[KPhotoAlbum] Picture selection workflow, etc.

[Andreas Neustifter]

Hi All!

Much of the issues have been addressed already but I just want to
share my solutions for reference.

On 28 December 2011 09:10, Joe <josephj at main.nc.us> wrote:
> [...]
> 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.

I found the Untagged-Tag solution always a little redundant since
every category has the "None"-Tag that can select all pictures that do
not have a tag of that category. To find all the pictures I have not
assigned a place I select the pictures with "None" place and start
tagging way. Only caveat is that I have for every category a tag that
says "i have seen this picture and do not want to add a tag for this
category" so that its not in the "None" filter anymore.

This method has the added advantage of being able to tag places and
keywords/events quickly and tag people later on when there is time.

> [...]
>
> 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.

I do it the other way round: I have create a custom catergory that
contains only one tag: Done. When a bunch of pictures is finally
tagged completely, usually after tagging the people, I attach this
Done tag. This allows me to select the Done pictures and the ones that
have "None" tags from this custom category.

> 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.

There is a quick and easy way to get from the picture in a search to
the exact same picture in the unfiltered list of all pictures: hit
Ctrl-J with the picture selected. This should enable you to return to
the tagging quite quick if you have lost the point. The corresponding
meny point is labeled "Jump to Context" in the "View" menu, I admit
thats not very intuitive.

Also I tend to have a folder for each "event" that contains the
related pictures of one day or event so this folders contain usually
50 to 500 pictures. When tagging I usually filter for this folder
first so I can not loose my place in my 25K pictures.

> 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 use tokes for "throw-away" selections that are not really worth a
tag. Those tokes are called A to Z and are toggled by selecting
pictures and pressing the corresponding key a to z. This can be used
to either quickly pre-tag pictures and then filtering by those tokens
and tagging them globally (Ctrl-2) or to cross-select different
searches.

> I can see that enhancements like this might take a considerable amount of
> coding.  Pictures probably don't even have their own borders now.  But
> adding a visual search feature like this could potentially make tagging and
> maintaining large collections of pictures much easier and more powerful by
> making it much easier to "see what you're doing."

Again, tokens to the rescue.

> [...]
>
> What do you think?

I guess you have to use tokens instead of tags for certain operations,
tokens are really easy to use and easier to attach and detach than
tags.

Cheers, Andi

PS: For reference I have added screenshots of my setup at flickr to
illustrate the my setup: http://flickr.com/gp/astifter/f4p088/