The left sidebar is the main difference in the Showfoto user interface compared to the digiKam Image Editor. digiKam used the left sidebar to manage many of its advanced Digital Asset Management capabilities, and these capabilities are not supported in Showfoto. ShowFoto does add the Folders and Stack tabs to the left sidebar giving the user the essential ability to explore, reference, and quickly access image files stored on the computer. All settings adjusted in the left sidebar are saved and restored between Showfoto sessions.
The Folders tab provides a complete tool for navigating your system directory hierarchy to find files, similar to the capabilities provided by a desktop file manager.
The Showfoto Stand-Alone Editor Folders Tab from Left Sidebar¶
The Foders tab view is divided into three sections from top to bottom:
The Navigation settings view providing:
A toolbar on the top to navigate the directory hierarchy, return to your personal folder, adjust the size of the thumbnails, a button to access advanced settings, and a button to manage the current folder contents with the Stack and Slideshow tools.
An editable combo-box showing the current directory path and the history of previous places visited from this tab.
A combo-box where you can apply a type-mime filter to restrict the thumbnails list to the desired file formats.
The Thumbnails list that displays thumbnail images, file names, and other file properties for all the files in the current selected folder that is set in the directory combo-box. You can adjust what is displayed in this list from the setting button in the toolbar, or from the list's context menu. Those same controls also allow you to assign content to the Places or to the Stack. Double clicking on an item from the list loads the contents into the canvas.
The preferred Bookmarks and Usual Places. This view is optional and can be disabled in the settings available from thumbnails list context menu or in tools-bar on the top. Bookmarks references your preferred places (folders) that you can save when navigating in the folder hierarchies. Bookmark properties includes a Path, an Icon, and a Title. These properties can be modified later as you wish. The Usual Places is a read-only group to give a quick access to the standard folders from your personal directory.
The Stack tab is a helper view to allow quick access to your preferred pictures or folders. Pictures in the stack can be hosted in different folders if necessary. This gives you quick access to your best images for easy sharing.
The Showfoto Stand-Alone Editor Stack Tab from Left Sidebar¶
The Stack tab view is divided into two sections from top to bottom:
The Thumbnails list showing the current stack contents. You can access the primary features of this view from the context menu that pops up when you right click on this list. The stack contents can be tuned with this context menu, or from the Folders tab. When you are satisfied with the list of items in the stack, you can register the entire container as a Favorite.
The Favorites tree-view is a list of the preferred stacks classified using a hierarchy (similar to Tags in digiKam). This hierarchy can be nested under My Favorites to host your stacks (Favorite item). You can edit stack properties which includes Name, Type, Description, Creation Date, Icon, and the list of Stacked items. Double clicking on an item from the hierarchy inserts the stack contents into the top of the thumbnails list, and loads the last opened file from the stack into the canvas. If there is no last opened file, then first item from the list is loaded into the canvas.
