[Digikam-devel] Re: Versioning, but not editing in digiKam

[Mikkel Bækhøj Christensen]

On Fri, 2010-11-05 at 14:58 +0100, Marcel Wiesweg wrote:
> 
> > Is the versioning metadata structure expected to be usable for images
> > that are not edited within digiKam? 
> 
> We plan to allow adding such relation manually, that is connect original with 
> result and allow a free-text description.
> There were some idea to provide a copy, start gimp on it, and add the relation 
> automatically when gimp closed.
> 
> > What about merging of multiple
> > images such as a panorama or simply getting all of your uncooperative
> > pets into a single 'shot' digitally?
> 
> Yes, multiple parents is possible. In the easiest case, there is a list of 
> source photos for a single image. It's a bit difficult to display that in a 
> treeview, because it's no more a strict tree, but the backend should be 
> prepared.
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I am very excited about the versioning feature. I think it is a very,
very significant step towards being a complete tool for image workflows.

For versioning with external tools such as the Gimp, I think the
solution is obvious. Now we have the "Open with..." menu item. What we
need is another item: "Open new version with...". This item simply
creates a new version on disk before it opens it with the external
editor. There is no need to do anything after the external editor
closes. If I end up not making any changes in Gimp after all, I can just
delete the new copy manually. I don't think that is a big deal. To try
to do something after the external editor closes is unreliable. What if
I close digikam first? Will my changes be lost?


I have a few of use cases for versioning, that I hope you have already
considered:

1. Most cameras are now able to create both RAW and JPEG files at the
same time. I think digikam should be able to recognize that each
RAW/JPEG pair is really just two versions of the same picture. Maybe it
could happen while importing from camera, but there should also be an
option to do automatic "version pairing" on existing folders. I have
thousands of these images.

2. When I apply some keywords/tags/metadata, I want to apply them to all
versions at the same time. That could be descriptions or keywords,
author, copyright, etc. But sometimes I want to apply metadata or tags
to only one specific version. Both should be possible.

3. Someone mentioned somewhere that all the different versions of an
image are stored in the same folder. I hope that is not a strict rule. I
like to keep a repository with original images and then keep my edited
versions in a separate folder tree. That makes backups a lot easier to
manage. At the moment, that sort of workflow makes it difficult to find
the edited versions of the pictures, but the new versioning feature will
make it really easy! Whoo hoo! Assuming that I can save a new version
somewhere else.

4. Is it possible to save the versioning relationships in metadata? I am
concerned that the relationships will be lost if I move files around or
restore part of the files from backup or something like that. If each
file had a unique ID, e.g. a checksum, and the version relationships
referenced those IDs, then it would be possible to restore the
relationships even if the files were moved to new locations.

Thank you very much for your work on this feature. For my part, it is
the most anticipated new feature in digikam ever!

Best regards,
Mikkel Christensen