[Digikam-users] Immediate danger

[gerlos]

Il giorno 29/mar/2010, alle ore 02.08, Hudson Porter ha scritto:

> The first thing I did when testing Digikam for the first time was to
> import a local hard disk with a years worth of medium format scans,
> 300 gigs into an album. I did not want to import into an album, I just
> wanted to view them but was forced to import.

Actually, digikam is made to let you manage your photos, not just viewing them (it's a small but neat difference), so importing them in the database is the right thing to do. 
There are better tools than digikam for browsing your images[1]: for example, you can use gwenview (my choice), kuickshow, gqview (I still love it), gthumb (nice!), eog, ristretto or gpicview. 
Or if you want the editing capabilities of digikam, but not using the database, you can open an image or a directory of images using showfoto.

> There were some folders
> I wanted to remove from the album and I saw immediately that it would
> trash them from my hard disk! How dangerous is that? Why can't I just
> edit the album? How do I delete that album without deleting my
> precious scans. 

The album tree in digikam reflects your folder tree in the file system, so a directory is (almost) the same thing of a digikam album. This let you manage your photos with more freedom than using an internal database like iPhoto does on Macs. 
So removing an album is (almost) the same thing than removing a directory, so removing an album is as "dangerous" as removing a directory.

The logic behind digikam is that you have one or more directory trees when you store your photos, and you manage to organize them in directories that work as albums, and you manage them as you like using digikam or any file management software you like. You decide that your photos should go there, and you organize them as you like.
If you don't matter about having (and mantaining) such a directory tree for storing your images, it's OK, you just don't need digikam (its extra features make it uncomfortable for such an use[2]), and can use alternative software as above. 

For example, imho gwenview is a really good tool for browsing and simple editing collections of images. 
I like shofoto too for working on sets of images out of my collection. For example, I work sometimes with shots taken by a friend of mine to compare my postprocessing with him; in these cases, I don't add his shots to my collection, but I open the directory with showfoto and edit them from there.

I hope this could help
regards
gerlos


[1] I suppose you are on gnu/linux, running KDE, Gnome, XFCE or LXDE.
[2] Actually, I think that digikam is extremely comfortable for managing your photos, but if you don't use its database feature, maybe you won't like to wait such a long time to open it, just for viewing some images, or maybe you could find the interface far too complicated for your simple needs...

--
"Life is pretty simple: You do some stuff. Most fails. Some works. You do more
of what works. If it works big, others quickly copy it. Then you do something
else. The trick is the doing something else."
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