Ubuntu
shotwell package

directory view

Asked by Steve Poppers

I need to organize a lot of pictures. Within the chaos I have are some directories that should not be separated. They should continue to act as a group for the most part. Comics. And several things I've already organized in a manner I like. I'm mainly trying to switch to tags to make searching the contents of those comics and the rest of the chaos easier. But it's going to be really difficult to tag what I've organized if it's broken up in the manner Shotwell breaks up a directory when importing. I would find it a LOT easier if Shotwell would let me view the filesystem as it's already organized. Am I not finding the setting or is this not possible at all? If it's not possible, I don't see myself using Shotwell for long.

Question information

Language:
English Edit question
Status:
Solved
For:
Ubuntu shotwell Edit question
Assignee:
No assignee Edit question
Solved by:
Laura Khalil
Solved:
Last query:
Last reply:
Revision history for this message
Best Laura Khalil (loura) said : 		#1

Hi Steve,

Thanks for your note. Currently, when Shotwell imports files, it places them in an Event whose name corresponds to the date the photo was taken. Once imported, you can then choose to rename the Event, move files around and add tags to make searching easier.

Shotwell does not copy the same directories you may have set up on your computer. This is a known issue and has been reported upstream. You can follow this issue at: http://redmine.yorba.org/issues/2108.

Let me know if you have any further questions.

Revision history for this message
Steve Poppers (stevepoppers) said : 		#2

Thanks. Sadly, that hasn't been updated in six months, but I didn't realize I'd somehow gotten off the shotwell site and ended up so far downstream. Sorry.

Revision history for this message
Wesley Werner (wesley-werner) said : 		#3

The advantages of using a event-based organization system for photos is obvious, for new collections of photos, but brings some major issues with existing collections of photos.

Particularly if your friend has over 15,000 photos and you cannot rely on dates as their camera's date was not set properly when the photos were taken (hey, not everybody is tech savvy).

A simple directory-to-event mapping would suffice :-)

Revision history for this message
Adam Dingle (adam-yorba) said : 		#4

Right. On the Shotwell team we also have mixed feelings about Shotwell's event model, and are considering changes to align it more closely with the file system. See the ticket Laura mentioned above, and also http://redmine.yorba.org/issues/3549 .

A more radical change would be to eliminate events entirely in favor of a directory tree (http://redmine.yorba.org/issues/1594) plus a time tree (http://redmine.yorba.org/issues/2747) and/or timeline view (http://redmine.yorba.org/issues/2195). That's also something we're considering.