[clue] Light-table style photo editor?

[Matt Gushee]

Hello, good linux folk--

I am trying to find a special kind of photo editor for Linux. I know
about GIMP, of course--been using it for many years--and the other usual
suspects like Krita. But I need something a little bit different.

I am doing some product photography for my web site, and I need to
achieve a consistent appearance across a large number of photos, where
the originals are very inconsistent (because they have been taken at
different times with varying light, and by an inexpert photographer [me]
working on a shoestring budget). So batch processing (e.g. ImageMagick)
will not work.

What I need is an interface where I can view a number of large
thumbnails side-by-side, and have easy access to editing functions.
Ideally, I would like to be able to right-click on a thumbnail and,
using the context menu, have a choice of applying a filter directly
(say, to adjust the contrast) or opening the photo in a separate window
(e.g., for cropping). I also would like to be able to preview the
results of the edit *in the thumbnail view*--again, it's that
side-by-side comparison thing.

If there is no single application that will do this, I suppose I can use
some file manager in combination with GIMP ... it would sort of work,
but it wouldn't make for a smooth workflow, and I expect to be doing
this on a regular basis for the forseeable future.

Anyone have a recommendation? Thanks!

-- 
Matt Gushee
matt at gushee.net