[digiKam-users] Compilations

[pinasse]

Hi!

I thought such a function to be a pretty obvious need  for a DAM; which at
least Lightroom, ACDSee and Capture one have in some manner. Here's two
links to blog post describing use cases for LR:
https://scottkelby.com/how-i-use-lightrooms-collections/
https://www.creative-photographer.com/organize-photos-lightroom-collections/

But since both blogs describe a need different from mine, let me describe my
workflow in more detail. This is going to be long, sorry :-)

After moving the image files into our computers we all import them into the
digikam db and tag them with lots of descriptive meta data. We add keywords,
captions, locations and many more meta data. For this digikam does a great
job! But all this tags just describe the image, but not it's usage. 

Many hours a day I create compilations (sets of my images) for online
galleries, print services and publishers. Browsing folders, timelines and
searches help me to find appropriate images, and I select a few of them and
add them to my compilation. I never add all found images, just the suitable
ones, suitable for a specific online gallery, book, magazine or whatever.
What is suitable constantly changes and can not be expressed within the
descriptive tags or by any kind of rating - an image, which is just perfect
for one compilation often is improper for another one. 

With time an image may be assigned to many compilations or none, this does
not depend on image quality, it depends on requests, fashion, ... - reasons
out of my control. In the last 15 years  I've created several thousand
compilations out of my 350,000 images. In total all my compilations contain
over a million assigned images.

I sometimes reuse an old compilation: Make a copy, rename it and assign some
new or drop  some old images. I never change a compilation after export.

Export a compilation means to make copies of the images in formats suitable
for the usage: E.g. TIFF with AdobeRGB for printing, full size JPEG for
magazines and resized JPG with sRGB or even PNG for online usage. Also often
the meta data of the exported images gets partly changed. Exported images
leave the house, they are not catalogued in the db, they even usually are
deleted after delivery. All what's kept in the db is the compilation with
additional meta data: when did I deliver it, who was it send to and what was
it used for.

I often split compilations and make sub-compilations, often several levels
deep. 

As workaround I could keep copies of all experted images, but this would
blow up my storage within weeks. I also could use hard/symlinks to the
files, but what should I do if I need to move a part of a digikam-collection
to a different drive? I also can't use saved searches, because not all
findings make it into a compilation. 

Compilations simply help me to keep track of what gets done with my images.

Here's another use case I can imagine: Think of a competition photographer. 
He creates a compilation of some of his best images every fortnight and
presents them for discussion in his club, or he sends them to a photography
contest. He will surly want to keep track of this uses and also note the
success of his images. He could track down all this by making copies, but if
he will want to browser his master collections for suitable images for a
contest. 

Hmm, I will stop writing at this point, much more could be said but I think
you will catch the idea :-)


Thanks for reading, pinasse





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