Collect Images > default to Folders instead of film rolls

Is there a way to configure the Collect Images module to default to Folders instead of Film Rolls? my workflow is based on photo folder and keep coming back to change Film Rolls to Folders when I need to browse around the collection.

I couldn’t find any realted setting under GUI or in the user manual. Wondering if there is some advanced setting in darktablerc that addresses this

Create a preset and set the preset to default.

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That sounds simpler than I thought it would be :slight_smile:
I created the preset and that alone helps a lot - question: how do you set it to “default”?

Settings > Presets.

Sorry, I don’t find where I can set a preset as default. Auto doesn’t sound applicable on collect images module. If applied it has no effect, when I reset the module, film roll is back…
What do I miss ?

I’m confused here as well and would love to know how to do this. I am used to organizing my photos via file structure so I always have to switch to folder view. Having it default to that would be awesome.

Also interested in how to set the preset as default. But furthermore is it possible to include a start folder in the preset? All my photos are in the folder Pictures and then grouped per year. I would ideally like to make a preset that would by default open in the folder view for a given year. So for now I would have a default preset for folder view with 2019 opened in the tree view. Currently if I navigate to that folder and then store I preset it will show the collapsed pictures folder.

You can make presets specific to a folder. Whatever folder is chosen at the time you create the preset will be saved with the preset. So you could make presets for each folder year, and one for your main folder as well.

However, I am still unclear on how to make a preset default.

Regardless, at least having the presets makes things a fairly trivial 2-click change.

I have the exact same use case. I organize all my photo albums in folders, with folder names starting with the year: “2019.01.some description”. I’d very much prefer to switch to a folder-based primary view but couldn’t find the way to make this a default.

I consider the database ephemeral as I am moving folders often (e.g. between NVME and slower SSD disks) so I remove and re-import folders to the DB all the time (one more reason I love DT’s simple approach of storing everying in the sidecar files), so my workflow is really based on folders rather than filmrolls.

It would be nice to optimize the ligthtable collection browsing for this use case (I would guess there is many of us using variations of this)

?But there is a move images function within dt?
https://www.darktable.org/usermanual/en/selected_images.html#selected_images

slow SSD :question: Do you really encounter any difference in speed?

I use more or less the same folder naming. My film rolls get the name of the folder. I do see the film rolls as a shortcut to my folders. Seeing the full path would just clutter the screen and selection of folders within a large tree must be quiet annoying …

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The difference is quite noticeable when browsing around and classifying (culling) very large photo sets. Typically I have 2-3K shots per vacation, 1K on a major event. I always shoot NEF. D500.
My NVME boot drive is 5 times faster than ssd. It certainly doesnt translate into 5X faster DT however it is very noticeable and makes DT usage noticeably snappier

I will try this some more but my last attempt the folder was not persisted in the preset. WIll log a defect if that is the expected behaviour. Thanks.

Still leaves the generally usefull feature of being able to set a preset as active by default.

dt remembers the last kind of collection used. if you use the folder view, quit darktable and restart it, you’ll be on the folder view. not sure what could be done better :slight_smile:

That’s right. I’ve mainly the issue after an import, even if I was in the right folder, I’m back to film roll…
I would prefer too to have “folder” as a default. But maybe a “back” button (like in a browser) would be convenient if easier to implement…

I’ve actually not noticed that darktable remembers the last kind of collection used. This is because I almost always start a darktable session with import.

I use YYYY/MMDD_jobcode file structure. I choose this to avoid deep structure and duplication of information (think good practice for uri’s). Film rolls aren’t useful with this structure as far as I can tell. I had resigned to this being a minor annoyance. It would be great if it could change though!