[Shotwell] Shotwell - Thoughts on work-flow and extensions

[Bruno Girin]

On Mon, 2010-05-24 at 08:16 -0700, Adam Dingle wrote:
> On 05/23/2010 05:35 AM, Chris Lindsay wrote:
> > Hi,
> > Let me introduce myself, my name is Chris Lindsay and I would class
> > myself as an Enthusiast Photographer.
> >    
> 
> Great - we like enthusiasts.  :)

Cool, I'll introduce myself too :-)

My name is Bruno Girin and I am an amateur photographer and experienced
Java developer and architect. I got interested in Shotwell for the same
reason as Chris, namely that Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick is planning to
replace F-Spot with Shotwell.

So far, I registered on Trac, downloaded the trunk SVN and built
Shotwell from source. I haven't really had the opportunity to try it out
but I had a look through the source code to see what Vala looked like
and how complex it was. And I must say that I am pleasantly surprised:
coming from a Java background, Vala seems very easy to follow and the
Shotwell source code is one of the clearest I've seen in a long time.

I would be very interested in contributing to Shotwell development first
by helping fix bugs and hopefully later contributing new features. What
easy bugs would people recommend I look at to get started?

I am also a member of the Ubuntu BugSquad team and am willing to help
with the interaction between Ubuntu and Shotwell in triaging and
resolving bugs.

> 
> > Ok, sorry for my longish lead in, but yesterday I read Shotwell would
> > replace F-spot on Ubuntu 10.10. So I start to investigate Shotwell
> > again after dismissing due to a lack of Raw support, which I see is
> > coming in 0.6!
> >
> > I am impressed with Shotwell and with Raw support and the other
> > additions in the pipeline will be a very usable photo manager.
> >    
> 
> Thanks!  I'll warn you now that the RAW support in 0.6 will be somewhat 
> limited.  In particular, you mentioned that you shoot RAW+JPEG.  In 
> Shotwell 0.6, if you import RAW and JPEG files from a camera together 
> they will simply appear side by side as two separate photos in your 
> library.  We hope to be able to treat RAW+JPEG pairs as a single photo 
> before long (see http://trac.yorba.org/ticket/1772 ) but I currently 
> believe that feature will not be in 0.6.
> 
> > My Workflow using Shotwell...
> >
> > 1, A days photographing in RAW + JPG
> > 2, Upload images from camera via Shotwell
> >       - Tag images
> >       - define naming convention with date/ location etc. (extension)
> >    
> 
> Right; this is http://trac.yorba.org/ticket/1942 .
> 
> >       - allow copies to be saved to external HD at same time for backup
> > (extension)
> >    
> 
> A reasonable idea; I've created a ticket for this at 
> http://trac.yorba.org/ticket/1963 .
> 
> > 3, Once imported images can be edited (non-destructively) within
> > Shotwell or in Raw processing app (preferably if choice not tying user
> > into a specific app, through settings, this could also be added as an
> > extension)
> > 4, Edited externally in for example Gimp. In this case a copy of image
> > would be opened in external edit to preserve original. Edited image
> > saved back into Shotwell as a revision of original.
> >    
> 
> Right.  Shotwell 0.6 will allow you to open photos in an external 
> editor.  We're working on implementing this now.  You'll be able to 
> specify both an external JPEG editor (e.g. Gimp) and also an external 
> RAW editor (e.g. UFRaw) to use for editing photos.
> 
> > 5, Finally edited images can be published to social networking sites,
> > web based galleries or emailed etc.
> >
> > These are of course just my thoughts, but I believe this type of
> > functionally would allow Shotwell to do what it does well, without
> > trying to do everything poorly. As much as the majority of people only
> > want an application which stores their images for easy review, basic
> > edited and enhancements before publishing to their favourite social
> > networking site or web based gallery. The addition of various more
> > advance features in the form of extensions would allow advanced or
> > users to still use and enjoy Shotwell as part of their work-flow.
> >    
> 
> Thanks again for the feedback.  We really appreciate hearing about 
> people's entire workflow and I hope we can continue to improve Shotwell 
> to make it work well for you and other enthusiasts.  :)

I have a very similar workflow:
     1. Take pictures (mostly JPEG, sometimes RAW as well);
     2. Connect the camera and load pictures onto my laptop;
     3. Do basic corrections (stretch contrast, remove dust marks, etc);
     4. Add tags and metadata;
     5. Optionally, save a copy onto an external HDD (in particular when
        I am travelling and can be away from home for several weeks);
     6. When home, save a copy on a file server. That file server then
        holds the master version of all my images and is backed up.
        Ideally, I would like to be able to do that by having several
        libraries: a local one on the laptop, a remote one on the
        server;
     7. Publish some of the pictures to Flickr or Facebook.

Other features that I would be interested in but that are not on the
Shotwell roadmap and would probably be better delivered as plugins or
external tools:
      * Create an HDR image from several identical shots that only
        differ in exposure compensation;
      * Load data from a GPS device, synchronise against timestamps and
        use GPS data to add geo-location tags to pictures;
      * Add simple annotations to pictures.

Cheers,

Bruno