Hi,
Like most people with a digital camera, I've amassed thousands of photos
on my hard disk. Viewing them with "xv", my trusty but long-in-the-tooth
image viewer, has become unwieldy, if not damn near impossible. I also really
miss the possibility to *search* on my photos without going over all the
pictures every time - something which I find myself doing very often for
various occasions.
So basically, I'm looking for a photo management application for Linux.
Something like Picassa would have been a good start, but not good enough,
as you'll see below in my wish-list. I also tried f-spot and it's not good
enough. So I was wondering, maybe the wise people of this list can recommend
a good photo management application for Linux?
Here is my wishlist for a photo manager. In fact, I'm wishing for these
features so much, that I'm itching to write one myself... (but I hope it
doesn't have to get to that).
1. I don't want any sort of vendor lock-in, forcing me to stay with a certain
application once I choose it. Therefore:
a. The photo manager should be able to work on a normal filesystem
hierarchy of photos, neither ruining it nor making a complete copy.
b. Whichever metadata the photo manager wants to save (like tags - see
below) it should save in an open, simple and potentially-standard file
format.
Not in an uber-complex database, and not (given 1a) to the photo files
themselves. Picasa and f-spot both fail in this regard - I didn't manage
to extract the meta-data I save in them to any readable format.
2. The application should allow me to easily and quickly browse all my photos
in different sizes (like in picassa).
3. The application should allow me to add textual descriptions and "tags"
to pictures, and have a full-featured text search engine to search these.
For example, I can add to each picture tags specifying the persons in the
picture, location of the picture, and so on, and then, for example, search
for all pictures containing a specific person. F-spot's tags are a good
start, while Picassa's folders are a worthless disaster. But remember 1b -
these tags need to be saved in a simple format, not in a propriatary
database. I don't want to spend hours to type tags in, and then be unable
to use them if I switch software. I don't loose my C code if I switch from
VI to Emacs!
4. Bonus points for some automatically-generated "tags" based on dates,
camera, colors, and other information obtainable from the picture files.
5. I want a digital photo manager, not a digital camera manager, and not a
sophisticated photo editor - for which separate applications are available.
6. Bonus points for an application that doubles as (or is only) a Web-
application - allowing others to "log in" to the application over the web,
and see my pictures according to access controls I specify (e.g., I can
say that a specific person can only see pictures with some specific tag).
Extra bonus points for a Web application that can host picture collection
uploaded by several users, allow them to manage their own photos and others
so see only some (as above), and perhaps help with the tagging task. I'm
looking for something small, though, not something capable of running a
huge site like as flickr.com.
So, can anyone point me to a good (according to my definition of good ;-))
digital photo manager? Or shall I be forced to write one myself?
--
Nadav Har'El | Tuesday, Aug 7 2007, 24 Av 5767
[EMAIL PROTECTED] |-----------------------------------------
Phone +972-523-790466, ICQ 13349191 |A fine is a tax for doing wrong. A tax is
http://nadav.harel.org.il |a fine for doing well.
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