photo import program (gnome)

robin_listas · May 19, 2011, 8:20pm

Hi,

I bought recently a small digital camera. I had to, even though I have a
good 35 mm film reflex camera. Film photography becomes expensive.

Fortunately, the memory card can be easily read by my laptop, gnome offers
to start g-photo, this one imports the photos and videos… good.

Almost.

In 11.2 both my photos and videos were imported. Now in 11.4 only photos.

Can I make it import videos again? How?

It is a nuisance to import them with nautilus or mc.

Another question.

The photos are imported in a tree, having folders for years, another level
for month, another for days. I would prefer all of them in the same flat
folder.

Is it possible?

Alternatively, what other tool can I use in Gnome for importing and
manipulating photos?

–
Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 11.2 x86_64 “Emerald” at Telcontar)

robin_listas · May 20, 2011, 2:33pm

On 2011-05-19 20:20, Carlos E. R. wrote:

Ping!

–
Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 11.2 x86_64 “Emerald” at Telcontar)

martin_helm · May 20, 2011, 2:46pm

I do not know g-phot, so I cannot answer your first questions. But as you
also asked for alternatives, there is F-Spot for the gnome desktop
(http://f-spot.org/) available from the standard repos, I do not use it
myself so you need to check if it fits.

robin_listas · May 20, 2011, 3:06pm

On 2011-05-20 14:46, martin_helm wrote:
> I do not know g-phot, so I cannot answer your first questions. But as you
> also asked for alternatives, there is F-Spot for the gnome desktop
> (http://f-spot.org/) available from the standard repos, I do not use it
> myself so you need to check if it fits.

Argh! I got confused. It is f-spot indeed what I’m using. There is no g-photo.

–
Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 11.2 x86_64 “Emerald” at Telcontar)

DenverD · May 20, 2011, 3:13pm

try digiKam… it downloads both photos and video for me…
(well, i’ve not used it on 11.4 yet, so . . .)

–
dd CAVEAT: http://is.gd/bpoMD
[NNTP via openSUSE 11.4 [2.6.37.6-0.5] + KDE 4.6.0 + Thunderbird 3.1.10]
Dual booting with Sluggish Loser7 on Acer Aspire One D255

djh-novell · May 20, 2011, 3:16pm

Carlos E. R. wrote:
> On 2011-05-20 14:46, martin_helm wrote:
>> I do not know g-phot, so I cannot answer your first questions. But as you
>> also asked for alternatives, there is F-Spot for the gnome desktop
>> (http://f-spot.org/) available from the standard repos, I do not use it
>> myself so you need to check if it fits.
>
> Argh! I got confused. It is f-spot indeed what I’m using. There is no g-photo.

Well I use f-spot and my photos are arranged as I want them. It doesn’t
move them when I import. But I don’t use it to import from the camera,
because I prefer cp!

I don’t think it does video, but I may be mistaken.

On an older system I used to use digikam, which I think was slightly
more friendly*, but I don’t want to have to load all the KDE stuff on
this system just to get it.

For example, digikam used to include all the photos in my Pictures
directory, without having to explicitly import each new batch, IIRC.

robin_listas · May 20, 2011, 3:50pm

On 2011-05-20 15:13, DenverD wrote:
>
> try digiKam… it downloads both photos and video for me…
> (well, i’ve not used it on 11.4 yet, so . . .)

Ah, the kde app. I may have to do that.

In the laptop I don’t have kde, to save space. I would use the desktop for
that, if I first buy a gadget to plug the memory card.

–
Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 11.2 x86_64 “Emerald” at Telcontar)

robin_listas · May 20, 2011, 4:03pm

On 2011-05-20 15:16, Dave Howorth wrote:
> Carlos E. R. wrote:

> Well I use f-spot and my photos are arranged as I want them. It doesn’t
> move them when I import. But I don’t use it to import from the camera,
> because I prefer cp!

Ah, plain copy, so that it is you who sorts the photos. I will have to do
that. Mount manually, import manually. Sigh.

> I don’t think it does video, but I may be mistaken.

It did the import, and I could see the photos with the video inserted in
between. It does not edit the video, but that’s fine. In 11.2 it worked.

Now it doesn’t even display the videos that “he himself” imported a month ago.

> On an older system I used to use digikam, which I think was slightly
> more friendly*, but I don’t want to have to load all the KDE stuff on
> this system just to get it.

That’s what I don’t want in the laptop. I will try and see what
dependencies it wants to install just for digikam.

–
Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 11.2 x86_64 “Emerald” at Telcontar)

DenverD · May 20, 2011, 5:42pm

On 05/20/2011 04:03 PM, Carlos E. R. wrote:

> Ah, plain copy, so that it is you who sorts the photos. I will have to do
> that. Mount manually, import manually. Sigh.

i think there is something called a ‘script’ that could do all the hard,
manual parts for you…

–
dd CAVEAT: http://is.gd/bpoMD
[NNTP via openSUSE 11.4 [2.6.37.6-0.5] + KDE 4.6.0 + Thunderbird 3.1.10]
Dual booting with Sluggish Loser7 on Acer Aspire One D255

robin_listas · May 21, 2011, 12:03am

On 2011-05-20 17:42, DenverD wrote:
> On 05/20/2011 04:03 PM, Carlos E. R. wrote:
>
>> Ah, plain copy, so that it is you who sorts the photos. I will have to do
>> that. Mount manually, import manually. Sigh.
>
> i think there is something called a ‘script’ that could do all the hard,
> manual parts for you…

Indeed, that is possible.

I have noticed that f-spot in 11.2 imports the videos, but puts all of them
in year/month/day, corresponding to the current day. All the videos in the
same (wrong) folder.

I have tried to manually import the photos. The problem is that then F-Spot
does not sees them! You can tell it to import them from hard disk, and then
it redistributes all of them (except videos) into year/month/days/ folders.

I’m trying Digikam (oS 11.2). I have no idea how to tell it that the photos
are somewhere in the hard disk. Ah, yes I see it. It wants to import them
to an “album”.

There is no quick button to rotate a photo, and it does so by
re-compressing instead of just changing the rotate info (exif). The size of
the file changes by half - this is incorrect!!!

In f-spot I simply mark a dozen photos, click rotate quick buttom, and they
are rotated in a split second.

Deleting and trying again … it crashes while importing! What else can you
expect from a KDE4 program… :-/ Sorry, that’s the reason I don’t use
kde: it crashes on me. On several computers, even with new installs. Call
it bad luck if you wish. :-}

Ok, importing again. Ah, now I see a menu option to adjust exif orientation
info… explained in text, no icon with an arrow to show how it will be
rotated! Grrr!

Dunno… I did everything I wanted to do with Digikam. Usability experience
is worse than in F-Spot. True, it is more powerful, but the task I do most
(rotate) is hidden deep.

–
Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 11.2 x86_64 “Emerald” at Telcontar)

ken_yap · May 21, 2011, 2:27am

robin_listas:

I’m trying Digikam (oS 11.2). I have no idea how to tell it that the photos
are somewhere in the hard disk. Ah, yes I see it. It wants to import them
to an “album”.

There is no quick button to rotate a photo, and it does so by
re-compressing instead of just changing the rotate info (exif). The size of
the file changes by half - this is incorrect!!!

In f-spot I simply mark a dozen photos, click rotate quick buttom, and they
are rotated in a split second.

Deleting and trying again … it crashes while importing! What else can you
expect from a KDE4 program… :-/ Sorry, that’s the reason I don’t use
kde: it crashes on me. On several computers, even with new installs. Call
it bad luck if you wish. :-}

Ok, importing again. Ah, now I see a menu option to adjust exif orientation
info… explained in text, no icon with an arrow to show how it will be
rotated! Grrr!

Hmm, dunno about the version in 11.2, but in mine you can certainly rotate from the preview, there are a couple of circular arrows. Maybe it’s not in your version?

Also I suspect that whether or not an EXIF rotate depends on what version EXIF data the camera put in. I think older EXIF versions didn’t support orientation info. If you are allowed to bump the EXIF version then you can do an EXIF rotate. But not all photo viewers will take into account the EXIF data. So a JPEG rotate is always safe, but an EXIF rotate is more efficient. It shouldn’t be half the size though, but around the same size. BTW a JPEG rotate is non-lossy, see man page for jpegtran. Also recent cameras, except perhaps the cheap ones, have orientation detectors to fill in that EXIF field which is nice.

And I haven’t had your bad luck with KDE3 or KDE4, so I can’t comment on that.

robin_listas · May 21, 2011, 3:03am

On 2011-05-21 02:36, ken yap wrote:

> Hmm, dunno about the version in 11.2, but in mine you can certainly
> rotate from the preview, there are a couple of circular arrows. Maybe
> it’s not in your version?

I just added the exif rotate buttons to the toolbar. That’s one of the good
things of KDE

The bad is that it crashed on me again.

The tool bar has names so long that it takes all of my display.

> BTW a JPEG rotate is non-lossy, see man page for
> jpegtran.

That’s interesting, I didn’t know that. But I doubt that all programs that
do such a transformation do it that way. It would be nice that they’d say
when saving an image wether the transformations I did were lossles or not.

> Also recent cameras, except perhaps the cheap ones, have
> orientation detectors to fill in that EXIF field which is nice.

Ha! Mine is of the cheap type :-}

> And I haven’t had your bad luck with KDE3 or KDE4, so I can’t comment
> on that.

X’-)

If everybody had my luck with KDE, the devs would hide in holes, in shame

–
Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 11.2 x86_64 “Emerald” at Telcontar)

robin_listas · May 21, 2011, 3:20am

On 2011-05-21 00:03, Carlos E. R. wrote:

F-Spot

> I have tried to manually import the photos. The problem is that then F-Spot
> does not sees them! You can tell it to import them from hard disk, and then
> it redistributes all of them (except videos) into year/month/days/ folders.

The trick is, when importing, to clear the tick for making a copy in ~/Photos.

Digikam

> Ok, importing again. Ah, now I see a menu option to adjust exif orientation
> info… explained in text, no icon with an arrow to show how it will be
> rotated! Grrr!

The buttons can be added to the toolbar. However, the buttons have no icon.

What I have not managed to do with Digikam is to “use” a folder of photos
without importing them (because they are already in the HD, for example).

This means having a set of photos for F-Spot, and another for Digikam

–
Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 11.2 x86_64 “Emerald” at Telcontar)

dragonbite · May 21, 2011, 4:44am

Has anybody mentioned Shotwell? Outside of openSUSE Gnome, which is heavy on the Mono-based apps like F-Spot and Banshee, distributions that are using Gnome have been moving to Shotwell and it has been getting better. I think the latest version includes video import as well.

While Shotwell stores in the same yyyy/mm/dd directory structure, when looking through your albums in shotwell you have the option to change the name to something more meaningful. This only is being changed in the database and doesn’t actually change the directory structure, plus it keeps the pictures in their same location in the folder tree navigator. Combined with the large visible “snapshot” images for each day and it really isn’t all that bad.

I started off with F-Spot, then went to DigiKam and am now settling with Shotwell for now. My uses it too and the visual view of days helps her quite a bit.

The other one I have fooled around with is Google’s Picasa. I would prefer a Linux-native program instead of one that runs in Wine, but overall it works pretty well too. My favorite feature is being able to auto-scan a location so you don’t have to “import” anything.

Those are the ones I know at this point. I’d be interested in what other people think or know of.

robin_listas · May 21, 2011, 9:50pm

On 2011-05-21 05:06, dragonbite wrote:
>
> Has anybody mentioned Shotwell? Outside of openSUSE Gnome, which is
> heavy on the Mono-based apps like F-Spot and Banshee, distributions that
> are using Gnome have been moving to Shotwell and it has been getting
> better. I think the latest version includes video import as well.

I have been looking at it after reading your post.

I was just now doing tests. I inserted the card, then clicked on “safely
remove”, and inserted it again: not recognized. I had to reboot.

Ok, this second time import from Shotwell sees all the photos. Previously
it only saw one. And now the videos are shown in context with the photos
(before they did not, when I imported from F-spot).

The rotate button is only one, rotate right. There is no rotate left
button, and no way to add it - which is typical of Gnome apps, they are not
very configurable. At least, there is a shortkey for them (ctrl-R,
ctrl-shift-R).

The left panel displays dates of the photos, and you see only one day, or
month, or year, or all. But you have to click on them, no shortkey.

And, if you select to see one whole month or year, photos are displayed
with rounded corners! Why!?

Ah, no, you see only one photo of each day. So the rounded corners are to
remind me that they are not all. To see all photos you have to click on
left panel: Photos.

If I edit the tittle of a photo, the filename dissapears from the display.
The filename does not change, though. I see no way to see all the exif info.

The window to display photos enlarged in F-Spot is better.

I can tell F-Spot to import photos from folder (~/Pictures/Year/*) without
making a second copy. The rotation holds. So I can then use both programs:
import fron camera with Shotwell (because it imports videos), and from
folder with F-Spot.

Looking good!

Titles defined in shotwell do not show in f-spot.

The quick editor in F-Spot is better: quick filters for crop, red-eye, etc.
It also offers to keep the orginal intact.

> While Shotwell stores in the same yyyy/mm/dd directory structure, when
> looking through your albums in shotwell you have the option to change
> the name to something more meaningful.

Albums? I did not see “albums” in the menu.

> This only is being changed in
> the database and doesn’t actually change the directory structure, plus
> it keeps the pictures in their same location in the folder tree
> navigator. Combined with the large visible “snapshot” images for each
> day and it really isn’t all that bad.

No, it is not bad.

There is another trick to have all the photos in the same folder: create
hardlinks from the year structure, for each photo, to another flat
structure. A script can create all the links.

–
Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 11.2 x86_64 “Emerald” at Telcontar)

dragonbite · May 22, 2011, 5:21am

Sorry, I called it an album, and Shotwell calls it an “Event”. By right-clicking on the date you can “Rename Event” can call it whatever you want and it will show in Shotwell only as that.