On Wed, 2010-09-29 at 11:25 -0700, Jim Nelson wrote: > With the current release of Shotwell (0.7.2), you are correct -- the > organizational data you've associated with the photos (as well as any > transformations you've made) would be lost. When you run Shotwell, > all the photos you've moved will appear in the "Missing Files" page. > > In Shotwell 0.8, we're implementing additional features to deal with > how your photos are stored on disk. It will attempt to find files > that have been moved (to a different directory and/or renamed) and > re-associate that file with the photo in the database -- no > information lost. If Shotwell detects that the photo has been altered > (i.e. by an outside image editor), Shotwell will do an in-place > reimport; you won't lose tags or events, but you will lose image edits > (i.e. enhance, crop) because those transformations were made against a > different image.
Thanks for your patient attention to my queries, Jim. In general, I tend not to overwrite the original files, but save successive versions as IMG000 draft01.jpg, IMG000 draf02.jpg etc. (Overcautious, perhaps, but I'm hopeful that my skills at improving images will themselves improve, and I may come back to an original image later and do a better job of it). I understand that Shotwell won't notice these edited versions unless I re-import the directory they're contained in, although this would be a helpful feature. > > Neither of these quite solves your problem because Shotwell 0.8 > currently only does these things in your library directory (i.e. > ~/Pictures, or whatever you've got set in your Shotwell Preferences > dialog). If you move the photos outside of the library directory, > then Shotwell will treat them as Missing Files. I haven't imported any files into this directory so far, because of familiarity with the existing structure of my image file directories. > > I think what you're asking for is one of two things. One would be to > allow Shotwell to expand it's scope of what a library directory can be > -- multiple directories, perhaps, or allowing you to place a symbolic > link in your Pictures directory that Shotwell honors. I'm only a couple of months into my migration to Ubuntu from Windows, so my knowledge of symbolic links is negligible. If I understand the idea correctly, it's possible in linux to have the same file apparently stored in more than one directory, but actually have only one copy of the file stored on disc, with entries in all but the "true" directory simply pointing to the single copy. I'd imagine that the operating system itself would handle the links appropriately if the file they're pointing to is moved. If this is the case, keeping symbolic links in ~/pictures would work well, provided linux is invoked to move the files about. I'm thinking, for example, of moving all the images taken by a particular camera with unique filenames into a single directory from the individual directories they were original imported into from the camera, either by dragging and dropping or using a shell script. > The other thing I think you're suggesting (in your last paragraph) is > that Shotwell does the file moving for you. > > Is this what you're asking for? I'm trying to work out exactly what > use-case you're envisioning here. This would be a way of keeping Shotwell in the driving seat when files are being moved around - using some kind of internal file manager whose activities would be monitored and appropriate adjustments then made to the Shotwell database. I'm thinking of two different scenarios: 1. Tidying up and consolidation of the directory tree of image files. 2. Moving files around to cope with hard discs filling up or needing replacement. >From a logical point of view these are the same activity - only the scale is different. Michael > > -- Jim > > On Wed, Sep 29, 2010 at 2:09 AM, Michael Hendry > <[email protected]> wrote: > Apologies if this has been dealt with already - I've browsed > the archive > for similar queries, but found none. > > I have my images organised in various directories and > subdirectories, > but moved most of these directories into a single "Pictures" > folder > before importing them to Shotwell recently. > > Many files need to stay in their original directories, because > the > directory name indicates which 35mm film the scanned images > came from, > and the filenames are IMG001.jpg, IMG002.jpg to indicate the > negative > numbers, but I also have a lot of files imported from my Nikon > D70 which > are uniquely names, but which have been imported by Nikon > software into > a new subdirectory for each upload. These could all be moved > into a > single D70 directory. > > As well as simple housekeeping like this, there will come a > time when I > outgrow the USB drive I currently use, or when it needs > replacement. > > If I understand the setup correctly, if I move any file from > the > directory it was in when imported by Shotwell, that I will > lose all the > tagging information attached to it by Shotwell, and that the > file would > have to be re-imported and tagged again. > > The mass movement of the directory structure to a new hard > disc could > presumably be covered by a relative simple database operation, > but > simpler housekeeping using this method is likely to be tedious > and > error-prone. > > I'd favour putting Shotwell in charge of the management of > this sort of > housekeeping on the directory structure which contains the > images - is > this feasible? > > Michael > > _______________________________________________ > Shotwell mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.yorba.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/shotwell > _______________________________________________ Shotwell mailing list [email protected] http://lists.yorba.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/shotwell
