The Everlasting Picture Categorizing Project

[zourtney]

Ok, I certainly agree with all of that.

I want to start making a list of expected functionality (use cases, if you will). I have done this before, but let's do it a 16th time. Maybe I will get feedback if I feed in smaller doses. I will start shifting over the concrete stuff into a more formal Drupal page.

Knock 'em or affirm:

• Display image thumbnails in a grid (like Explorer does)
• Grid is multiselect
• Free tagging text box...somewhere
• Apply tag(s) to a single item via free tagging text box
• Apply tag(s) to multiple selected items via free tagging text box

Yea? Nay?

[zourtney]

Oh, and what should we call this thing?? It needs a name. My old one is lame and I probably made it up in the shower, or something.

[Nick]

That's more or less what I was thinking. It just makes sense to be able to do it that way. To really carve out our niche I think we should focus on tagging and searchability with this. Having the tags compatible with other services (flickr for example) would be a nice bonus to it all. We might have to make out own flicker uploader for that though. Not sure.

[Nick]

And another thing...

Another idea for picture project: Load waypoints (or have a way to input them) so as to associate them with a given tag. So if I tag a picture with  Elk Lake or pichole, the software will automatically tag the image with the geotagging information for that location. Enabling non gps-enabled camera owners to benefit from their GPS and geotagging (or the use of waypoints/coordinates from some other source if they have no GPS.)

[Brad]

[DELETED BECAUSE I DIDN'T READ PROPERLY]

If you wanted to get really cool (at some later date) you could use the google api to actual show thumbnails of pictures along with the location they were taken on a map.

EDIT: I just realized I read your post completely wrong. Having them map to a specific waypoint which you could save in the program is cool idea. The only drawback is that you lose the detail level of actually specifying the exact position you took the picture from. Of course that assumes that you actually know that information... Since most cameras don't save GPS information when they take the picture I'd say that waypoints would probably be useful.

Flickr shows you a map and lets you click on the spot you took the picture. That lets you get pretty close to the exact spot the picture came from. Unless we plan on doing that (sounds like more work than usefulness) the waypoint system would be a good compromise.

[Nick]

I was thinking that google and flickr would use the geotagging information stored in the image automatically. Is there a standard for tagging images? Like the EXIF standards?

[Brad]

No tagging standard that I've ever found.

And Flickr may use the GPS data stored in the Exif by your camera, I wouldn't know as I don't have any cameras with GPSrs in them.

[Brad]

I've taken a screen shot of Picasa's interface and wrote my ideas and thoughts all over it. I think the program has a lot of good ideas we could steal and a lot of things we could make simpler/better.

I'll give the link rather than embedding it as the image is fairly large.

Let me know what you guys think. We should probably make a definite list of exactly what functionality should be in the initial version of this project. That way we can avoid feature creep and have some kind of an idea exactly what we are trying to accomplish.

[zourtney]

Sweet, that definitely helps. I too want to get this project well defined so I can avoid the feature creep* we are accustomed to. Also, if we have a well defined project, we will have no excuse to not make it.

I like the overall look of Picasa, I think. From the screenshot, it seems that most of the application's functionality happens on that screen. I want to go for something simple like that -- the simpler the better.

I'm going to try and slide all of the concrete ideas over to this page.

* man, we need a mascot of a "feature creep"

[Brad]

Yeah I think Picasa's interface for the most part is probably as simple as you can get (it was designed by Google after all).

It does have one other screen to handle other functionality. When you double click on an image it takes up that whole main scrolling pane and gives you a bunch of basic image editing options. Which is something we REALLY don't need in the program. Why compete with Photoshop and Gimp? No, I think we ought to just show the image resized to fill the whole pane. We probably wouldn't even need to change the control bar or anything. In fact could probably just make the larger sized image pop up in another window sorta like the randomland galleries do. That way we wouldn't have to change the thumbnail pane at all.

[zourtney]

I didn't explicitly mention it, but feel free to edit the outline page, here. It's only a start. I was in a hurry otherwise I would have stubbed out some more section headings.

[Brad]

So is the outline page were you want us to start suggesting features? Or should we suggest features here and then put them in the outline when they are semi-approved/agreed upon?

[zourtney]

Let's suggest features here. I'd like the outline page (and any sub-pages we think up) to be the solid, agreed-upon stuff. It should be what this project is built off of. That was my thinking.

If we need an additional thread in the forum, we can do that too.

[Brad]

You should make a list of all the currently suggested features at the top of this thread or something (or start a new thread) so that we can keep track of what has been suggested.

Here is some suggested functionality:

• Image folders can be "added" to the program
• "Added" image folders are displayed in a directory tree structure (including all sub-folders).
• When an image folder is added all images in that folder and all of it's sub-folders are added to the program
• Image folders can be "updated" meaning the folder and sub-folders are searched for new images. Any new images found are added into the program
• Image folders can be removed from the program. This does not modify the actual folder on the drive.
• "Albums" can be created. An "Album" is a group of images (not necessarily from the same folder(s)).
• Albums are displayed in a list. No sub-albums.
• Images can be added into albums.
• Images can be removed from albums.
• Albums can be deleted. This does not delete the images inside the album.
• Selecting a folder in the folder tree makes the program display a thumbnail grid of all the images in that folder.
• Selecting an album in the album list makes the program display a thumbnail grid of all the images in that album.
• An image in the thumbnail grid can be selected.
• Multiple images in the thumbnail grid can be selected by using shift or control click.
• When an image is selected it's file name, size, file size, tags, date taken on, camera type and geo-location are displayed.
• When multiple images are selected the total number selected and their total size are displayed.
• Tags can be added to a selected image or group of images.
• Image tags are stored in the EXIF data of the image.
• When an image is added to the program any tags stored in it's EXIF data are loaded into the program.

That's just a (really) partial list. I'll try to suggest some more later.

[Nick]

I personally despise ctrl+click for making selections. I much prefer a click-on/click-off style (so you don't lose your selection if you click away from the program and then click back on it without holding ctrl) or check boxes, but they are a little 1999.

Also, how should galleries (a.k.a collections) be handled? Images with the same 'collection/gallery' tag or should it be a separate object that keeps a list of what images belong in it?