Mockups for Photo Management Application

*Please click the Download link to view my complete Mockups*

In my photo management application proposal mockups I focused on usability and a more organized configuration setup. The main feature is it's ability to Browse by just about anyway possible, as well as using the right sidebar that will make an extendable centralized location to perform any editing, effects, changing the images properties, geolocation, as well as tags among other possibilities.

Because some questions were raised about how this differs from digikam, here are some differences between what I propose and how Digikam works.

1. My idea is for a Photo Manager + Editor in one application. Whereas Digikam breaks it up into Digikam + Showfoto, which can be a hassle and messy
2. I propose getting rid of the tabs on the sides, which I see as a major usability issue. To accomplish these same functions I created a button to show/hide the panel as well as a way to switch between different panels easily by clicking the dropdown box next to the button. Some possible panels could be Information(properties, tags, and metadata), Modify(tools, effects, and colors), People(face recognition and tagging), Date(timeline and calendar), and Location(geolocation tools). With the ability to add or remove any or all panel options from the dropdown button.
3. Digikam has a ton of tools all crammed into different menus and buttons and panels. My mockups show a uniform and easily accessible way to handle tasks, with the focus on displaying the most common jobs while still being able to perform more advanced functions.
4. Digikam has an internal database that can be slow and cumbersome at times. My idea is to harness KDE4's technologies to make things faster. eg; use Dolphin's native thumbnails since they seem to display 50x faster than Digikam's.
5. My proposal also includes using Nepomuk to show and change metadata for images
6. Currently Digikam works separately from Kipi-plugins, even though they're developed together. This can be a strength, but my proposal would make the plugins a dependency of my photo management application and integrate all of the great work that's been done on the Kipi-plugins to easily be able to offer tools and effects right from within the program without having to write the code from scratch.
7. My interface focuses on a clean and clutter free layout, with the main focus on browsing through your images, and all tasks and jobs pushed into the sidepanel, which has the ability to be hidden when not needed.
8. My mockups show all filters and search bars at the top. This is more consistent with the rest of KDE4 and is just better usability wise. Search results should be displayed below the search box, making it less distance between clicking on the search bar and then clicking on the search results.
9. The look of Digikam is based on a theming platform. While this can be nice, in order to simplify coding and better integrate with KDE4, my idea is to use the color scheme and appearance settings of the users configuration to automatically blend with the other applications and desktop.
10. Not yet shown in my mockups, I intend to make it possible to browse through your albums not just with the tree view hierarchy but also show a "flat view" option that would show all of your photo albums on one level regardless of the folder's disk location
11. What first got me to start working on these mockups was how Digikam handled tagging. My proposal would use an easy check/uncheck function to add or remove tags from an image or group of images. This is based primarily from Picasa.
12. In my newest mockups I have icons at the bottom of the browse sidepanel that allows you to switch between browsing by folder, person, date, tag, or location.
13. I propose to show the comment in a semi-transparent overlapping bar at the bottom of the image. To change the comment, just click on the bar and start typing. The button on the left will show or hide the comment bar and the button on the right will remove the comment. Refer to Picasa for an example of use.

v8.3 - 2010-08-20
-New Dates/Tags/People Browse panel
-Thumbnail changes
-Added (# of Images) after the Album name

v8 - 2010-08-10
-Completely redid several mockups for pixel perfect lines and colors
-New icons to switch between browsing by folder, person, date, tag, or location
-New comment bar at bottom of image