[KPhotoAlbum] Picture selection workflow, etc.

[Joe]

On 12/29/2011 12:03 AM, Miika Turkia wrote:
> On Thu, Dec 29, 2011 at 12:49 AM, Joe<josephj at main.nc.us>  wrote:
>> Great!  Continue Later is exactly what I want for the first issue.
>>
>> Maybe someday there'll be a KPA manual to look these things up  in.
>> That's the weakest link in an otherwise outstanding project.
>>
>> Joe
>>
>> More responses inline.
>>
>> On 12/28/2011 05:40 AM, Miika Turkia wrote:
>>> 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.
>> Not entirely sure what you mean by "dynamic selection based on some search
>> criteria within the current set of images".
> Marking images by a keyword or some other search criteria (within the
> selection). Just like control clicking the ones you want, except the
> selection would be done by search results automatically. Somewhat
> different use-case than what you describe but almost same as the first
> phase of your explanation.
That would be really neat.  Now if I had a picture recognition program 
that could "see" all the pictures that had deer in them and tag them ....
>> What I want is to see attributes of a selection of pictures that don't all
>> have exactly the same attributes.
>>
>> Thumbnails won't help very much because it shows attributes one at a time so
>> I'd have to look at the thumbnail of every picture.
>> Also, thumbnails are mostly unusable for me in KPA 4.1.1 because there's no
>> delay displaying them on mouse over so they jump all over the place when I
>> move the mouse.  I requested a fix for this and someone did it almost right
>> away, but since I haven't yet figured out how to build KPA from git, etc., I
>> don't have access to it.  (See my post on the new release thread.)
> I sure understand if you are not willing to compile KPA yourself but
> just in case:
> https://mail.kdab.com/pipermail/kphotoalbum/2011-July/004747.html
I'm willing (and probably able).  There's just so many hours in a day!

I'll take a look and see if I can manage it.  Thanks.

> miika
>