What photo management software is available?

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jeffrey
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What photo management software is available?

#1 Post by jeffrey »

I'd like to store my digital photos grouped by date and be able to add tags to the photos without being tied to an application and database. There are some Linux tools, but they may have excessive dependencies:
F-spot (see http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/9110)
Mapivi (http://mapivi.sourceforge.net/mapivi.shtml)
jBrout (http://jbrout.python-hosting.com/)

So far I've used Image Magick's 'convert' to create 50kB versions in separate directories to my 1MB originals because the smaller ones are easier to search through and suitable for attaching to emails. I've also written a short script that uses Unix's 'strings' to determine the embedded date for the picture because I didn't have 'exif' and it may not manage all the formats that I've sifted through anyway.

Now what I need to do is to add some sensible structure to my ever expanding set of pictures. Are there any photograph managers out there?

TIA
Jeffrey

John Doe
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#2 Post by John Doe »

Mapivi looks like the best bet for running under puppy with no additions.

"jBrout is a photo manager, written in python/pygtk", python is available but it would need to be installed.

"F-Spot is a full-featured personal photo management application for the GNOME desktop (http://www.gnome.org/).", gnome dependant apps can sometimes run with a few of the experimental libraries around here, but I would guess this one isn't a good choice (although i liked the look of it the most).

Any one know of any others?

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rarsa
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#3 Post by rarsa »

If you are not religious about open source you can try Picasa. It installs flawlessly in Puppy.
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john biles
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#4 Post by john biles »

Well rarsa,
I went to Google and downloaded Picasa for Linux "stand alone version" it is a 25MB download.
I wasn't expecting it to install easily as it wasn't a Dotpup, but following the instructions given by Google it installed itself in about 20 seconds and works as well as the Window version.
I know alot of Linux users don't want to use non open source packages.
When I was a Windows user, I liked trying freeware programs and found some very useful programs.
I believe that if Google or someone else makes a freeware version and allows it to be downloaded and installed for home use then that's fine with me.
Picasa allows me to get that one more step closer to saying good bye to Windows, so to me that's not a bad thing.
One last thing, you need alot of spare space on your HD as Picasa scans all your images and by the look of it, makes copies as my spare HD space when down by 700MB's :!:

O.K one more last thing. If google can make a one package fits all Linux versions, why isn't there more standardisation with Linux packages. It would put one more nail in Windows coffin.
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trapster
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#5 Post by trapster »

trapster
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ndujoe1
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ONline PHoto editor

#6 Post by ndujoe1 »

I use this online approach, it doesn't have a lot of features, but works for me.

http://snipshot.com/


Joe

Taavi
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#7 Post by Taavi »

Still I won't be very sorry if someone has time and interest to make a Mapivi dotpup it looks quite well designed software.

Taavi

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rarsa
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#8 Post by rarsa »

I found strange that the Mapivi web site says that it is a standalone application when it clearly also says that it requires perl.

I will take it for a ride and see where it takes me.
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WhoDo
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#9 Post by WhoDo »

john biles wrote: I know alot of Linux users don't want to use non open source packages.
When I was a Windows user, I liked trying freeware programs and found some very useful programs.
I believe that if Google or someone else makes a freeware version and allows it to be downloaded and installed for home use then that's fine with me.
In that case I'm surprised you haven't tried Xnview from the PSI repos under Graphics.

Sure it's freeware, not Open Source, but when you look at the guy's licencing it's basically forcing business away from Micro$oft and into Open Source/Freeware equivalents. That's a laudible approach IMHO.

Here is a snapshot - note that you can edit IPTC data for your images in this program, it won't add 700Mb to your storage and it has some very sophisticated editing capabilities including batch rename, etc. When you start it, choose Tools-Options-Browser-Start Browser at startup for best access.
Image
Cheers

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#10 Post by Taavi »

Yes, I like XnView too, kind of. It is something like IrfanView, not as good as it I think. Something in it's interface does not completely please me. I know there is possibility for other languages in Xnview, but I did'nt find it in the dotpup one, is it cut off from it?

There is other image viewer available as dotpup too called Gqview. It's smaller and little bit faster than Xnview. But there's no support for IPTC data in it. But it has it's own commenting system. And better and faster fullscreen slide show. Xnviews fullscreen ain't a real fullscreen.

One progran I miss from my Windows is a little peace called PhotoCDBrowser. It has really nice features for viewing pictures and commenting them with text files (you coult get comments showing/hiding with transparent background on the fullscreen pictures by pressing a key. And it had support for voice and music too. It was an exellent program for making photoCDs and browsing images.

You can use these programs for managing photos too, but they are mainly viewers. They are not so much managers.

Taavi

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rarsa
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#11 Post by rarsa »

Taavi wrote:Still I won't be very sorry if someone has time and interest to make a Mapivi dotpup it looks quite well designed software.
Question... Why do you need a dotpup?

I just downloaded the linux version packed as an executable "mapivi091_Linux.exe", changed the attributes to make it executable and it ran. I didn't like it but it ran.
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Nathan F
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#12 Post by Nathan F »

XnView is still one of the best, I can't stress enough how useful this program is as a general purpose viewer. Can open just about any image format you will ever run across. The drawback is the clunky xlib based interface, and the fact that the Linux version is quite a bit behind the Windows version.

A nice SMALL photo manager is Flphoto. This is based on the FLTK toolkit and runs really fast even on old hardware. Lets you organize photos into albums. It also has a nice export feature that will create a static web gallery out of an album. Drawbacks are the small feature set (it's a tiny program) and the rough scaling of the images.

For high end digital cameras that shoot in a raw format try ufraw. Based on the cli dcraw program but it has a nice gtk interface and endless adjustment options. I like it better than the convertors that Nikon and Canon bundle with their SLR's, and the results are just as good if not better. I use it all the time for images from a Nikon D1x.

Basically, though, there's no one killer app for you. I'd try several and probably use a few different ones. A lot of the nicer ones are unfortunately a little too Gnome-centric to run easily in Puppy, especially F-spot. But the ones I mentioned have minimum deps to deal with. What would be kind of neat is having a dedicated image browser for Gimp, like in Photoshop, which can be used not only to load images but to organize them (moving from folder to folder, deleting, renaming, etc). Or maybe something like acdsee but open source. I'd also like to point out that ideally a photo viewer should be able to open not only jpeg images but also all of the various raw formats, psd files, xcf files, and more exotic things like jpeg2000. But right now most of them don't even scratch the surface as far as the file types issue is concerned. So basically this is still an area where Linux is behind, and the problem is more pronounced for distros that have a lightweight desktop as opposed to KDE or Gnome.

Nathan
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klhrevolutionist
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#13 Post by klhrevolutionist »

Agrees with Nathan on XnView ! Have not tried flPhoto but am looking at it to see what it is about. Thanks for the info Nate.
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Taavi
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#14 Post by Taavi »

Hi,

Rarsa, I just didn't realise it was so easy. Thanks for a hint. I get Mapivi working. Kind of messy at the first sight. But it has fine options for managing photos; IPTC data is nicely on view for all photos in directory etc.

Taavi

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john biles
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#15 Post by john biles »

Hello WhoDo,
I installed XN View 1.70 a few days after installing Puppy 2.10 when it came out. It was around that time I became a fulltime Puppy User.
As I had XN View when I was a Windows user, I was glad to see there was a Puppy version.
As I only used XN view in Windows for unusual formats, I didn't use it much.
So basically what I am trying to say is that I never realized that it could do more than I thought it did.
As I haven't come across a image I wanted to open yet in Puppy that required XN view, I haven't spent time with it.
Thanks for pointing out all the extras it does. I to don't like the fact the Picasa uses 700MB's of HD to sort itself out.
I will now play with both and if XN View does what I want, I will leave out Picasa on my next re-install of Puppy when I have finished trying different Dotspups and decide which ones to keep. :D
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WhoDo
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#16 Post by WhoDo »

john biles wrote:As I had XN View when I was a Windows user, I was glad to see there was a Puppy version. As I only used XN view in Windows for unusual formats, I didn't use it much. ...[snip]...
Thanks for pointing out all the extras it does. I to don't like the fact the Picasa uses 700MB's of HD to sort itself out.
You're welcome, John. It sure seemed too much to give up 700Mb of disk space to an application when your OS itself requires less than 10% of that.

Cheers

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peppyy
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#17 Post by peppyy »

I very much like xnview also. I have been trying to create the correct "Open with" script though and ahven't got it yet. I know it works in RXVT by adding the file like.

Code: Select all

xnview /mnt/hde1/dcim/100_fuji/dscf0088.jpg
I tried several different ways of adding it to the open with in 2.0.1 and can only get the program itself to open. How should a script read in /root/Choices/SendTo/ ?

I was also thinking I might set it as default for images but that also only opens the program and you still have to browse to the image.
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plinej
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#18 Post by plinej »

You can set your run action in rox with this command:

xnview "$1"

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WhoDo
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#19 Post by WhoDo »

peppyy wrote:I very much like xnview also. I have been trying to create the correct "Open with" script though and ahven't got it yet. I know it works in RXVT by adding the file like.

Code: Select all

xnview /mnt/hde1/dcim/100_fuji/dscf0088.jpg
I tried several different ways of adding it to the open with in 2.0.1 and can only get the program itself to open. How should a script read in /root/Choices/SendTo/ ?

I was also thinking I might set it as default for images but that also only opens the program and you still have to browse to the image.
In order to start XnView in View Only mode you need to turn off Launch Browser at Startup from the options menu.

Then your command line should work fine. You will find that it is probably working now, but the Browser is popping up over the View window, pushing it to the background so it looks like you are only launching the program.

For command-line options, type xnview -help in rxvt terminal.

Scripts should probably look like this:

Code: Select all

#!/bin/sh
exec xnview "$@"
...where the $@ is the filename you pass to the script on execution.

Hope that helps.

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peppyy
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#20 Post by peppyy »

Perfect, Just what I was looking for. Thanks Who Do.

How quickly we forget what we do not use. When I was running another linux distro a year and a half ago I would have remembered that since a lot of the tweaking had to be done command line. Puppy has gotten so nubee friendly that I am forgetting half of what I have learned. Of course my age may have something to do with that too :)
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