[digiKam-users] Compilations

[Guenole Keraudren]

Hi Pinasse,

I have tried to freely think about your description. I did not browse your suggested webpages.

Your goal could be achieved using the tag hierarchy even though you might loose some link when resynchronising metadata between files (pictures or XMP) and the DB. Main drawback: It might soon be messy when it comes to hundreds of collections. 

I am no developer but a better solution could be to duplicate the tags tables and management processes to support « collections tracking » with the difference that nothing should be written to files. Assumption: links relate to the original pictures and not to the on-purpose generated versions.

Doing so, one should be able to ser
- the pictures belonging to a selected collection
- the collections a given picture belongs to

Is it what you meant?

Cheers

Guénolé 


> Le 10 juin 2019 à 08:33, pinasse <pinasse at gmx.ch> a écrit :
> 
> 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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