The Everlasting Picture Categorizing Project

[Brad]

I don't think we should use tags to specify galleries. Neither Flickr nor Picasa do. They use both keep the Album/Set/Gallery seperate and unrelated to tags. I mean you would probaly end up storing special "Gallery/Album/Set" tags inside the EXIF or something but to the user they aren't really the same thing. It lets you do things like make a "Christmas 2009" set without actually having to tag every image with "christmas2009". I mean you'll probably have already tagged it "christmas" and the image already stores the date it was taken so why should you have to make a christmas2009 tag? It kinda clutters up your tag list. It also lets you select from the much smaller set list rather than having to find the tag/set you are looking for in a list of all the tags (which is probably massive). Anyway that's just my opinion, I'm open for discussion on the subject.

What Flickr calls collections are actually sets of sets. We should probably figure out our terminology so we don't confuse each other.

[Nick]

I was more thinking of singling out specific tags to use as galleries. The drupal gallery we have now does not store lists of images in a gallery, but images store what gallery they are in. I am talking more structure and you seem to be talking more data locations. A

Also, as long as we are talking about where things get stored,I don't think we should go mucking around with the EXIF tags in non-standard ways. There seems to be no standard for storing tags in EXIF format so it would do no good to keep them there. No one else would know to look there (no flickr or any other comparability added) A local database would be faster (by like an order of magnitude or so) then searching tags attached to images.  The only tags we could really add to images and expect other services to recognize are author, copyright and some geotagging stuff. If I am wrong them let me know. We seem to have different ideas about this, you (brad) having used flickr and picasa allot and me having used neither to any extent. I am just going off my ideas of what an ideal image thing would be like. 

[zourtney]

@nick:
The original design (Sr. Project) took a copy of the EXIF (relevant) data and created corresponding tags in the database. That way, date, camera, etc were fully searchable through a database query. The actual image file was only accessed to display the image on the screen.

@brad:
I don't particularly like the idea of a directory tree sidebar, if it can be avoided. I'm looking to abstract away from directory layout as much as possible. Why should you care about the "physical" layout of where the images are stored once they've been imported? It detracts from the search-oriented purpose and design.

Maybe I'm missing something and need to play with Picasa a bit to see how necessary it is. Maybe it is unavoidable.

[Nick]

No! Stay pure! Looking at that will only warp your thinking so you can't see things being any other way! Or it might give you some good ideas from people who have been how this road before.

So your thinking more of an image cloud that you pull things out of based on search terms/associations (i.e. a gallery?) I like that, and it stops us from recreating the work done by every other image organizer program ever. 

[Brad]

I haven't been talking about implementation at all, just functionality. I think it's a bad idea to design something around the implementation. We should be concentrating on what we want this program to DO. Then after we figure that out we can figure out the best way to implement all the functionality.

And if you aren't going to use a directory structure (which would only include image folders added into the program) how are you going to allow people to view images which haven't been added to a set/gallery/album yet? Or are you going to make it so that every image folder added is turned into a gallery/set/album?

The reason for storing the tags in the EXIF is so that if I give a picture I've taken and tagged on my computer, it'll retain the same tags if I give it to you and you use it on a different computer. We would of course also need to keep tag information in a database. Solely keeping it in the EXIF would be slow/stupid.

[Nick]

That requires that I have the same application to see those tags. I wish there was a standard for tagging images with metadata that all the major imaging places understood. Then you could create your own personal archive and any images that you sent the way of the internet would be fully tagged. Though we could probably make interfaces to work with flickr and the likes so the tags will persist when uploading.

[Brad]

I guess my idea was to at least have the tags transferable between users of this program on seperate computers. Using the Flickr api it would be really easy to transfer images (tags and all) to Flickr. The user would just have to input his Flickr username/password.

[zourtney]

Ahh! Too much talkings! This is what I was going to say a while ago, in regards to Brad's comment before the last one:

Interesting question. The way I see it, an image does not need to be in a set. Really, that is fine grain information. An image can certainly exist in the system without being part of some arbitrary set. Remember, when you add a folder to your library, they will be automatically tagged with all standard EXIF info -- most importantly: date taken.

I was thinking maybe we could stick to a single pane with multiple views, which are really just queries. Maybe something like:

• All images
• All album/set/collection/gallery/whatever-we-call-'ems
• Stray Images (the ones in no sets that Brad mentioned)

I don't know. Just spewin' ideas.

Bam, I got it out!

[Brad]

I can see that. What if you had some sort of UI control to all you to easily show pictures taken in a specific year/month/day? I could actually see myself use that.

I'm just thinking it's gonna be hugely difficult for somebody to look through their pictures without some sort of order or way to view less at a time. Even with all the emphasis on tagging/searching, you've still got to go through and actually add all the tags to your images.

All of us have several thousand images. To be able to tag them accurately we are going to need some way to only display images taken on a certain date. That's pretty how I organize my image folders right now. If the program can show you only images taken on a specific date then that makes my folder system redundant.

Thoughts?

[zourtney]

I want your folder system to be redundant and useless. Directory structure should be transparent to the user. That's my thought -- once it's in the program, forget your directory structure.

Is that not the entire purpose of the program? Everyone arranges their picture dumps a little differently, but it's all arbitrary. The point of tagging and album creation is to remove the idea of the limited singular hierarchy enforced by the filesystem. No?

[zourtney]

Oh, but definitely YES to arrange by date taken. That is a must-have.

[Brad]

I agree. I think we can safely leave out directories all together.

You'll need some way to display the list of image directories though. That way users can see which directories have been added to the program and remove a directory if necessary. You'll also need the list so that you can "update" -> search the directories for new images.

[Nick]

Multi axis searching! Show me pictures of ducks + in December 06! I'm sure that was a given though.

So should be hash out what information every file will have prior to being tagged via human intervention?
Here is what I can think of real quick (With extra useless comments!)

Date taken (for picture, not for photoshop creations)
Date Modified
Date created (provided you are using linux or something, as windows changes that every time you move a file (SO DUMB) )
EXIF data (provided its an image from a camera not software or the interwebs where it got separated from that info by paint or something. But thats not what this is for)
Size
Predominate colors (computers can see that the image is mostly green or whatever. Though we might not care)
Date added to program
file format

Anything else that might be useful for searching on prior to tagging/categorizing/grouping?

[zourtney]

I agree to Brad's assessment of needing to show what folders are being cataloged. Perhaps a small popup window can handle this? Or another pane of the main screen. Somethin'

Ok, specifically, what EXIF data are you looking for? I know we've gone over this before, but for the record...

Here's a few I can think of:

• Date Taken
• Camera Make
• Camera Model
• Shutter Speed
• ISO
• Aperture
• Flash (yes/no)
• Mode (auto, AV/TV, manual, etc)
• Elevation

There are dozens more, but many seem camera-specific.

[Brad]

Heres a few more we may want

• Focal Length
• Exposure Bias
• File Type (JPEG or RAW)
• Orientation

It'd also be nice to be able to see ALL the EXIF data. You wouldn't need to store them all in the database you could just read them off the file when asked as it's fairly likely nobody would ever want to search on them. Just keep the common/important ones in the database.