[Digikam-users] RAW workflow and tags

[Mikolaj Machowski]

On Monday 04 May 2009 16:57:49 Leonardo Giordani wrote:
> 1 Download all RAW photos with digiKam in albums automatically named basing
> on date
> 2 Delete very bad ones
> 3 Choose the best ones and copy them in another album
> 4 Process each chosen photo with UFRaw (creating a .ufraw file)

Maybe you could tell what you don't like in digiKam RAW importer - and fill 
bugs/wishes on BKO :)

> 5 Batch processing .ufraw files (creating .tif file)
> 6 Process each TIFF with The Gimp (sharpening, saturation, crop, etc)

Sharpening and saturation also can be done with digiKam. Crop is more 
complicated. While tool for aspect ratio crop in digiKam is great, simple crop 
is awkward comparing to GIMP.

> 7 Batch converting .tif in .jpeg with digiKam
> 8 Tagging JPEG
>
> Periodically I backup original RAW, chosen RAW with .ufraw and TIFFs on
> DVDs.
>
> There are some point where I'm not at ease with this workflow: I just list
> them, being conscious that probably that are a consequence of a wrong
> approach of mine; but perhaps they expose issues that can be fixed in
> digiKam.
>
> For each photo I have a RAW file, a .ufraw, a TIFF file and a JPEG file.
> Sometimes I have more than one TIFF per RAW, for example when there are
> exposition issues (I develop a .hi.tif and a .lo.tif and then merge them
> with The Gimp). Having all these files in the same directory/album is not
> good because:
>
>  * TIFF preview is slow (can be fixed by a powerful computer, but is always
> much slower the JPEG or RAW preview)
>  * Seeing the same photo in 3 versions is not useful
>  * Multiple TIFFs can be named with various suffixes, which are not always
> visible since some file names are truncated because of length (e.g.
> 20090503-101323-000059.cr2)
>  * ufraw files are not understood by digiKam (it does not show them)

You can add .ufraw extension in list of recognized extensions in digiKam 
configuration but results can be strange. Keep backup copies :)
>
> So one question is: would it be useful and possible (I'm going to ask
> developers too) to embed a WORKFLOW in digiKam, so that I simply see one
> object per photo, that object representing all files that belong to that
> photo (i.e. RAW, TIFF, JPEG, .ufraw, .txt, etc)?
>
It is in todo list.

> Tagging is also a problem: if I tag RAW photos than I have to tag TIFFs and
> JPEGs again, with an high probabilty of forgetting tags (already happened
> many times). Well, than it is really boring :)
> By now I only tag JPEGs, but tagging RAWs and TIFFs is useful: sometimes I
> have not the time of processing RAWs and when I am looking for a particular
> subject I would see this RAW photos too. I solved this by using three tags
> (RAW, TIFF and JPEG), but this is a nightmare since I must tag each photo
> basing on the format, which means a lot of work and a lot of errors.

digiKam 0.10 + exiv 0.18.1 support tagging of RAW and TIFF files. 

>
> I think digiKam lacks a WORKFLOW view of its objects. For example: I cannot
> simply click on a photo and see if I already converted it to TIFF (and with
> which program) or I already processed it in a particular step (for example
> sharpening). Moreover: I follow a certain workflow, others can have
> different needs, so it could be interesting to be able to define a personal
> flow or set of steps.
>
> Another example: I cannot only view JPEGs of each objects (now I exploit
> this by using three tags - JPEG, TIFF and RAW - but it is not the best
> solution).

In latest version of digiKam there is at the bottom very convenient filter for 
MIME types. This will not replace stacks of images but you can easily switch 
between viewing RAW, TIFF, or JPEG files.

> Or for example I cannot simply list all photos that have not yet
> been converted from RAW to TIFF to continue a previously stopped work.
> Or what about a program that saves strange files to record what has been
> done on an image: ufraw files are this, another program that can be
> mentioned is hugin, which saves a file with the description of the
> paramentes used to create an image.

It is in todo-list.

> I try to define more precisely my idea of assisted workflow:
> I define a set of steps linking them with a particular digiKam action or an
> external program:
>  * "RAW->ufraw": ufraw <file.RAW>
>  * "ufraw->TIFF": ufraw-batch *.ufraw
>  * "TIFF processing": gimp <file.tif>
>  * TIFF->JPEG: digiKam internal
> Then I click on an image and a popup menu appears with only the first step
> available; I select it and ufraw is run on the RAW image.

Some part should be doable with incoming 0.11 and Batch Queue Manager.

> Well, sorry if my thoughts seems stange or stupid; I'm experiencing these
> limitations in my work with digiKam (and other OS softwares) and since I
> don't know if they are shared and solved by you I just tried to identify a
> solution.

I think that sharing of workflows is very good thing. Of course not everything 
can be included in one application but with enough data it is possible for 
developers to recognize common needs.

m.