Shotwell - First date was a ruin, second date was nice

I've written a review of Shotwell, a photo manager for Gnome desktops, featuring basic image editing, online album integration, ratings, favorites, tags, and more. Enjoy.

http://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/shotwell.html


Cheers,
Mrk

 

I don't know if you know iPhoto, but from your Mac-esque screenshots you should.
Shotwell's GUI is a blatant copy of iPhoto and I hate iPhoto with passion. Would it be far fetched to assume its developers are copying more than just the GUI? From my own testing and your review it looks like that's the case.

It starts with the stupid import process and the all automatic folder organisation. I don't know any pro photographer who likes to give up all control and flexibility for dubious "automation". Coming from UNIX this is of course also violates the do one thing and do it well rule. File management is a task for the file manager or even more specialized software like rsync. Another Trash? For the average user surely confusing.
Then the stupid browserlike interface. It's fine for a virtual photoalbum but not a photo manager. You can't even have two photos open in the edit mode side by side.
I won't talk about about features , it's a young project and it would be unfair comparing it to mature or even commercial products. But come on, where's the search box?*

Adobe LR + PS is the best I know and nothing comes remotely close to that workflow but I haven't done much photography lately. For quick edits and simple managements I prefer filemanager + GIMP any day.

*Oh, here it is: http://trac.yorba.org/ticket/80
Took them only 2 years but that's OK for a small project. Adding a half finished project into the default app selection of the largest Linux distro is not.