Version 1.0.0-preview.40

Announcements
1

Hey everyone,

a new version of Aspect has been released: 1.0.0-preview.40 (view blog post). You’ll find the download links at the bottom of this post. Simply install over the existing installation to upgrade.

Download

:paperclip: Windows installer
:paperclip: macOS bundle
:paperclip: Linux AppImage (experimental)

Please remember: Even though the software is reasonably stable at this point, always make a backup of your data, or work with a copy of it, when using pre-release software.

New features

  • Adds a new iOS companion app
    • The iOS app can be used to import and synchronize mobile phone photos with a desktop based Aspect library
    • Note that, in contrast to the Android app, this app works using the general library synchronization functionality and will eventually be extended into a full mobile version of Aspect
  • Adds a new Android companion app
    • The Android app allows to treat a mobile phone as an import source, including setting up auto-imports for real-time imports
    • Note that this app has existed for a while in the Play Store already, but up to now had a few issues and was not officially endorsed
  • Added a function to delete a library from within the application
    • In contrast to just deleting the library folder by hand, this ensures that any scanned folders and referenced event folders will be unregistered first, so that they can be used in other/new libraries afterwards

Enhancements

  • File system and network synchronization is now active for all local instances of the currently loaded library
  • Reworked the device pane to group storage devices/library instances below each device and display detailed availability status for remote library instances
  • Improved excessively long scanning times during the “synchronizing file system” activity
  • Added a new “Add scanned folder” menu entry next to “import files”
  • JPEG files that have been truncated are now being decoded as far as possible instead of failing completely
  • Improved the file transfer speed during synchronization

Bug fixes

  • Fixed the “execute” scripting API to work on Linux
  • Fixed external editors not launching on Linux
  • Fixed external links not opening on Linux
  • Fixed selection related menu entries not working when invoking them via the menu bar on Windows/Linux (regression introduced in 1.0.0-preview.39)
  • Fixed the library device list jumping and losing the current selection during updates
  • Fixed an issue where freshly synchronized photos appeared as blank thumbnails
  • Fixed operations that attempt to move files into the system trash can failing on modern macOS systems
  • Fixed an issue where a long network device list resets its scroll position after updates
  • Fixed a crash sometimes occurring during synchronization shortly after starting the application
  • Fixed a crash during synchronization when two instances had the same files with conflicting file names moved, but in a different order
  • Fixed spurious detections of individual photos folders from a different version of the library
  • Fixed an issue where metadata/thumbnails could reset to blank during synchronization
  • Fixed the button label of paused activities being reversed after the list of activities/notifications changed
  • Fixed a crash happening when deleting an imported file before it finished importing
  • Fixed an issue where folder contents in the folder browser would fail to display after file I/O errors
  • Fixed an issue causing the library invitation sent directly after pairing with a device to fail
  • Fixed the mouse scroll speed on macOS/Linux to match Windows
  • Fixed a possible crash when renaming/moving a file within the same individual photos folder
  • Fixed multiple causes for crashes when attempting to load a corrupted library
  • Fixed the state of the example library folder structure when first navigating to the customize page of the library creation dialog
  • Fixed the appearance of the maximize button while the mouse is resting over it
  • Fixed window redraw issues that were especially pronounced in dialogs on macOS/Linux (#2)
  • Avoid precision specifier that is not valid for GLSL 3.30 and causes an error on old AMD OpenGL drivers
  • Fixed a failure during synchronization caused by wrong handling of time zones in date/time values
  • Avoids attempts to download thumbnails/previews from other library instances that are either too small or are not media files
  • The duplicate finder dialog doesn’t show deleted (trash) files anymore
  • Fixed a crash occurring when cloning/synchronizing a library with a large number of revisions
  • The library controls in the settings dialog are now disabled when no library is loaded
  • The date/time adjustment menu entry is now disabled when no files are selected
  • Fixed a crash caused by invoking the event select menu entry when no library was loaded
  • Fixed the folder browser to now allow adding folders from other drives as scanned folders

Feel free to leave any feedback here or in the bug reports sub forum. Thanks for helping to shape a new way of organizing photos!

3

Thanks for the new release and all the work you put into it. I am still trying it out and I will let you know when I break something :slightly_smiling_face:

Gord

4

Find out about this software and try it. Get turned away almost right away.
I try two folders with images and video.
Thumbnails are low res. And when i click it it open thumbnail and no original image. When i try add keywords nothing happens.
Some thumbnail are pitch black.

5

It sounds as if the application is busy performing heavy I/O in a background process and thus reacts slowly when loading thumbnails or applying changed metadata. This shouldn’t very noticeable in a typical setup with a relatively fast storage (SSD or HDD connected with USB 3.0/SATA or faster), but some NAS connections can be pretty slow in that regard.

In particular, after adding folders to the library (as scanned folders), there is the image analysis process running in the background, which hashes all files and performs some color analysis. This process is slowed down to only use a single CPU core when the application is in active use to avoid degrading the responsivity too much, but there may still be cases where that’s enough to cause a bad experience. Pausing the process or waiting until it’s finished is then the only option.

Also, with freshly added folders, the preview/thumbnail images have not yet been generated, so especially for RAW images, the thumbnail view may update slower than usual, exaggerating the problem. Unfortunately that’s a trade-off we are forced to make in order to allow minimizing the overall wait time.

In case the image analysis process was not running, a quick description of how the photos are stored would be interesting to judge whether there may be something else going on.

Having said that, we have identified a cause for slowdowns during imports or synchronization runs earlier, which will be fixed in the next release. It doesn’t sound like this should apply here, though.

6

I try new aproach i delete whole linrary and try it again and now everything work correctly.
And i wanna ask about nested collections. In faq is only generic text.

7

There is a basic description found on the collections page (see the “More Features” and “Different Collection Types” sections). Basically, nested collections are similar to a folder structure, but a single image can be in any number of nested collections. In contrast, taxonomies behave more like actual folders, as those enforce that a single image can only be in one of the nested taxons at a time.

You can create nested collections either by right-clicking on a collection in the collection pane and choosing “Create sub collection”, or by dragging an existing collection onto another collection.