Extensions for Bibble users and others

[Paul Wellner Bou <paul purecodes org>]

Hi there,

nothing spectacular, I just want to publish my two very simple
extensions I wrote to simplify my life with F-Spot and Bibble, the
program I use for RAWs.

- Send selected files from F-Spot to a Bibble work queue
- Import processed files back to F-Spot (this could be useful using 
other software to process raw files, too)

My workflow:

- I import all my RAWs from the camera into F-Spot. There I
have an overview and I can select or delete the shots I want or don't want.

- Opening the RAW files I want to process with Bibble. There are three 
ways to to this.

1) Copying the file name rightclicking in F-Spot, open the file open 
dialog in Bibble, paste file name, press enter. I don't like this method 
very much, but it works always.

2) Using the desktop-file and the little script passing URIs to Bibble I 
sent months ago to this list. With this I can right click -> open with 
-> Bibble to open the RAW file with bibble. See here: 
http://purecodes.org/f-spot/open-uri-with-bibble/
(there is a script which shows the directory of the selected photo in 
nautilus, too)

You'll need to adjust paths (script location, bibble installation, lite 
or pro, and so on), the desktop files goes to 
/usr/local/share/applications/ for example.

The Problem of this method: It only works if Bibble is not open. If you 
started Bibble yet, it does not take any filenames.

3) Using the extension I wrote: 
http://purecodes.org/f-spot/SendToBibbleQueue/

This extension appears in the tools-menu if you install it. It sends the 
paths of all the selected photos to a Bibble work queue called "F-Spot" 
(~/.bibble/work/F-Spot.work).

The problem: Bibble does not recognize any changes in the workgroup 
files if started. I'll contact the Bibble people regarding this.

Workaround: Just copy the work queue in Bibble to make the changes 
visible there. Not nice, but it works.

- Next step: processing the RAW files and storing TIFFs or JPGs. I 
configured Bibble so that the processed files are stored in the same 
directory and with the same name (of course with different extension) as 
the RAW files.

- Reimporting the processed files in F-Spot. There are several ways:

1) Use the import function of Bibble, select ~/Photos/YYYY/MM/DD of the 
photo and import the new ones. Workes more or less. Ultimately this 
method wasn't usable anymore as F-Spot would reimport _all_ files there 
with spaces in its filenames. Ugly.

2) Use the import plugin I wrote: 
http://purecodes.org/f-spot/ImportRawProcessed/
Don't expect very much. This tool just searches for any file in the 
directory of the selected RAW(s) that does have the same filename 
without extension. If my RAW file I selected is 
/home/paul/Photos/2007/12/03/dsc_4206.nef, the tool searches for all 
/home/paul/Photos/2007/12/03/dsc_4206.*.

As I am not using the RAW/JPEG-version-merging tool and I want to keep 
my RAW files and my processed files in different photos (just to be able 
to separate them by filtering and searching), this works for me. The 
tool could be modified so that it will import the processed file as new 
version and not as new photo.

Don't know if you are interested in all these, but I just wanted to tell 
it. Perhaps the extensions are useful, perhaps not. If you have an idea 
to simplify my workflow, please tell my. :-)

regards
Paul.