Re: Sorting photos

["jason switzer" <jswitzer gmail com>]

On 3/27/07, Richard Bronosky <mythtv bronosky com> wrote:

This is long overdue, so I'm going to go ahead and put this to rest.  I apologize for not explaining here why folders are not needed IN* f-spot, but I promise you they are not.  (I posted a comment to a WIRED article months ago that explained the difference between tags and folders and how a simple change of mind is needed to make the switch.  But, today I find that all the comments on that, if not all, WIRED article[s] are gone.  AH!)  I will write an explanation of this on my blog and send a link later.

* Folders are quite useful outside of f-spot and I think that is the whole reason for the debate.

Anyway, for those of us who are transitioning from folder based organization to f-spot (which includes myself), there needs to be a tool created.  A simple shell script could be written to:
1. Perform a "find /path/to/photos -type f"
2. Create a hierarchy of tags based on the folders that are discovered in step 1.
3. Access the db and tag each photo based on it's original path.
A complementary script could be used to export photos to a folder structure based on how they are tagged or create tar or iso backups.  If navigating photos from the filesystem is the need, we use an interesting solution with MythTV.  We have a "pretty view" which is just a complex system of symlinks to the actual videofiles.  The "pretty view" is just a FS representation of what MythTV keeps in MySQL.

You seem to be horribly misinformed as to how some (if not most) people use photo managers. I want to use F-Spot _in_conjunction_ with the rest of my system, not instead of. I want F-Spot to supplement my image management, not complicate it. If I intend on using my photos outside of F-Spot, that would be rather cumbersome under your proposal. Let me state this as bluntly as I possibly can: it is extremely naive to think that the end users of F-Spot will use NO OTHER means of viewing, sharing, and organizing their photos. Photo management should make managing my photos easy, not make things impossible if I (God forbid) do things with my images outside of F-Spot.

I fully understand how tags work and I am not arguing against them. You will need to understand that this can never be "put to rest" because mashing all of my images into some special folder and database that locks the user into the tool is wrong. Tags are useful to identify information about the image that simply cannot be gleamed from filename, folder name, or date taken. Tags are useful to tie the concept, focus, or subject of the image to how the human mind operates. Tags however are not useful to store my images as they can be used in so many ways, navigating the folder structure with any other tool would be an exercise in frustration.

Not to mention step two is just a bad idea. I can only imagine the travesty F-Spot will make of my file system by applying every possible permutation of tags in order to place my images in folders according to their tags. That is most definitely two steps in the wrong direction.

The crucial first step to anyone using an application is getting beyond the initial "dipping of the toe." If F-Spot requires a complete lobotomy in order to think of things in a manner that is not logical to the end user, the end user will cease using the application. This is probably one of those issues that will turn the user to other applications such as jAlbum, digikam, or Picasa because they are much more forgiving and flexible to the end user (that provide tag support, folder browsing, and require less lock-in than F-Spot).

-Jason