gThumb is an image viewer and browser for the GNOME desktop that allows users to manage, tag, sort, view and edit their photo collection from the one application. It can import photos directly from digital cameras and export them to web albums and more.

In August this year, gThumb tour-de-force Paolo Bacchilega announced on the gThumb Mailing list that the application was about to receive some due love and attention, i.e. a total code rewrite.

The reasons behind it? To make gThumb a more capable and extensible application, allow it to handle browsing tasks more efficiently and to take advantage of new foundational libraries being on Linux desktops, like Clutter.

This post presents a quick tour of the new and improved gThumb 2.11.0. The next version of gThumb – the 2.11.xx series – brings some exciting new features and user-interface improvements. (Including ditching its ugly built-in icons!)

The first thing I noticed when trying gThumb 2.11.0 was the speed. It might be my simple library, but compared to the old version, the rewrite starts up fast – nigh-on instantly! gThumb’s always benefited from sharing a thumbnail database with Nautilus to speed up its initial loading times.

More than anything those updates should help position gThumb as a real competitor to F-Spot, which is Ubuntu’s default image viewer.

The browsing-view mode has changed a little from the current release. The main visible change being the toolbar, which is made “file browsing” friendly with navigation buttons, rather than using the tree-view to navigate back and forth.

Here’s the old version, for comparison:

The “catalog” tool is still available in 2.11.0, but you may be forgiven for thinking it wasn’t due to its lack of its inclusion in the new toolbar. The tree view also continues to work as it does in the current version, so don’t fret about changes there.

Quirks

The pencil icon on the toolbar in browser mode lets you edit file metadata, e.g., adding comments, location, date and tags, etc. The cog icon lets you rotate, resize or set the image as your desktop wallpaper.

While those icons are useful, they might might confuse users. As you will read below, the same icons are used in the new Viewer mode, where they each do different things…

The New gThumb Viewer

gThumb’s viewer is improved, albeit subtly. It’s reduced the number of icon buttons shown on the toolbar, losing ‘close’ and ‘save’. The marginally cleaner look help ensure focus is on the image, and not trying to decipher a bunch of buttons around it.

Compare the new viewer, above, with the current/old one below: –

There are fewer main menu entries along the top in the new version, with file properties and editing tools now appearing as side-panes rather than menu items as before.

The editing panel is toggled via the ‘pencil’ icon in the far right. As you can see from the picture above, it comes with most of the editing tools found in the current version – and includes the most popular editing options such as red-eye removal, rotation and auto-enhancement.

Each editing tool, when selected and if applicable, will either show the configuration options available in the same pane.

For example, in the screenshot below the crop tool selected. The cropping options appear in the same right-hand pane – no extra windows or pop-ups:

Properties: The properties panel can also be toggled in a similar fashion to the editing pane; simply press the ‘cog’ icons to see the currently viewed photograph’s vital stats such as size, format, metadata, tags, etc.

No Export: This development version doesn’t support exporting to web-albums or photo services. This is likely only a temporary omission.

Spot the pixel: The default “viewer mode” is set to view at “actual size”, which is an incredible oversight for a photo viewer. Those 8 megapixel holiday snaps at “actual size” are too zoomed in on regular-sized monitors. Thankfully, you can change this in the preferences menu.

How to try gThumb’s rewrite

Enough of breezy stuff. You probably want to try this out yourself. First, make sure you’ve read what the development version can and cannot do before you rush to replacing your current stable version with it.

To get it installed you’ll need to install the following list of dependencies, adding git-core to the list if you don’t already have it installed: –

sudo apt-get install git-core autoconf libgnome2-dev libgtk2.0-dev libgnomeui-dev libexiv2-dev libglade2-dev gnome-common libgphoto2-2-dev libgnomedesktop2.20-cil gnome-devel libunique-dev

Once that is done, we’ll get the source using: – 

git clone git://git.gnome.org/gthumb 

Navigate into the source folder using: – 

cd gthumb

Followed by: –

git checkout -b ext origin/ext

and then: –

./autogen.sh --prefix=/usr CFLAGS="-ggdb" 

NB: I received errors regarding “missing” dependencies that were already installed using the above command. Using just  ./autogen.sh without arguments did the trick. 

Finally, finish up by installing it:

make && sudo make install

(or make && sudo checkinstall, if that is your preference)

Assuming it all completes perfectly (if it doesn’t, let me know in the comments, you’ll be able to launch gThumb 2.11.0 from Ubuntu’s Applications > Graphics menu.

Thanks to John Stowers