Re: RAW/Versioning improvement ideas

["Antti Ahonen" <aahonen gmail com>]

I have been wondering about the same thing myself.

The problem with automatically detecting the files (thing #3) might be
proglematic, because if you are shooting both raw and jpg, you will
already have a JPG file with the same name.

Then again it is a version of the same picture as well, so maybe it
would be the right way after all.

The converted Raws would be img_0001-2.jpg and so on.

On 11/1/06, Peter Finley <pezskwerl gmail com> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I am new to the list and am looking to get involved in developing this
> application.
>
> To start, I would love to help improve the RAW support. I don't know what
> the current plan is for this functionality, but currently, F-Spot does not
> support versioning with RAW photographs. I know that many photographers
> (including myself) shoot only in RAW and it is a major drawback to not be
> able to manage versions of RAW images as with other image types (like JPEG).
>
> I see a few options to here remedy this dilemma (I'm sure some of them have
> already been suggested):
>
>
> Implement a RAW converter (dcraw) into the F-Spot code. However, I think
> most people currently use the excellent UFRaw application, which might be
> hard to compete with. This would be the nicest, most clean solution, but
> also the most intensive if it is to compete with UFRaw.
>
>
> Implement the ability to manage versions. This would include the ability to
> take an image and add it as a version of a different image. Originally, I
> was thinking this could be done by selecting and dragging one or more images
> onto an other in the query view. I looked into actually implementing
> something like this only to find that versions must have the same file
> extension. Obviously, for this functionality to be possible this limitation
> would need to be fixed in the database (add a 'path' field to the
> 'photo_versions' table or change the 'version_id' to be a FK to
> 'photos'.'id' instead).
>
>
> Add some code to automatically detect converted RAW files during the import
> process. For instance, say there is a RAW file called 'img_0001.cr2'. Most
> often a file converted from this will retain the same base filename, such as
> 'img_0001.jpeg'. During the import process, this could be detected and the
> JPEG file could be automatically added as a version of the RAW file. Again,
> this suffers from the same limitation of #2.
>
>
> Somehow intelligently support UFRaw so that F-Spot has some control over the
> conversion process. For instance, I noticed that ufraw-batch can output to
> standard out or to a designated file. This could allow for F-Spot to spawn
> the ufraw-batch process on some selected RAW files and specify the output
> file (or read from standard out). The ufraw-batch process will use the
> configuration file stored in the user's home directory (~/.ufrawrc) to
> perform the conversion.
>
> Personally, I would be content with only having option #3. This would allow
> for RAW files to be converted outside of F-Spot and automatically imported
> as a version of the original RAW file, so long as the converted versions are
> in the same directory as the RAW and have the same base filename. In fact,
> this same logic could be applied to other situations, such as if there is a
> file 'img_0001.tiff' and a 'img_0001.jpg' in the same directory, the JPEG
> could be add detected and added as a version of the TIFF upon being
> imported. Going a step further (and dreaming a little bit), it would be even
> nicer to have a version tree instead of a flat list. That way you could have
> a base RAW file, several different TIFF versions at the next level and JPEG
> versions of those, or something to that effect. Maybe overkill, but an idea
> anyway.
>
> Anyway, I am interested in hearing all of your thoughts and I look forward
> to hopefully contributing this excellent application.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Peter
>
> BTW, I am willing to implement any of the above solutions (or others).
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