Re: Terminology

["Dotan Cohen" <dotancohen gmail com>]

On 16/09/06, Warren Baird <photogeekmtl gmail com> wrote:
> > Album: A group of photos that are kept together. A photo belonging to
> > a particular album is said to be "in" the album- thus the same photo
> > cannot be in any other album. If the user wants to have the same image
> > (the visual part of a photo) in more than one album, then he must
> > duplicate the Photo containing the image and place the duplicate in
> > the second album. Furthermore, every image must belong to an album.
>
> I disagree quite strongly here with the idea of each photo belonging to
> exactly one album.   This seems very artificial, and would be *very*
> annoying to me.
>
> Conceptually (to me at least), I consider an album to be 'a sorted
> collection of photos suitable to present to someone'.   I would use
> albums to organize photos I might upload to flickr, or photos that I
> want to show to someone in a particular order to highlight a trip or a
> particular photo project.   I **WILL** regularly need to have a single
> photo represented in multiple albums - but I definitely do not want it
> duplicated, both for disk space issues, and because if I touch it up in
> one album, I don't want to have to manually find and update all of the
> other copies.
>
> I'm also not sure why every photo needs to be in an album.   When I'm
> uploading a set of new photos, I might not yet have decided which albums
> each photo should go in.
>
> I've described what I think is a very reasonable use case at the bottom
> of this email highlighting  why photos need to be in multiple albums.
>
>
> Album Use Case
>
> Fred takes a trip to the botanical gardens.   He takes several hundred
> pictures of the gardens.  There are a lot of pictures of flowers, and
> some pictures of his wife.   He had forgotten to upload the 50 pictures
> he had taken of some flowers in his back yard before going to the gardens.
>
> Fred uploads all of the pictures into f-spot
>
> Fred already has an album entitled "Great Pictures of Betty" (his wife)
> - he takes the best 4 or 5 pictures of his wife from the gardens and
> puts them in this album as well.
>
> Fred puts the first 50 pictures from his back yard in his "Pictures from
> the back yard" album.
>
> Fred takes the best 5 or 10 pictures of flowers from the entire set of
> new photos (his backyard *and* the botantical gardens) and puts them in
> his "Best Flower Pics" album.
>
> Fred creates an album of photos representing his trip to the botanical
> gardens - he puts all of the photos from the botanical gardens in this
> album.

I see your point very well. In the case of Fred, the album sorting
method that I suggested would not work. We ned a solution to cases
such as Fred's, as it seems a reasonable case.

However, if pictures can belong to more than one "album" then I
disagree with the use of the term "album". "Album" has connotations in
the real world, where a photo can belong to only one album. We have an
unused term "collection" that might be a better term than "album". And
you do mention that it is a 'collection' that you visualize:

> Conceptually (to me at least), I consider an album to be 'a sorted
> collection of photos suitable to present to someone'.

So we will drop the term "album" and use collection instead, with it's
new meaning.


> > Library/Collection: A group of albums. This would contain all the
> > photos that a particular installation of F-spot is designed to handle.
> > We need to pick one name and use it- I vote for "Library".
>
> Makes sense - I also like "Library".    An important thing to note is
> that I think the 'Library' is the right place to put the photos.db file,
> not the album as you suggested in a previous email.   moving photos
> between albums in a library needs to be quick and easy.    Moving photos
> between libraries needs to be possible, but it can be slower and more
> complex.

Yes, the idea that moving photos within a library should be smooth.
Moving them to other libraries would be a more involved process.

> > Touchup: A change to an image that is made to correct camera error,
> > such as red-eye reduction.
> >
> > Modify: A change to an image that is made to alter the content of the
> > photo, such as removing your aunt from the photo.
>
> Hmm.   The distinction here seems blurry...   Is adjusting the
> brightness/contrast a touchup or a modify?   By these definitions it
> depends on the intent of the change --- if I adjust the brightness cause
> the camera took a picture that is too dark, it's a touch up...  but if I
> adjust the brightness so that the person hiding in the shadows isn't
> visible any more, it's a modify.
>
> What's the point of this distinction?  why do we need two terms for a
> change to a photo?

The point of the distinction is to define what F-spot can do to a
photo within it's core. This topic was discussed in an earlier thread.
The conclusion reached was that F-spot would allow for touching up a
photo, but not for modifying a photo. Plugins, however, could modify a
photo. The idea was to keep F-spot from becoming the Gimp.

While your use case of adjusting the brightness for two different
purposes makes a good point, I see it rather as an abuse of the
ability to touch up a photo. That's fine. The intent of including a
brightness scale in F-spot is to allow touchups. If someone abuses it,
well then, so be it. But F-spot need not include tools such as the
Gimp.



Here is the new list of terms:

List Of Terms (version 0.2) :)

Plugin: This is any third-party addition to F-spot.

Photo: One image that was produced by a digital camera, graphics
program, or scanned image. An alternative word is "picture".

Tag: An arbitrary word or phrase added to a photo (by an end-user) to
decribe the photo. A photo may have multiple tags, and a tag can be
assigned to more than one photo.

Collection: A group of photos that are kept together. A photo can
belong to multiple collections. When a collection is displayed, only
the photos of that collection are accessable. That means that the tags
of photos not in the collection are not displayed, and the timeline
refers to the collection being used only. Also, operations such as
Select All or Export, when done while viewing a collection, will
operate only on the photos of that collection.

Library: A group of collections. This would contain all the
photos that a particular installation of F-spot is designed to handle.

Touchup: A change to an image that is made to correct camera error,
such as red-eye reduction. F-spot can perform touchups on photos.

Modify: A change to an image that is made to alter the content of the
photo, such as removing your aunt from the photo. F-spot is not
designed to modify photos (That's what the Gimp is for). However,
plugins may modify photos.