> - Import should be file system based (organize by folder) and this
should be configurable.
> Pictures/2010/2010-01-01 New Year's Eve/
> or
> Pictures/2010/01/New Year's Eve
> or whatever format a user wants.
> I cannot stress how important this is. This is
required for archival purposes. You should not need Shotwell 10 years
from now to be able to view your organized photos. I should also be
able to import my pictures, organize them, and be able to browse them
intelligently in the file manager.
>
Completely
agreed. This is http://trac.yorba.org/ticket/1597 . I hope
we
can make this happen before too long.
....
Here are my usage scenarios and thoughts for import:
A. BASIC IMPORT + FILE SYSTEM RENAME
1) Import from a camera to a customizable date based structure such as
/Pictures/2010/2010-01-01/2010-01-01 001.jpg
My preference is above since it keeps the file names short and makes them distinct. When I pick and choose photos, there is no overlap with DSC0001.jpg appearing 5 times.
2) File system: the next step is to rename only the folder at the file system level to something like
/Pictures/2010/2010-01-01 New Year's/
3) the files are not renamed, they would stay as 2010-01-01 001.jpg
4) reopen Shotwell, photos are reindexed in the background based on new structure (watched folders)
Thoughts:
this is a crude approach, but must be supported as you cannot prevent users from changing filenames or directories from the filesystem. Shotwell does the heavy lifting of the initial renaming of files and organizing in the file structure. The good thing about this approach is that when using multiple cameras, it still works, by doing all the imports from all cameras first and then renaming the folders afterwards. Pictures from 2 cameras for same event are in same folder.
B. RENAME IN APP DURINGIMPORT
This is how Windows 7 Live photo gallery handles it. It is very interesting.
1) Import is started
2) Pictures are sorted and grouped based on date (they actually do a time interval in hours between shots) on screen in import window. Nothing has been imported yet.
3) Each "event" is given a name. They have an issue with how they implement this in that only thumbnails are shown in one very small size, which makes figuring out naming sometimes difficult.
4) files are imported based on date and event name to a structure such as
/Pictures/2010/2010-01-01 New Years/2010-01-01 New Years 001.jpg
Thoughts:
This works really nicely... your picture files not only have unique names, but descriptive text which can be searchable on filesystem. If you copy 10 files to share with someone, there's no guesswork as to what's in those files and they are sorted by date by virtue of natural name sorting. WOW!
The import doesn't work when you have 2 cameras though. You are forced to name events multiple times, often with different names. Hmmm.
C. RENAME FOLDER IN APP AFTER IMPORT
The import would be done first same as in A for both Cameras, but the one folder that all the pictures (from one event) went into is renamed within the app .
So we go from
/Pictures/2010/2010-01-01/2010-01-01 001.jpg (from camera 1)
/Pictures/2010/2010-01-01/2010-01-01 002.jpg (from camera 2)
to
/Pictures/2010/2010-01-01 New Years/2010-01-01 001.jpg (from camera 1)
/Pictures/2010/2010-01-01 New Years/2010-01-01 002.jpg (from camera 2)
Ideally, the this would affect the filenames as well. So it would be:
/Pictures/2010/2010-01-01 New Years/2010-01-01 New Years 001.jpg (from
camera 1)
/Pictures/2010/2010-01-01 New Years/2010-01-01 New Years 002.jpg (from
camera 2)
Simple, but effective approach.
D. MERGE FOLDERS IN APP AFTER IMPORT
To fix B's failings, it would be ideal to merge multiple folders within the app and the folder and filenames would be changed to reflect the new event name.
1) Import is done based on A or B's approach with files being either named
/Pictures/2010/2010-01-01/
/Pictures/2010/2010-01-01 New Years/
2) folders are merged. Select 2 folders, merge files. The first folder's name is used (a prompt possibly asks for new folder name)
3) files are merged together and naming is updated to follow the folder convention appending 001.jpg, 002.jpg, etc.
So, there are several things to consider on import
- custom folder structure
- custom renaming of files to be unique across library (however original filenames should be supported too eg. DSC0001.jpg)
- renaming of files to be descriptive and match folder naming
- renaming of folders/files from within app
- app being aware of renaming of folders/files in filesystem (as in watched folders)
- merging folders from same events, but different cameras that ended up in different folders
Hopefully this gives some food for thought. This problem is difficult to implement well when giving consideration to all above points.
Thank you.
Lu Timdale
lutimdale at yahoo.com