Re: [tlug] Photo organizers

[Lyle H Saxon <llletters@example.com>]

On Thu, Jul 5, 2012 at 7:44 AM, David J Iannucci
<jlinux@example.com> wrote:
> Does anyone have any thoughts on Shotwell vs. Picasa vs. F-Spot vs.
> digikam vs. ???

I've been using Gwenview for no better reason than it was already
there, but it works well enough for thumbnail views, rotating, batch
deleting, etc.  One minor irritation is that the only way to proceed
through a batch of pictures (looking at each picture in full-screen
size) is with the [Space] bar and [Backspace] key.  I don't know why
the arrow keys and [Page Up] and [Page Down] keys aren't used by the
program.  When I have to do editing of an individual picture, I right
click on a thumbnail image (it works with full-size images as well)
and open that image in Gimp.

> I have for ages and ages needed a convenient photo organizer. Nothing
> too "pro"... just something really good at taking pics off a camera,
> organizing, tagging, rotating, mass deletion, renaming, exporting in zip
> files for sharing or whatever, uploading to popular sites.

About zip... if the pictures are typical .jpg files form a typical
camera, then zipping them is basically meaningless, unless having a
same total size single file is preferable to having the same total
size in several individual files.  .jpg files from most cameras are
already heavily compressed and zipping them tends to make almost no
difference at all.  But... with high-end cameras and increasingly even
with cheap cameras, the manufacturers are dialing back the amount of
jpg compression to get better picture quality, and I would presume (I
haven't tested this) that more lightly compressed jpg images probably
do shrink more when zipped.

As for organizing the pictures, I'm not sure what to say.  I organize
mine manually and don't want to leave that up to software.  An easy
way to keep track of photos without relying on software to do it for
you, is to load pictures from your camera(s) into folders with
six-digit date codes, like 120705 for today (yr-mn-dy so they sort in
chronological order until the year 2100 - or go to eight digits if
that's not long enough) and follow that with something about the
contents, like 120705_JohnBirthday_Roppongi.  It can make for
disgustingly long file names, but you can keep track of your pictures
that way without locking yourself into one application's sorting
features, and the files (in logically named folders) will be easily
understood by the next generation(s) (assuming you want to pass the
data along), and easily used with whatever software.

Incidentally, I have a question - can someone recommend a good way to
batch-rename files?  (The file names generated by cameras are usually
meaningless beyond being chronological, and sometimes they're not even
chronological with a large batch!)

Lyle