Re: Sorting photos

[David Stahl <othernerd gmail com>]

jason switzer wrote:
> The difference is it is very difficult to automate the process of
> identifying the tags. For example, tagging all photos that remind you of
> something cannot be easily automated, whereas converting all of your

I'm not talking about tagging all photos with what they remind you of.
I'm talking about tagging the photo with the name of the directory it
was in, which is exactly what you get with your folder naming convention.

> remember the dates (maybe year) that my pictures are taken. I remember
> them by the event or the concept.

Then searching them by tag should be just as effective, if not moreso.

> I don't really want to waste any unnecessary space on my file server and
> I'm sure there are other people who find it equally annoying to have to
> copy several  thousand pictures into the ~/Photos folder.

I can almost see this argument, but
1) You have to store the files somewhere
2) You can copy them to ~/Photos and then remove them from wherever they
were initially.

You only have to do it once. Start it, go to bed, and never worry about
it again.

> I happen to think that I have my images well organized already. I would
> apply tags only so that I can search faster for images that contain

If you already have them well organized, then what do you want F-Spot
for anyway? You never answered that question. I'm not saying you're a
bad organizer, I'm getting back to my point of 'what is it that you want
F-Spot to be in the first place'? A glorified file browser that supports
tags? An easy way to export to flickr? Maybe F-Spot isn't want you
really need to Get Stuff Done?

And if you are set on using F-Spot, can't a tag named after the
directory it's in suffice?

> would be a step in the right direction. Like I said before, applying
> tags to many pictures is extremely time consuming and a way to deal with
> just a certain folder at a time would make things easier.

I might not understand you, but if we assume that my "every folder is a
tag" is viable, then you can -- with one click -- turn on one and only
one tag in F-Spot. This has the same effect of showing you one folder's
worth of data.

Even now, you can import a batch of files and tell F-Spot to put a tag
on all of those photos automatically. I'm not suggesting you do that
since you have a few hundred folders, but once you've got a new library
set up, the ongoing maintenance is pretty easy.

>     FolderA\
>             FolderB\
>                     img1.jpg
>             img2.jpg
> 
>     Importing this would create two tags "FolderA" and "FolderB" and both of
>     which would apply to img1.jpg. img2.jpg would only have "FolderA" as
>     a tag. 
> 
> 
> This is wrong because there is no logical organization for multiple
> tags. If image1 has tags A and B, it would be laid out in A/B/image1. If
> image2 has tags B, it would be laid out in B/image2. This would be a
> rather cumbersome process to find all images on my hard-drive with the B
> tag.

I'm not sure I understand you. Image1 has tags A and B and is laid out
exactly as you describe. img2.jpg has only tag A because it is in FolderA.

I know it sounds like I'm picking on you, but this is an example where I
don't see a solid argument for why folders are so much better for what
you're doing currently. Of course, I'm also basing a lot of my argument
on a way to import directories as tags :)

-D