(Archived) Request: Table functionality, Image resizing

[Orfeo 0]

Hi Evernote, 

 

I am trying to use Evernote instead of a paper notebook for work and generally Evernote does well. However there are some big problems with the functionality.

 

a) Images inserted into notes must have the ability to be resized, i'm not going to go into an image editor, resize them and then insert them in Evernote. Image resizing is a simple task and should be included. 

b)The tables need to be more functional. You need to be able to copy formatted table data from Excel into an Evernote table, Excel can accept an Evernote table format but not the other way around. And even worse, copying data from a table in evernote to another table in evernote places a table within a table. This is moronic. Also, you should be able to edit table properties once inserted, mainly the table width. If you insert a table but then need to add more columns you can run out of width. 

 

 

I hope you can fix these issues, they've been mentioned many times before. I would love to become a premium member but without these features it doesn't really seem worth it. 

 

regards

orfeo

[gazumped 11,652]

Hi and welcome to the forums.  Thanks for the input - this is a user forum,  but developers do read it for inspiration (and the occasional laugh).  There will be improvements in the Notes editor - almost everyone agrees that it's pretty stone age as editors go - but then Evernote isn't designed to replace publishing or spreadsheet packages.  If you need that sort of layout you can always produce the document elsewhere and copy/ paste the output into a note,  or embed the source file.  If you do become a premium member,  Evernote will even OCR your Office documents for you...

[Tmo 9]

Just a word on resizing images.

 

Evernote is great and I fully appreciate the argument that it's not be a word processor, spreadsheet or a publishing package.

 

But it is to be a super convenient tool to dump and recall our thoughts. Putting photo snaps in a note seems only natural, but the problem is, that:

 

When an image is not margined/padded+bordered and not visible as a whole, the communicative power of the image is seriously compromised.

 

There is good reason for paintings having frames, and photos having passepartout. Not to mention that now I see only half of my photos on my widescreen - this actually makes me not want to put photos in notes anymore.

 

So - image manipulation is not needed, but being able to make it proper (visible on monitor) size and margins, ideally a lightweight border, is crucial to using photo snaps and images at all in a note.

[gazumped 11,652]

I tend not to use images as 'part' of a note - they're there as extra information,  like attached emails / PDFs and a variety of other file types.  I don't want to lay out my notes so they look especially nice,  or use Evernote as a photo album.  Not rubbishing your comment,  just pointing out that there are different views on thjs, 

 

If I were including pics on a more regular / intensive basis,  I'd look at finding software that can change the size/ resolution of pictures to a standard that will display best in my notes,  and use that to create a specific copy of my pictures for that purpose.

 

I use Xnview to change picture resolution and size and I believe it can do 'batch' processing as well - just a suggestion for a work-around...

[Tmo 9]

I was able to reach my desired effect by external batch resizing and a horizontal line (ctrl shift -).

 

When I think of it, this is a much better way than resizing in Evernote, since now I have a one-click script that copies my snappy snaps from the camera and resizes them. Just pick and paste to evernote.

 

So I am withdrawing my vote (I know my voting is the 'occasional laugh material', but nevermind for implementation of resizing.

 

Thank you for your suggestion gazumped.

[Orfeo 0]

I can understand you're argument that you don't think picture resizing is within evernote's scope, or that there are tedious work arounds. But i think it a worthwhile feature. Microsoft OneNote has a huge array of functionality built into it which might suit my application better, however i believe evernote has a better user interface. It would be good if evernote also had some of MS onenote's functionality. 

[gazumped 11,652]

Which bits of Onenote's functionality are you looking for exactly? (apart from the resizing thing..)

[Liam Gretton 86]

Although Evernote is now claiming that it's only five years old, well before 2008 the application it had the ability to resize images exactly as many of us would like to do today.

 

Recently we regained the ability to rotate images. Hopefully before too long, Evernote 5 may get released and start to offer a few more of the useful features that we had in Evernote 2 which got dropped along the way.

 

For the nostalgics amongst us, here's the old image dialogue from EN 2.

 

 

Seems quaint by today's standards, but extremely sophisticated by for EN :-(

[Felipe 4]

Yes resizing images would be huge ... I miss it every day

[BurgersNFries 2,407]

Although Evernote is now claiming that it's only five years old, well before 2008 the application it had the ability to resize images exactly as many of us would like to do today.

 

Recently we regained the ability to rotate images. Hopefully before too long, Evernote 5 may get released and start to offer a few more of the useful features that we had in Evernote 2 which got dropped along the way.

 

For the nostalgics amongst us, here's the old image dialogue from EN 2.

 

 

Seems quaint by today's standards, but extremely sophisticated by for EN :-(

 

"Seems quaint by today's standards, but extremely sophisticated by for EN?"  Yeah, b/c that version worked really well on iPad, iPhones, Mac, Android, etc. 

 

EN-the-Windows-only-app is a very different animal from EN-the-service.  Comparing the two is pretty fruitless. 

 

FWIW, if EN-the-Windows-only-app had not evolved into EN-the-service, there would be no EN at all today. IOW, you're EN 1.x/2.x did not suffer b/c EN evolved into a service.  EN 1.x/2.x would be dead regardless.  However, since some folks at EN wanted to retain their jobs & had a vision, they evolved it into EN the service that has been far more successful than the original EN-Windows-only-app ever was.

[Mharda 0]

I agree, Evernote is not a spreadsheet replacement. But... (a big but) .. if there is an option 'tables' it should at least support moving (cut/paste if you like) rows... For me a reason to use evernote A LOT less than I would like...

[gazumped 11,652]

You can always embed a range or a full spreadsheet..

[Brian Andrews 21]

I hear what you are saying. It would be awfully convenient to drag a photo into a note, grab a corner, and re-size it for a fixed size. But, even if that feature were available, I would not use it, for a couple reasons.

 

1)      As a photographer, I want to know what is going on with a photo. If I drag a 2, 3 or 10 Mb file into a note, and then “re-size” it, what is it doing? How is it doing it? How much data is it throwing away? Compression? Is it throwing that data away? Or is it the same huge file, just visually scaled? No thanks…..

 

2)      I can’t be wasteful, and this comes to storage, file size, database size, etc. If I pull a photo from my phone (as an example) and don’t do any external re-sizing it could be around 2 Mb. That is way too big for a visual display on a monitor (having a print made is a different issue). Meaning, I don’t want to dump a 2Mb file into a note just to have it hog up space. I want to dump a 200k file that I know how it got downsized, and how much compression has been put on it and sharpened to accommodate the downsizing. Bottom line, there is no way I would put a non-optimized photo into any notetaking program, OneNote included.

 

I do agree though, as a previous OneNote user, it does have a lot of “visually appealing” features, and looks wise it is much nicer. It was almost a deal breaker for me when I switched over. I really liked how cool notes looked in OneNote and how I had so many layout options, etc. But, as it turns out the visual aspect of OneNote is also something that I have never used, so I got over it pretty quickly.

 

A lot of my photos are taken in a RAW format. I do my adjustments  and keep the RAWs. Convert to JPG and batch downsize them, which includes sizing, compression and sharpening for “web or monitor” optimized photos. If the photos are from my phone, they skip the RAW to JPG conversion, but still get the same downsizing treatment before they go to the web, my blog, business website, on-line articles, Evernote, MacJournal, etc.

 

Not saying this helps you any…..just something to think about. Once you have the workflow down, it is not cumbersome, but it does force you to be organized with your photos.

 

B

[gazumped 11,652]

1. In very general terms,  if you resize a picture in a document like a note,  you are resizing the view you have,   not the file that produces the image.

It would be rather dumb (and is therefore not advisable) to store photo-quality images in Evernote - it's not designed to offer that service.

[Shayley 0]

So combining the two subject topics:

 

I tend to clip screen grabs and photos into my Evernote account and find they fill the screen, something that I dont always find desirable. My easy workaround / solution is to create a 1x1 table sized to a width of  (say) 50% of the page, and then paste my image into the cell Ive created. I find this a pretty fast an easy solution to the image resize problem.

 

 

I don't know if this has been suggested before, so please forgive any repetition. Hope this helps as an idea for others.

[dlevenstein 2]

I would like to see this as well.  Have been using evernote for a few years for various things and recently started using it for my lab notebook (time to finally replace those pain in the ass large computation notebooks.....).  

 

Improved table functionality would be very helpful - the ability to say, select/resize rows and columns, basic formulas, merge cells, etc.  Cutting and pasting from excel/numbers results in very large cells that take up too much space due to spacing above and below text.

 

Resizing an image is a must - I don't want a picture of a gel with 3 bands to take up the entire screen.

 

Also adding text boxes within notes would be all sorts of useful.