[KPhotoAlbum] Some thoughts for KPA 5.2

[Andreas Schleth]

On 27.12.2016 20:22, Robert Krawitz wrote:
> On Tue, 27 Dec 2016 20:01:44 +0100, Andreas Schleth wrote:
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>> On 27.12.2016 16:00, Robert Krawitz wrote:
>>> On Tue, 27 Dec 2016 14:36:29 +0100, Andreas Schleth wrote:
>>>> a) Annotation dialog:
>>>> This is one of the best and central features of KPA.  I tried a quite few other photo tagging tools and always came back to KPA. Therefore I think, this central feature should be as polished as it can get:
>>>>     - It should always start up either in full screen or at most in screen size.  Right now it always starts up in a size larger than my screen.
>>>>     - Saving a layout should also save the (relative) sizes of all widgets including the preview image
>>>>     - window layout should get a dedicated button at the lower left edge to ease accessibility
>>>>     - In the latest version, sorting the tags by time seems to be a bit off - could this have a connection with saving the index file in a different way now?
>>>>     - @Martin Füssel: as you are looking at the map interface: how about some method of mapping the places tag to a map feature?  Or a point and click map interface to create a new geo location?  I have a lot of old scans from slides ...
>>> This reminds me of another annoyance with the annotation dialog.  The
>>> three widgets at the top left are the three that are least useful (and
>>> possibly most dangerous): label, date, and Use Fuzzy Date.
>>>
>>> I have a few times inadvertently changed the name of many files
>>> because I accidentally started typing something I intended as a
>>> keyword into the label box.  I don't even want to think about what
>>> setting the date implies.  And I don't know what Use Fuzzy Date even
>>> means in this context.
>>>
>>> These look like artifacts of the very similar search dialog, but
>>> search and annotate are not the same thing.
>> Hi Robert,
>>
>> you might just redesign your window layout and simply put away this offending window either totally (hit the x) or to an less dangerous position (grab the local title bar and move the widget around - it will become either a floating window or dock somewhere).  Options -> configure ... -> save current layout saves this for future tagging sessions.
> Well, the rating (stars) widget is in the same pane as the label and
> date widgets.  And that one is certainly valuable (albeit I'd think
> you'd more likely use it with annotating single images).
>
> I understand that there are good reasons in some cases to set the
> dates, although probably fewer than 10-15 years ago now that most
> people are taking photos with a device that embeds the date in the
> EXIF data and most image editing apps propagate the EXIF data.  15
> years ago, this wasn't necessarily the case; a lot of people were
> using scanners that even if they embedded EXIF data were embedding the
> date that the image was scanned, not originally created.
>
> But setting the label is another matter.  That should be a unique or
> close to unique (img_xxxx.jpg -- you're not going to have too many of
> them).  I'm very hard pressed to see _any_ use case for that, at least
> for multiple annotation.  If you want to do that, I'd think you almost
> certainly want to set a keyword.
>
> *Maybe* you would want to do that when annotating a single image.  But
> kpa already knows that it's a different situation; there's only one
> image being annotated, so it has a single label.
>
>> Setting the date is just another label in the database. Remember, KPA does not touch your images.  Except if you order it to do so via one of the KIPI plugins.  KPA fills the date from exif data on loading new images.  If the image does not contain any exif-info, the file date is used.  This might not be appropriate, so you may set it to another date.
>>
>> There is was?!? a KIPI plugin that allows you to transfer the KPA-date to the image (exif) and vice versa.

Hi Robert,

I see - setting the date on *multiple* images seems to be a strange 
action and even for single images that is not often necessary - as you 
say: this is in the exif data (if they are correct).  However, after 
scanning a set of really old pictures, I used this feature to set an 
approximate date for the whole set (like 1.1.1928 - 31.12.1928), to bin 
these images into the right year at least.

I regularly set a common label for a group of images - typically the 
"event" name.  This obscures the file name to some extent, but I rarely 
need that directly.  So, for me there is quite a bit of usefulness in 
this feature.

I do not use the stars.  When I started with KPA there were no stars, so 
I set up my own category for quality and use that instead.

Andreas