Re: Sorting photos

["jason switzer" <jswitzer gmail com>]

On 3/26/07, David Stahl <othernerd gmail com> wrote:

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.

The purpose of image tags is to make search easier. Sometimes, I want to look for pictures that invoke a certain frame of mind or thought. This could be an arbitrary adjective, but will not be in the folder name as not all of them apply.

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

 
I'm not arguing against tags here, so no need to continue this.

> 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.

I don't want to remove them from where they were initially becuase where I keep them is backed up on a regular basis and is considered stable storage. The hard-drive on the machine in which my user account is stored is not to be considered stable as it may be erased or damaged at a moment's notice with no backups ever made.

> 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?

I have them well organized on the file system, but it is a nightmare to search them for certain things. For example, I want to find all of the pictures that contain myself and someone else and was taken on Christmas. Simple folder structure does not provide this capability. I would also like to export this gallery so other may view them. F-Spot could be what I really need to Get Stuff Done if it actually could do thing Things I Need Done.

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

Not really, see aforementioned example.

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.

Just putting a tag on an image with the directory name is not enough. I will once more refer you to the previous example as a folder name cannot provide that structure. As I understand it, I can apply a set of tags to photos being imported, but once they are imported, I no longer can deal with my photos in the directory structure that they were imported from. I don't want to use F-Spot to import my photos because I have a certain way to pull my pictures down from mine and other cameras (automatically rsynced from the camera without needing Gnome running).

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 :)

You are right, you didn't understand. The example was to prove that it would be hard to tell which folder a file belongs in when it has multiple tags applied. You would basically need a folder structure setup for every possible combination of tags used on your photos.db (this is a classic example of a permutation). This would be a nightmare to navigate and automate with scripts.

I use scripts to find images, collect information about said images, and automatically place them there in the presence of a camera or flash card. The best example I can give you for a proper folder structure is a network attached MythTV machine that can browse your images on your harddrive. Even the new AppleTV does this. A good folder structure makes devices like this much easier to deal with when they don't understand the F-Spot ~/Photos folder or photos.db database.

Think outside the box on this. My photos are not just imported through F-Spot on a linux machine and are not always uploaded to some cheesy image hosting service. For F-Spot to make real progress, it should look beyond the desktop.

-Jason