[Techtalk] photo collection management software

[John Sturdy]

On Mon, Jan 21, 2013 at 7:06 PM, Akkana Peck <akkana at shallowsky.com> wrote:

> Please, extend pho! (Not that I'm biased or anything. :-)
>
> Pho does handle tagging (keywords mode, which gives output you can
> paste into text Keywords files; it doesn't get write to the Keywords
> file directly but I've been wanting to add that).  I use it for all
> my tagging.  I'm not totally satisfied with the UI, but I haven't
> come up with a better idea, and I'd love to hear suggestions for
> better ways to do it.

OK, now I've tried using it (I was just going by the documentation
before, and hadn't noticed keywords mode).  I'm pretty sure that
hacking this will be the way to go for what I want.

>  I'd also love to get help supporting
> directory trees and otherwise improving directory navigation.
>
> But I'm also very interested to hear how other apps do this, so I
> hope some other people chime in. I don't much like the iPhoto-type
> model, where you have a big window showing lots of thumbnails, and
> all the data is saved in an opaque database that only works with
> that one app and can't be migrated to anything else.  Most of the
> Linux photo organization apps seem to be copying that model (which
> is why I've kept hacking pho all these years). But there must be a
> few programs that use other models.

You mention "keywords file" above, do you mean the same format that
pho outputs (or rather, the part of it other than rotate commands
etc)?

As someone who lives in emacs, I was thinking of using an org-mode
file, with a bottom-level heading for each file, and org-mode labels
for the labels.

But whatever the file format is, I'd suggest being able to preload the
keywords from it, and write them back to it afterwards.  I'm happy to
have a go at this myself.

> What's the most efficient way to
> deal with five years' worth of uncategorized photos, or returning
> from a vacation where you shot 2000 photos?

I'd like something where I can categorize a run of related photos with
at most one keystroke per photo --- I'd probably put that onto the
return key, so the space bar means "go on to next photo" and return
means "tag this photo the same as the previous one, and go on to the
next one".  (Or is this already there but not in the help messages?)

If there were a thumbnail window, I'd want something like emacs'
numeric prefix, so I could tell it "tag the next 12 photos the same as
the previous one", and thus have even fewer keystrokes and be even
faster!

And the other thing I've thought of so far would be to have a
file-level rename command.

__John