[Digikam-users] png huge sorting and digikam future

[Peter Shute]

jdd wrote on Thursday, 21 January 2010 9:09 AM:

> Given online storage involve some kind of name obfuscation, because
> one may have in the same online folder public and private images (and
> it's too easy to gess private names from public ones), it becomes
> very difficult, say, to find back the original from an oline lowres
> copy, when *this* will be the real goal if suddently one particular
> image become necessary (have to be edited again).     
> 
> So we need probably some sort of thinking for the digikam future.
> 
> Right now I have an "original" folder, an "edited" folder (digikam
> album) and online storage (three various.image size)
> 
> May be we could think of keeping all the metadata and various same
> image versions in a simple zip file? most OS can read zip like
> folders, so it could be simple (a little like openoffice store it's  
> images) - may be there is already a format for this?
> 
> piwigo already have a sync tool that's able to sync the metadata from
> local storage to online storage and vice-versa without
> uploading/downloading the complete (and heavy) files (it's name is
> ploader - photo loader)   

Lightroom solves the problem I think you are describing here with its system of non destructive editing.  Associated with each original file is a set of editing and "publishing" instructions for creating edited versions.  I haven't used it much, but I assume you can work out the name of the original file from the name of one of the "published" files, as you can certainly do the reverse by looking at the "history" of the original file.

But I guess the non destructive edits are a side issue.  Basically, it seems they are keeping a history of all the "Save as" commands so that you can later tell which file has been created from which.  It shouldn't be hard for digiKam to check this file before displaying thumbnails so that it can group these files with their original, if necessary, and flag them as non-originals.

Doesn't work if you later rename them outside of digiKam, of course.