Re: Album Support

[Warren Baird <photogeekmtl gmail com>]

Ben Monnahan wrote:
> My thoughts
>
> At first during the discussion I was thinking, "But Albums are just 
> tags, do we really need to separate interface for them"  As Stephane 
> says, I have them too, under Events.  Then I got to thinking.  Maybe 
> albums aren't exactly like tags.  I have pictures of "Frank", "Eiffel 
> Tower",  "Jesse's Bday 2006", and "Roadtrip to Tacoma".  To me "Frank" 
> or "Eiffel Tower" are tags, whereas "Jesse's Bday 2006" and "Roadtrip to 
> Tacoma" are Albums.  What's the difference. The album really *defines* 
> the picture.  It's its most important tag.  Photos can only belong to 
> one album whereas it can have many tags.  (this make break some others 
> mental picture of albums)

Limiting each photo to one album definitely breaks my view of them. 
using your example, I might also want to have a "Birthdays" album that 
contains the same photos as "Jesse's Bday 2006" and "Fred's Bday 2006" - 
and a 'Jesse' album that contains the same photos as "Jesse's Bday 
2006", and "Jesse's Housewarming", etc...

However, I think the key differentiator is what other people have 
mentioned :  Ordering.   I think usable definitions are:

Tag:   Identifies an unsorted collection of photos with a common theme
Album: Identifies a sorted collection of photos with a common theme

> Given its importance, I could see how it would be nice to create a 
> separate way of selecting them.  That could be Johns way, or some other 
> way, thats still to be decided.

Agreed.

> Another idea I came up with on the train - pushing personal agenda here :)
>
> This seems to help solve another problem I have with F-Spot, the 
> organization of Photos.  What if, instead of putting the photos in 
> year/month/day/ we put them in album/ or year-of-earliest-photo/album/ 
> ?  I never copy to Photos because its nearly useless to have them sorted 
> by date if you want to browse for them on the disk.  Apart from 
> birthdays/anniversaries etc I never know the date a photo was taken.  I 
> surely could find it in album/ though.

hmm.   Now I see where your one album per photo idea comes from. 
Unfortunately, I feel pretty strongly that we need the ability to put a 
photo in multiple albums, but I think that breaks what you are talking 
about.   Unless we assume the presence of links and put the actual photo 
in one dir, and then (symbolically or hard) link it into other album dirs.

I definitely agree that an album based dir structure would be a lot 
easier to navigate, if we can figure out a way to make it work.


> To make this work, In addition to  the "Add tag" we would add "Add to 
> album" in  the import dialog.  There would be the option to leave it as 
> (No album) or create a new one.  Under the covers it would basically be 
> implemented by a tag + import dir.  Changing the album would move the 
> photo to the proper directory.
>
> Issues with this:
>   * Photos can only belong to one album - For me this isn't a problem, 
> but could be for others.

I think this would be a big issue for me...   iPhoto had the concept of 
multiple albums per photo, and I used it quite a bit...

>   * Subalbums, would we support them and how?

Hmm.  Good question.   In general I'm a big fan of heirarchical 
organization.   This is one of my complaints about iPhoto - it had a 
flat structure of albums.   As the photo collection grows, I think 
*some* way to organize and group albums is important.


>   * For (No album) would we revert to y/m/d/ ? - It could get full if 
> someone never assigns to albums, also would maybe make the transition 
> easier, since we all have a bunch of photos that aren't in albums.

Also a good question.   I think what you describe makes sense.

I might even be convinced that the y/m/d structure should be used 
beneath all albums...   for a birthday party album it might not matter 
too much, but say you had an Album containing all your christmas photos, 
or *all* birthday photos for a particular person.   Having them 
organized by year and date could be a good thing...

Warren