[Feature] Custom number of columns and higher quality thumbnails

[yephny]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe. It's difficult to view images without opening them one by one. The fact that they load slowly when opened doesn't help.

Describe the solution you'd like If you've used Simple Gallery on F-Droid before, it can increase/reduce the column count, which allows the user to change how many images they want to see at a time. It helps when you want to scroll through thousands of images quickly or view multiple images near full resolution to see the details. This solution is perfect, in my opinion. It would entirely eliminate the redundant use of low quality thumbnails (even for small files) without compromising anything, as it can be changed by the user.

Describe alternatives you've considered Have better quality thumbnails and at most 3 images/columns per row.

[leonlatsch]

Thank you for the feature request.

This is a topic with many opinions.

An early version of Photok actually supported configuring the number of columns, but it didn't feel right.

I may have a second look into this.

About the thumbnail size: Since the images are encrypted (thats why they load longer) there is no way to obtain a thumbnail from the files. They are saved separately. Therefore changing the size of existing thumbnails would be difficult.

[yephny]

Thanks for hearing me out and deciding to give it a thought.

I don't understand the predicament when it comes to the thumbnails, however. If thumbnails can't be obtained because the images themselves are encrypted, how come there are still thumbnails in the app?

[leonlatsch]

When the images are imported, a thumbnail gets saved as an image inside the app (also encrypted). These are shown in the gallery. So for every image there is an original and a thumbnail file (both encrypted).

This is because android's api for automatically obtaining thumbnails only works for image, video files.

[yephny]

@leonlatsch Oh, then, does the API not allow higher quality thumbnails to be taken? I'd not be bothered to re-import my images as long as better thumbnails will be available.

[leonlatsch]

The api is not used. The thumbnails are just cropped smaller versions of the original image.

So yes, if I would implement the ability to customize the thumbnail size, it would not affect already imported images.

[yephny]

That change makes a lot of sense, thanks.