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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?"
http://www.opensourcedirectory.org/projects/gphoto coll/
Found with a quick google search.
Remember, there were no nuclear weapons before women were allowed to vote.
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.
You could've hired me.
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.
Only 'flamers' flame!
Well, here are some projects that do do what you want, in one way or another.
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
-- Watch the REAL Jon Katz.
him: I want software for linux that does x
/pub/computer/nerd/my/pc/
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
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.
www.avacal.com -- the home page of pete shaw
Why not just use the filesystem to categorize pictures, and some other solution for hierarchical storage or removable media cataloging? Then, when you want to look for a picture, you just search for the directory/category name, and it'll either tell you where it is
Yes, you are oversimplifying. Big time.
I work for a newspaper. Our single greatest technological hurdle is archiving in some sort or reasonable fashion.
You'd think the Associated Press would have this figured out. They create tens of thousands of pictures a day. They have the big stick to get the system built. They had their developers create a product called 'AP Preserver'. It was to be the end-all be-all photo archive solution. After many years of trying to get it right, they dropped the product. Even with all their knowledge of the subject and a rather large check book, they couldn't get it right.
In the past, archiving photos was easy. They were physical and humanity was well versed with physical items. No longer is that the case. Digital photos are a pain in the buttocks.
Part of the problem is expectations are higher now that photos are digital. When photos were on strips of film, often times they weren't kept for more than five or ten years. Even folks who kept them longer generally didn't keep out-takes (photos not used in the newspaper).
Now, we are expected to keep every picture taken by every photographer of every event forever. Worse than that, folks want to be able to search for photos using keywords and sometimes even by what the picture looks like. (For example, if you want all the profile pictures of Bush, all you'd need to do is find a picture of Bush in profile and then feed it to the search engine and it will find the rest. (Just for clarification, when I say 'profile pictures of Bush', I mean profile pictures of President Bush and not profile pictures of hairy bush.)
The fairly large newspaper I work for creates a gig or so of photos and graphics each day (speaking only for Editorial and not Advertising). We use a product called Portfolio by Extensis. It runs on an NT server which doesn't help the AskSlashdotter in the least. We will probably use Portfolio for another couple years until CCI's MediaStore is ready for prime time.
Some will say I'm being silly by comparing a major newspaper to a guy with a digital camera. We both face the same issues of cataloging and retrieval. The only difference is that he is probably using a 60-gig harddrive and we're using a multi-terabyte array.
Anyone who thinks that archiving photos is easy has never tried.
I'm sorry to report that there are no great photo archiving solutions. Find the one that sucks the least and you have accomplished much.
Matt