There are two separate features being discussed here: the Undo/Redo stack and a journaling non-destructive photo editor.
I'm unaware of any application that maintains its Undo/Redo stack between sessions. Also, apps (including Shotwell) have a finite limit to the undo stack's size (in Shotwell, it's 20 operations). Once that limit is reached, old operations are dropped to make way for the new ones. What you're referring to is a journaling non-destructive editor, where each operation on a photo is stored as a list and applied against the original in turn. We've discussed this feature in the past. I definitely see its value, but it's not a simple feature and has many ramifications throughout the app, especially since its real value is in the other features you've mentioned: scripting, rewinding, filtering, and so forth. I could've sworn we had a ticket for this somewhere, but I can't find it. I've ticketed it here: http://redmine.yorba.org/issues/4184 I don't think this is something we're going to get to in the near future, but it's worth consideration going forward. -- Jim On Sat, Sep 24, 2011 at 7:31 AM, Conrad Dean <[email protected]>wrote: > > > > I'm not aware of any other GNOME application that persists the undo > > hierarchy across sessions, so I don't think that Shotwell needs to > either. > > The undo mechanism is not intended to allow you to go back and revert > > recent changes to individual photos; it simply allows you to, well, undo > the > > last step that you did globally (just like in other GNOME apps). We > could > > conceivably modify Shotwell someday to keep track of the order of changes > > you've made to each photo and to revert recent changes. But if we do > > implement that, the user interface will probably not be through > Edit->Undo. > > > > > I apologize if this is a little off topic... but Adobe Lightroom keeps a > list of operations performed on a single photo. This lets you play around > with your photos and get a particular "look" that you like, and then you > can > analyze how you got there. > > While it's neat to play around with the operations themselves, going back > into the photo's history, modifying the operations, etc -- the real > strength > of this feature is you can save the operations as a single batch operation > that can be applied to multiple photos in the future, which is useful if > you > have a large set of photos from a single shoot that all need the same exact > color and exposure adjustments made at once. > > It's also a super intuitive interface for creating your own filters. > > Probably a superfluous feature, but it's one of those things that makes a > user feel in control of their environment and has a huge 'wow-factor'. > _______________________________________________ > Shotwell mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.yorba.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/shotwell > _______________________________________________ Shotwell mailing list [email protected] http://lists.yorba.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/shotwell
