[Digikam-users] Off-line Collection Browsing & DB cleanup

[Jean-François Rabasse]

On Thu, 10 May 2012, Nick Anderson wrote:

> Ive been using digikam for a while now. In general as a library
> management tool it works well for me. There are two functions that I
> don't understand.
> 
> Collections:
> (I recently wiped out my digikam db and started fresh and have not
> re-connected my remote collections yet so perhaps this has changed.)
> 
> The notion of remote or removable collections. Both the thumbnails and
> the metadata are stored in the database correct? Whenever I launch
> digikam and my network collections are not available I cant use
> digikam to browse the disconnected collections. So in order to find an
> image I have to have that collection connected? Since all the
> information is available shouldn't I be able to search and browse the
> collection, but be given some message about attaching the collection
> before being able to view a full size image?

Hello Nick,

A few comments, as I have exactly the same problem, i.e. how to manage
images collections with DK, when images are off-line.

I agree with you, given the database and images thumbnails, DK should be
able to handle all tasks that don't require the effective presence of
original files; tagging, indexing, metadata handling, browsing,
searching, etc.

But this is the theory, and DK isn't an images collections management
program but a « all in one » program, with also a lot of images
processing functions, raw conversion, edition, etc., not just
collections management. And the design doesn't split those two functions
families, so to use DK, whatever you plan to do, your images need to be
present even if of no use at the moment.



Don't know if this can help, as I don't known exactly the way you work,
but here is my personal usage and the way I work around that problem :

1. I use off-line collections because I want my images to be on
pluggable USB hard drives. (I have several of them including security
backups.)
My main reason is to spare space on my desktop fixed drives, the other
reasons are to be able to access my images from different machines,
desktop, laptop, and be able to move with them; an USB drive holds in
a pocket, a desktop computer no.
(Maybe I have too small pockets on my clothes:-)

2. On my desktop fixed drive, I have a complete directories tree of all
of my folders, albums, subalbums, but without the images files.
Instead, original images are replaced by small versions.

(This built is automatized with shell scripts, browsing an images set
and building small versions with command line tools as the ImageMagick
convert program. My typical convert settings are (-resize '300x300>'
-quality 70), so small sized but readable images, and low quality but
high compression. Typical reduced version is 40 Kbytes, instead of the
original 6 to 8 Mbytes, thus a disk space requirement reduced by a
factor of 200 !)

3. And I run DK on that collections tree. I can do all what doesn't
require the original images, browsing, tagging, looking at geolocation,
searching, even searching for duplicates, etc.
As long as DK has an image file, it is happy, even if this isn't the
genuine one.

4. The only thing I can't do is original images edition, of course.
But I don't see this as a problem, because I mostly work on new images
and only in some very rare occasions on archived images. I process my
new images on my standard disk, geotagging, cropping, adjustments, etc.,
and when all is Ok, I move the images set on an USB drive and build the
local reduced versions for DK.

5. And, obviously, when I want, after searching my folders, to get some
original images files to do something with, prints, web album, other,
I need to plug my external drive(s) and access files by pathnames, as
it's the same albums structure with only a different mount point.



I agree this may seem a bit weird, but I have no better idea to work
with off-line collections and, as for me, I get stuck to the idea of
working with removeable media. (In a few years from now, perhaps all of
our images will be « in the clouds » :-)

Maybe some other users could feed this issue with ideas and hints.

Cheers,
Jean-François