A critique of the ptgui interface

[Bruno Postle]

Lots more opinions.  Basically this is what I think is wrong with ptgui,
I didn't think I would find so much.  I might put together a mockup to
show what I'm talking about.

1 Tabbed structure

I generally like the tabbed structure, it's particularly nice not having
lots of pop-up windows.

1.1 Source images

  This is the initial image loader tab with the loaded images presented
  in a table view, each image has it's own row.  Generally OK.

  The sort button is superfluous, I guess you need it in windows after
  drag-n-dropping a bunch of photos and getting them in
  8,2,3,4,5,6,7,1,9 order.

  What is out-of-place is the correct button, which launches the
  photoshop correct-plugin (except I don't have the plugin installed, so
  this must come from pano12.dll) - I feel like this is 'lens-settings',
  not very well integrated, perhaps this stuff deserves its own tab.

1.2 Lens settings

  This is where the default lens values are entered.  My main problem
  with this is that it's a 'form' version of the 'table' on the 'Image
  parameters' tab - Much of the interface is duplicated, perhaps it
  could be accessed there if the first image in that table is 'default'.

  Or perhaps there should be a table view here somewhat like the 'Image
  parameters' tab.

1.3 Panorama settings

  This is where the output panorama is defined.  My problem is that
  there are 'project specific' settings here (like feather, gamma,
  interpolation, color correction & file format) combined with 'output
  image' parameters.  

  I think that it is more useful to think of the output image in the
  same way as the input images since the object type is very similar
  (width, height, type etc..) and there are already two separate output
  images in the system (preview and 'panorama').
  
  [The cool thing about pteditor is the way that a panorama can be
  extracted, edited and then reused as input, this is something to think
  about for the _future_.]

1.4 Crop

  This really doesn't belong here.  This should be the second tab after
  'Source images' and before 'lens settings'.  In fact it tripped me up
  when I cropped an image without realising that I should go back and
  give it a different field-of-view - If it was before 'lens settings'
  then it would be obvious.

1.5 Image parameters

  Field-of-view, a, b, c, d & e don't really belong here.  I think this
  could be split in half, with the lens specific details on the 'lens
  settings' tab before the 'panorama settings' and the orientation
  (roll, pitch & yaw) settings here after the 'panorama settings'.

1.6 Control points

  Does anyone use anything other than auto-add?

  [I'm going to leave aside the possibility of having a control point
  that spans three or more images, I don't know what the interface for
  that might look like] 
  
  I think that there should be a zoom window for each main window, ie.
  two zoom windows.

1.7 Optimizer

  I think this tab should go.  Optimizing is something that can be done
  at different stages in the process ('lens settings', 'image
  parameters' and 'control points').  Putting it here is very
  artificial since you often have to jump back, tweak something then
  jump forward to optimize again.
  
  The ability to indicate which parameter to optimize should devolve to
  the 'lens settings' and 'image parameters' tabs and there should be a
  big 'optimize' button on a button bar above the tabs.

1.8 Preview

  This is an empty tab and should go, the preview is just another output
  image.  There should be a 'preview' button on a button bar that can be
  hit at any time.

1.9 Create Panorama

  This should go too, and be replaced by a 'stitch' button and a
  separate 'project' tab that can be used to set gamma, interpolator,
  file-formats etc..

1.10 Utilities

  I feel that the 'utilities' don't really belong in a gui.  featuritis.

-- 
Bruno