Photo version 0.9 released!!

Published: 18th of January, 2013

It's finally here: Photo version 0.9. A lot (and I mean a lot!) has changed since the last release. Pretty much the complete code has been re-written and re-structured. Many bugs have been fixed/avoided, and also many new features introduced.

You can find some screenshots on the "Features" page.

The re-structuring of the code led to the need of re-translating most of the strings in Photo. Kudos to all the translators, you do/did a great job!!

The source code of Photo now is much better structured, and split up over more files. That makes it a lot easier to maintain it, and it's now also (hopefully) less error prone. And on top of it, it is now a little easier to fix bugs, since you only have to deal with a small(er) number of lines at a time.

To give a complete overview over what has changed would be far too much to write it here. So I just want to point out some of the main things:

More uniform interface:

Up until v0.8.2, Photo used a random mix of custom and system dialogs. Even still now, in version 0.9, not everything is included in the main interface (like the "Open File" window), but most windows/dialogs are. And the overall look is much more uniform, it all just feels like it belongs to each other.

Settings:

If you thought, Photo had many settings available in the previous release, have a look at v0.9. Though I haven't counted them, I'm certain the number of settings has at least doubled. But I hope that didn't mess up the settings window too much, and still keeps it simple and easy to use (I tried hard to accomplish that).

Shortcuts:

Shortcuts have always been one of Photo's strengths, especially since v0.7 as mouse shortcuts were introduced. But the abundance of possible internal functions that can be called via shortcut has become pretty big. They were all crammed into a tiny list in the settings; Hard to see, and hard to keep an overview. That has now completely changed. All Shortcuts are now represented by tiles, and are grouped into 4 categories (for internal functions) plus 1 for external commands. Keeping an overview and tweaking shortcuts has never been easier.

Background:

Up until now Photo knew two types of background: Real Transparent (using Composite) and Fake Transparent (using Screenshot). This has now been extended to four possibilities: Composite (i.e. Real Transparent), Screenshot (i.e. Fake Transparent), Background Image, and Background Colour. On top of it, you can also adjust the overlay colour or resp. the colour of the half transparent background. However you like it best.

Right-Click Menu:

A click onto the main image opens now a right-click menu. Per default it has three entries: Open in Dolphin, Edit with Gimp, and Open in Gwenview. But, of course, these can be arbitrarily adjusted and sorted. Have a look at "Other Settings" in the settings window...

Known Image Formats:

Photo always supported all image formats supported by Qt. However, this list can vary depending on your Qt installation. Therefore, you can now adjust the filter list used by Photo, add a (new?) format and remove a problematic format. Just be careful! If you make a mistake there, Photo might not recognise any image formats anymore (Solution in that case: Restore Default Settings).

Slideshow Feature:

As was requested by some: Photo can now also show pictures in a slideshow. You can set the time, if and how fast the images fade into each other, and even set a music file that is played in the background.

That is just a glimpse of all the changes. What are you waiting for, download it and see for yourself... I'm sure, you wont be disappointed :-)

Note: The latest stable version can always be downloaded from the downloads page.

You can also grab the latest snapshot from GitHub. The code on GitHub will be updated for testing whenever a new feature has been added/changed/fixed, i.e. a "running beta" if you like. Just be aware of that, some features there might not (yet) be working properly!