely visible, they are cropped. Was surprised at first.
- Ofc logical when you think if through. But it did not fulfill my user goal.
b) In that proposed mode your goal is:
- I want all my images to be fully visible and the canvas gets created accordingly.
- If "Canvas Size" is set to that "Auto" mode, then "Layout" only offers "Grid"
- "Grid" gets a new settings section "Placeholders Containers"
-- Useful for this scenario and in general
-- Aspect ratio: [ First dropped image ▾]
--- Other choices: "Last dropped image", 16x9, 16x10, 4x3, … all other usual ratios …, Square, Custom…
-- Scaling: [ Scale to fill ▾ ] → visually appears as a regular grid
--- "Scale to fit" → height/width may vary amongst images, feel visually a bit more chaotic (though placeholder grid is regular, but the content within differs)
--- Full height → width may vary amongst images
--- Full width → height may vary amongst images
-- "Reference point" for the scaling operations: Top left, top center, top right, left, center, right, bottom left, bottom center, bottom right.
Followup:
- Please tell me if you want to consider any of those proposals for implementation
- And I would create the proper single topic follow-up tickets.