DarkRoom/docs/manual/README.md

# DarkRoom, shown

A tour of what the application does, one picture per thing. Every image on
this page was captured from the desktop build driving itself — nothing is a
mock-up, and nothing has been retouched outside DarkRoom. Where a feature is
better seen moving, it moves.

The requirements behind each feature are in [requirements.md](../dev/requirements.md);
the reasoning is in the design documents linked from each section. This page
is only about what you see.

The photographs are the author's. None show a person.

## Opening a library

DarkRoom opens on a library: a folder on this machine, a folder a sync
client keeps, or a Nextcloud account. A folder needs no password and uploads
nothing. `Choose folder…` opens your desktop's own folder dialogue, which can
make a new folder too; the folder used last stays on the screen with
`Open folder` beside it. On a Nextcloud account the library folder is chosen
in a browser of the server, whose `New folder` makes one there.

![The launch screen: a server field, a folder field, and which formats to scan for](media/launch.png)

Once a folder is named, it is the library — you are not asked for it again,
and `Open library` opens it whole. `Subfolder…` narrows the scan to part of
it. The formats ticked are what the scan looks for; RAW is on and JPEG off
by default, because a RAW editor's sensible default is the file the camera
wrote first.

![A folder chosen: the library, whether to scan a subfolder, and the formats](media/launch-folder.png)

## The library

![The grid: collections on the left, the timeline beside it, the roll of thumbnails, and the filter bar above](media/library.png)

Photographs are ordered by capture time, with a month heading where each
begins. The strip on the left is the timeline — drag it to jump to a year.
The bar above the grid filters by rating, flag, colour label and where the
file is (on this device, or only on the server).

### Rating and flagging

Hover a cell and the stars appear; click one. The filter chips above the grid
count what each rating holds, and clicking `3+` shows only those. From the
keyboard, `0` to `5` set the stars on the photograph under the pointer or on
the selection; `P` picks, `X` rejects and `U` takes the flag off, and `Flag`
on the selection bar does the same with the pointer. In
develop the same keys judge the open photograph and stay on it, and the top
bar carries its stars and `Pick` and `Reject`; the roll marks each frame's
flag and stars.

![Rating two photographs, then filtering the grid to three stars and more](media/library-rating.gif)

Colour labels work as Lightroom's do: `6` red, `7` yellow, `8` green, `9`
blue, on the photograph under the pointer or on the selection, and the same
key again takes the label off. `Label` on the selection bar offers all five,
purple included, and `None`. Each label is drawn with its initial on it, so
it reads without telling the colours apart, and the filter bar has a chip for
each. In develop, the top bar names the open photograph's label and sets it,
and the same keys work there.

![Labelling four frames with 6, 7, 8 and 9, taking one off with the same key, and filtering the grid to green](media/library-labels.gif)

### Getting about

Drag the timeline to scrub through years; Ctrl and the wheel resize the
thumbnails. On a desktop a scrollbar beside the grid says how far through the
library the view is — drag its thumb, or click the track to move a page — and
the sidebar, the develop column and Settings have one too whenever they run
past the window. On a tablet they scroll by flick alone.

`Help` in the header, or `F1`, opens the controls and shortcuts: every key and
gesture, screen by screen, with `See it` beside those this page shows, and
`Manual` to open this page. In develop it is the `?` beside `Settings`.

![Scrubbing the timeline](media/library-timeline.gif)

![Resizing the thumbnails with Ctrl and the wheel](media/library-thumbsize.gif)

### Selecting several

`Select` in the header — or Ctrl-click — starts a selection. Shift-click picks
a range. The bar at the foot of the grid is everything a selection can be done
to: collections, keywords, presets, export, and merging to a panorama.

![Twelve photographs selected, with the selection bar along the foot of the grid](media/library-selection.png)

`Keywords` on that bar opens a sheet; type a word and press return, and it
is on every photograph selected. The list below the field is every keyword
the library has, ticked where the selection carries it.

![Keywording twelve frames](media/library-keywords.gif)

### Collections

`+` at the head of the sidebar makes one. Drag a photograph — or the whole
selection — onto its row to file it there; click the row to see it. A
photograph can be in several, and the badge on its cell counts them.

![Filing photographs in a collection by dragging them onto it](media/library-collections.gif)

Collections nest. Drag one onto another to put it inside; `+` with a
collection selected — or `New collection inside` from its menu — makes a
child. A parent shows everything its children hold, and its count says so.
Right-click a row (hold it, on a tablet) for the menu: rename, nest,
move back to the top level, keep it offline, delete.

![Making Trips, nesting Alps and New York inside it, and opening the parent](media/library-nesting.gif)

![Trips showing both of its children's photographs](media/library-nesting.png)

![The menu on a collection](media/library-collection-menu.png)

### Bursts

Frames taken a moment apart that look alike fold into one cell, with a badge
counting them. Click the badge — tap it, on a tablet — to open the burst in
the grid, and again to fold it back. A folded burst shows its earliest frame;
to have it show another, open it and click the ring on the frame you want.

With faces indexed, narrowing the grid to a person puts `Eyes open` beside
their name on the filter bar, which leaves out the frames where they blinked.

### Duplicate originals

A library put together by hand often holds the same RAW more than once — a
dated folder, a `bck` folder beside it, a renamed copy another program
exported. When the catalog finds files with the same camera, capture time
and size in more than one place, `Duplicate originals` appears under the
trash in the sidebar with how many there are; Settings offers the same page
beside the other whole-library passes.

The page lists each group with its picture and its paths. One copy is
marked `Stays`: the one outside a folder named like a backup (`bck`,
`backup`, `copy`, `old`…), then the one still named the way the camera named
it (`_MG_4623`, `IMG_0001`, `DSC_0042`), then the one catalogued first. Tap
another path to keep that copy instead, and untick `Include` to leave a
group alone.

Nothing moves until `Check` has read the first and last megabyte of every
copy and each copy's sidecar. A group whose files differ, or whose copies
carry two different edits, is marked skipped and says why — two edits of
one frame are kept for virtual copies. What the check reads is kept, so a
second visit costs nothing. The line under each group says what the copy
that stays will gain: the highest rating, every keyword and collection, a
flag or label the copies agree on, faces and the names on them, and the
edit if only a copy had one. Where the copies disagree on a flag or a
label, the one that stays keeps its own and the line says so.

![Two frames with a copy each in a bck folder, checked and proved the same, the copy that stays marked on each](media/duplicates.png)

`Move N copies to trash` does it, one group at a time: each group is merged
and its spare copies moved together, or not at all. The copies go to the
trash, not away — select them in the trash view and `Restore` puts them
back where they were.

## Developing a photograph

Click a thumbnail to open it. The column on the right is every adjustment;
the strip at its head narrows it to one group.

![The develop view: the photograph, the histogram, and the adjustment column](media/develop.png)

![Switching between the Optics, Light, Colour, Effects and Detail groups](media/develop-groups.gif)

### Light

Exposure, contrast, highlights, shadows, blacks, whites and a tone curve.
Hold `Before` to see the photograph as it was.

![Raising exposure, pulling the highlights, lifting the shadows, then holding Before](media/develop-light.gif)

### Looking closer

Double-click for 1:1; drag to move about; double-click again to fit. The
wheel zooms to any amount in between. Past 1:1 the file's own pixels are
drawn as hard-edged blocks rather than smoothed, so what you see is what
the sensor recorded.

![Zooming to 1:1 with a double-click, panning, then further in with the wheel](media/develop-zoom.gif)

### Moving between photographs

The roll along the foot of the canvas holds the photographs the grid was
showing; click one to open it. The right arrow, `D` or space opens the next,
and the left arrow or `A` the one before; held down, they go on past the
stretch the roll has loaded, through everything the grid would show. The
edit on screen is saved on the way, so stepping along a shoot loses nothing.

### White balance from the photograph

Press `pick` in the White Balance group, then click something neutral —
a white wall, a grey card, the air conditioner here. The picker sets the
sliders from the photograph, not from where they were: below, the frame
is dragged cold first and one click puts it right. A blown highlight is
refused, since a clipped pixel has no colour left to balance.

![Cooling the frame with the slider, then picking a white air conditioner to set the white balance](media/develop-wb.gif)

### Composing

Crop by dragging the frame's corners, straighten with the slider, lock a
ratio from the chips. `Done composing` returns to the photograph.

![Cropping, straightening and choosing a ratio](media/compose.gif)

`Vertical` and `Horizontal`, under `Straighten`, correct the lines that
converge when the camera is tilted up at a building; the crop refits to
what is left.

![Standing towers shot from below upright with the Vertical slider](media/compose-perspective.gif)

A crop that leaves a mask wholly outside the frame says so, and offers to
take the crop back or keep it.

![A stroke in a corner, a crop that leaves it outside, and the notice with Undo crop and Keep crop](media/crop-orphan.gif)

### Local adjustments

`Local` in the rail turns the column into a mask stack. `Find subjects` runs a
segmentation model over the photograph; what it recognises appears as a list
of categories with how much of the frame each covers. Click one and it is a
mask — then every slider below edits only that region.

![What the model found in an urban scene: ground, architecture, sky, vegetation](media/local-categories.png)

![The sky chosen: tinted on the photograph, and the column now scoped to it](media/local-segment.png)

A mask is a stack of parts. Paint into it, subtract a gradient from it, grow
or shrink its edge, choose how it falls off. `Show masks as` draws the mask
tinted, as alpha, or as an outline; the eye on its row switches it off.

![Looking at the mask three ways, painting into it, then growing its edge](media/local-paint.gif)

Linear and radial gradients, a tone range and a colour range are the other
ways to make one; each can be combined with any other. `∩ Intersect` keeps
only where the new part and the mask agree: below, a gradient over the
lower half, then two strokes that survive only where the gradient is.

![A linear gradient, then Intersect and two painted strokes](media/local-intersect.gif)

### Repair

`Repair` in the rail: click a mark and it is covered from a source DarkRoom
chooses beside it. Drag either circle to move it; the size, feather and
opacity are in the panel. Heal blends; clone copies.

![Covering marks on a road](media/repair.gif)

### Film

The `Film` chooser at the head of Adjust applies a spectral simulation of a
named stock; below it, the print exposure and push controls a film has and a
sensor does not. The list opens over the column and scrolls on its own — by
wheel, drag or flick, or with `Up`, `Down` and `Enter` — down to the
black-and-white stocks at its end.

![Opening the film list, scrolling it, choosing Velvia, then holding Before](media/film.gif)

### History, snapshots, presets

Every change is a step; `Undo` and the History panel walk them. `Snapshot`
keeps the current state under a name. `Presets…` saves the settings to
apply elsewhere, and imports `.xmp` from other applications.

The sheet lists your own presets first, then the ones DarkRoom ships —
Essentials, and colour, cinema and black-and-white film, one measured stock
each. A shipped preset is a look: it changes what it names and leaves the
photograph's own corrections alone, as an imported Lightroom preset does.
Saving under a shipped preset's name makes your version the one that name
applies, marked *changed*; `Revert` brings the shipped one back, and renaming
yours makes it one of your own.

![The presets sheet](media/presets.png)

### Copying settings

`Copy` in the top bar, or Ctrl+C, takes this photograph's settings; `Paste`,
or Ctrl+V, puts them on another, and says what it would paste — how many
adjustments, and whether the crop comes too. In the grid, `Paste to N` on the
selection bar pastes onto every photograph selected. Which kinds of edit a
copy carries is chosen in `Presets…`, or with Ctrl+Shift+C: a look carried
across a shoot usually leaves each frame's own crop alone.

## Merging a panorama

Select the frames, then `Merge to panorama` from the selection bar. The
frames are read, aligned, and drawn on the suggested projection with each one
outlined where it landed — twelve hand-held portrait frames across an alpine
valley, here. Change the projection (a 150° sweep on a flat perspective is
what the middle of the film shows, and why cylindrical is suggested), ask for
the border to be filled rather than cropped, then `Merge`. The composite is
written beside its sources as a DNG and appears in the grid with the merge
as the first step in its history.

![Twelve frames aligned, the projections tried, and the border filled](media/panorama.gif)

![The alignment on a cylinder, each frame outlined where it landed](media/panorama-aligned.png)

![The same, with the ragged border filled by the model rather than cropped away](media/panorama-filled.png)

## Export

`Export` in the develop header, or `Export N` from a selection. Format,
size, colour space, sharpening and naming are in Settings, and apply to every
export until changed. Where the file goes is an album.

An album is a folder exports go to, listed under **Albums** in the sidebar,
below the collections. Press `+` there, or `New album…` in the export sheet
(`Ctrl+E`), name it, and choose its folder: on this device, in the system's
folder dialogue (on the tablet, Android's folder picker), or on the server,
in a browser that can make a folder as well as open one. Not inside the
library — a JPEG exported there would come back from the next scan as a
photograph of its own, and the browser says so rather than letting you.

The folder holds only the exported files. The album remembers which
photograph each came from, so selecting it in the sidebar shows the
originals behind its JPEGs — edit one and export it again. Albums reach your
other devices as collections do; a folder on this device does not, so an
album made on the desktop asks the tablet for a folder of its own. Deleting
an album leaves its files where they are.

An export with no album chosen is refused, and the header says so.

![Export defaults in Settings](media/settings-export.png)

## Settings

![The settings page: background activity, indexing, storage, display](media/settings.png)

Background activity with progress, thumbnail and face indexing, how many
duplicate originals the library holds and the way to their review, storage
on this device, display and colour, export defaults, what is written to XMP
sidecars, the manual, and a diagnostics bundle for a bug report.

## People

Face detection and identity run over the library and group faces by person;
the `Identity` page is where suggestions are confirmed, rejected and split,
and `People` on the filter bar narrows the grid to someone. Not pictured
here, for the obvious reason — [faces.md](../dev/faces.md) has the design.

## Where things are written down

| Feature | Design |
|---|---|
| Local masks and segmentation | [segmentation.md](../dev/segmentation.md), [mask-editing.md](../dev/mask-editing.md) |
| Repair | [spot-removal.md](../dev/spot-removal.md) |
| Panorama | [panorama.md](../dev/panorama.md) |
| Faces and identity | [faces.md](../dev/faces.md) |
| Gestures, generated from the code | [gestures.md](../gestures.md) |
| Navigation and layout | [ui-navigation.md](../dev/ui-navigation.md) |
| Sync and storage | [storage.md](../dev/storage.md) |

## How this page is made

[`tools/manual/`](../../tools/manual/README.md) drives the desktop build on
a private X server and records each scene; `record.sh <library>` re-makes
every picture here. Run it after a change to the interface and commit what
changed. The pictures are in LFS.

The application carries this page. `cargo run -p traceability -- manual`
renders it to `index.html` beside it, which the packages install with the
pictures and the app opens from Help, from Settings, and from the "See it"
link beside a gesture on the help sheet. CI fails when the two differ.

Making it the first time turned up nine faults, each fixed in its own
commit before the pictures were taken: the folder picker could not choose
the top level, month headings overprinted each other, a category mask
widened the column off the window, the mask tint outlived its mode, the
first sync uploaded an empty thumbnail shard, a merge that ran out of GPU
memory left the page on Stop for ever, the export settings promised to ask
for a folder and did not, the keyword sheet sent its keys to the grid, and
an empty trash told you to check your library folder.