Photo grouping

["Michael Hutchinson" <m j hutchinson gmail com>]

Hello,

I've been thinking about a potential feature for F-Spot for a little
while, and although it will likely be several months before I can even
consider spending time hacking on it I thought I'd see what other
peoples' opinions are (and whether any one else wants to give it a go
;-).

The basic feature I'd like to have a kind of "hidden grouping".
Although only the final combined result would be shown in the browser
and for tagging etc, it could have several hidden "source" photos. I
can see several uses for this -- panoramas, bracketed exposures for
HDR, and other short sequences like burst shots where only a single
final result is produced. In most cases this grouping could happen
automatically, and it could provide a useful entry point for future
panorama and HDR processing and similar features without intruding
into the main UI.

However, this could go a lot further. On a related note, are there any
plans to further develop the photo editing workflow? I like the way
F-Spot keeps the source images. However, it would be useful to be able
to specify whether derived images replace the original in the browser
(like they currently do, and I am proposing for the hidden groups) or
whether they become a new image. Also, when composite photos are
produced, even though this would have to be done in an outside app, it
would be nice to be able to represent this relationship in some way in
F-Spot.

I realise that this has come up before, like in
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=311550. My main idea, I
guess, is that it would be interesting to look into creating a
unified, consistent UI to handle all of these scenarios, as they *are*
related.

The way I'd currently do this is to add the concept of something like
a "workspace" (though there really must be a better name for this, as
it's also a kind of processing element), with one or more output
images, these being what is shown in the main browser. All source
photos must be part of at least one workspace, and the default when
importing would be that each image gets its own workspace. This simple
workspace would allow all the basic retouching operations that F-Spot
does right now.

Everything else could lead on from there. Maybe there could be
different kinds of workspaces -- simple, HDR, panorama, sequence, even
one that integrates with the GIMP. Maybe their inputs and outputs
could be chained. There could be all sorts of extension points for
plugins.

I realise I've rambled a bit, but I really want to see what people
think of this. Is it too complicated for F-Spot? A lot of it would be
hidden away when not relevant. I'm very happy with F-Spot ATM, but I
must admit I feel a little uncomfortable not knowing where it is
headed. The closest thing to a long-term roadmap that I have found
(http://f-spot.org/Spec) says very, very little. And the wiki is
completely locked-down too.

I'm going to think about this a while more, and blog a better
thought-out version with diagrams and incorporating any input I get.
I'd really appreciate ideas and feedback.


Thanks for looking!


Michael Hutchinson