[KPhotoAlbum] Picture selection workflow, etc.

[Miika Turkia]

On Wed, Dec 28, 2011 at 10:10 AM, Joe <josephj at main.nc.us> wrote:
> The following is what I'm doing and why it doesn't work very well.  I'm open
> to suggestions on how to do it better! And I have a few ideas.
> I'm not saying this is the way KPA is supposed to work or that there's not
> already a better way.  Just that, if there is one, I don't know what it is.

Here is some tips that will hopefully be enough for you (at least for
the first issue).

> I am selecting some pictures to print from a  large collection (24k
> pictures, a small percentage of which are tagged.  Hopefully, I'll get it
> done someday!)
>
> I create a new keyword "0_select" (so it shows up first on the sorted
> keyword list in search) and I add that tag to each picture I select (more
> than one at a time where possible).
>
> This works, but raises a number of issues.
>
> 1) If the picture was untagged, (my keyword for that is "untagged"), adding
> the 0_select tag causes the "untagged" keyword to be automatically removed.
>  (I suppose I could just turn that feature off and do it manually.)  When
> I'm done with this selection, I have two choices.  a) Leave the keyword
> there forever and don't reuse it until I have fully tagged all the pictures
> with that tag or b) remove the tag from the pictures and consequently lose
> the ability to find them as untagged in the future.
>
> This problem is an artifact of the larger issue that selecting pictures is
> conceptually disjoint from tagging them and using the same facility for both
> (I forget what this "programming" sin is officially called - something about
> dependencies within variables or improper normalization) is flawed design.
>
> Suggestion:  *If* this is the way it's done, then one improvement (really a
> workaround for a conceptual shortcoming) to kpa would be to allow the user
> to select the "untagged" keyword  and have it stick.  Currently, it deletes
> itself.  (Also, I sometimes add some tags to a set of pictures, but know I
> need to go back and add more, so I'd like to use "untagged" semantically as
> "not finished tagging".)  So, I'd like to be able to add some tags and still
> have the "untagged" keyword stick.  I guess the best of both worlds would be
> to have every new picture I add automatically marked as "untagged", but for
> KPA to leave that field alone from then on and leave it up to me to delete
> it manually.

- new pictures are automatically marked as untagged
- when tagging images you have two confirmation buttons, Done and
Continue Later. The first one automatically removes the untagged tag
and latter leaves the untagged there (but does not add it if there is
no untagged tag)

Sounds like you are describing the behaviour of the Continue Later
button in your suggestion.

> 2) When I'm selecting-by-tag a lot of pictures (using a tag as above), a lot
> of things can happen to make me lose my place in the large collection of
> pictures - anything from hitting left click or down arrow by accident
> instead of ctrl left click/ctrl down arrow  and  clearing all the previously
> (mouse click) selected pictures; having to quit and resume later; hitting
> ctrl home or end or letting keyboard repeat go wild by holding down a
> positioning key too long ....
>
> When something like this happens, I lose track of where I am and what's
> selected-by-tagand what's not.  I can use search to show me all the
> selected-by-tagpictures.  That works, but disrupts my context because once I
> find the last picture that was selected-by-tag, it's not very easy to get
> back to it once the search is undone.  I have to look for it by date or its
> cryptic file name.  This works, but it's less than elegant.  It also doesn't
> let me see what's not selected-by-tag, but should be.
>
> Suggestion: Add a new type of search/filter that finds things exactly the
> way the current search does, but instead of eliminating everything else and
> just showing the new selection, add an attribute to each picture like
> changing the color of its border to a custom color or maybe even adding a
> badge to it like kde does with icons.  If that was done, my context would
> not be disturbed.  I'd still be looking at the same selection of pictures I
> was looking at before the search (without even moving anything on my
> screen!)and I could instantly tell which ones were selected-by-tagand which
> weren't.  This would be even more awesome if it could "display" the results
> of more than one search at a time.  That would be "easy" by just using
> different colors for each selected-by-tag search/filterand figuring out what
> to do when these selections overlap or allowing more than one badge per
> picture.

I think search is the only functionality that discards the information
of previous selections. So you can add more filtering criteria after
search or filtering by clicking the categories. And going back removes
the latest filtering criteria. E.g. start with search of images shot
in home town and that includes John. Then check the thumbnails..and
see that you need only images that were shot in birthday (event)...hit
back. Select e.g. category event and keyword birthday from there. Now
the filtering includes home town, John, birthday.

There is also an option to include categories in the thumbnail view (I
haven't tried it). Not exactly what you describe in colors but at
least it might be useful to you.

Anyway, dynamic selection based on some search criteria within the
current set of images is something that would be useful to me also.
(Currently I just do a new search, do some tagging or something and
then hit back button to return previously selected image set.)

miika