GNU Photo Archiving software?

jonr asks: "After I got my Olympus E-100RS camera, I have been enjoying photography again. I now take on average dozens photos a day. Now the problem is ever growing photo collection. I found an excellent archiving software, IMatch but I'm looking for something similar to run under Linux. Folders and sub-folders are are just not cutting it. IMatch allows me to put my photos in a category tree, e.g. a photo of my dog could be placed in Family/Pets and Animals/Dogs. It also has off-line archiving, a must have for growing collection. Now does anybody know of a tool or a collection of tools for this?"

Comments

Re:Am I oversimplifying the problem here?

[renehollan]

Perhaps creative use of symlinks wasn't considered? That would relieve the limitation of a single hierarchical key for a given image. Careful renaming and relinking when off-line migration takes place would take care of on-line vs. off-line issues. However, there are still some problems with this:

While it leverages filesystem tools, it isn't user friendly: one still needs some kind of app to tie it all together (and answer questions like, "Under what other keys is this image also indexed?"). I call this the "reverse-symlink" problem: what are the symlinks to a given cannonical file name?

Also, symlinks to symlinks (keys to on-line version to possibly off-line nfs-mountable media) tend to add inefficiency, although I don't reall see two levels as all that problematic.

Still, it does look like a quick and dirty poor-man's hack. Don't give up on the simple and obvious just yet.

Re:Come on, this question is soo lame

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, Please. show me some awk that will find every picture sorted by shoot date, black-and-white, done for a particular client. And tag for me the ones most recently accessed.

Note that I said "shoot" date, not file creation date. Real software for this type of task is database-driven and is what pro photographers need to maintain thousands of files, and be able to search them and subsearch them.

ln -s that.

gqview and konqueror

[josepha48]

I use gqview as it allows me to view files from my webcam or digital camera and rename them by right clicking on the file and also allows me to move them around and create directories. It works pretty well. Then when I want to preview a directory or a cdrom I have made from them, I use konqueror and have a directory of thumbnails in seconds. (I have a very fast machine with loads of RAM).

I can't think of anything better. I also have some directories that have over 1000 files in them, and using konqueror to view the thumbnails works like a charm.

I really can't think of why you'd need any other software to create a directory for you based on what you want to list the files under when it is so easy to do it in gqview. I.E. File -> new directory , then select files and then right click and move them to your directory. I guess by naming them as a category this save a step or two, but its really insignificant IMHO.

Here we go

[n8willis]

*sigh* Yet another Ask Slashdot where "How do I do X?" gets greeted with a slew of non-answers refusing to even consider the question at hand. "You don't need to do that!" "I've never done it, but why would anyone need to?" "Don't. Do something else!"

Well, here are some projects that do do what you want, in one way or another.

• photoseek.sourceforge.net
  
• gpc.sourceforge.net
  
• www.menalto.com/projects/gallery
  
• photoarch.sourceforge.net
  
• photo.sourceforge.net
  
• liw.iki.fi/liw/lodju
  
• www.seindal.dk/rene/software/sights

Photoseek, Lodju and GPC are the only ones that are not designed to be web-interface only. Several of the numerous "web gallery" packages have good indexing capabilities, but are primarily geared at presentation, not cataloging.

The non-Web-gallery programs are all relatively young-in-the-lifecycle projects. Although GPC seems to be the furthest along, my initial experience with Photoseek was better -- but it has been so long since a release that I'm not sure how healthy development is.

Don't listen to anybody who suggests that you do it all by hand with flat files. They've never tried.

Nate

what he have here is a failure to communicate

[peteshaw]

him: I want software for linux that does x

them1: software, shmoftware! Linux users are men! Write a script! Bootstrap the damn thing!

them2: I tore apart a sega dreamcast and converted my 27" jamma console into a multimedia photo archival unit. Check out the links here

them3: Why in gods name would you want to archive something as stupid as photos anyway? I just take pictures of my computer, and put them in a directory called /pub/computer/nerd/my/pc/

The question is not why or when or how but Is there any software available! Jeesh guys, its a simple question.

Of course, I don't know the answer to that question either, so file this one under a troll I guess.