Defaults and Import Filters

[kaymann (Randall)]

I have two questions and this forum has not let me down yet so here goes:

1. Is there any way to force DT to default to folders under collections. It seems to revert to FILM ROLL after every import. With the over 700,000 photos in my collections switching between film roll and folders is painfully long.

2. I do a lot of astrophotography usually in SER and FIT file format. Taking FIT’s can result in hundreds or thousands of files that need to be aligned and stacked in astro specific software. Is there any way to tell darktable to ignore/hide these file when choosing to import photos.

In either of these cases, solutions involving config files or even the registry I am very comfortable with…

Thank you all in advance for your time and assistance.

[g-man]

@kaymann

Is there any way to force DT to default to folders under collections. It seems to revert to FILM ROLL after every import. With the over 700,000 photos in my collections switching between film roll and folders is painfully long.

I noticed this yesterday. I think it is a bug since I think it used to work.

I also noticed that switching sort collection from descending has no effect when in folder mode.

I need to start an Issue on GitHub about it.

[kaymann (Randall)]

in regards to #2 above I tried inserting entries in the darktablerc and have had no joy. So I will assume that it is a no go.

I wonder if that could be a “feature” - Ignore all (fill in the blank) in the import popup

[vbs (Bojidar Bojkov)]

@kaymann

I do a lot of astrophotography usually in SER and FIT file format. Taking FIT’s can result in hundreds or thousands of files that need to be aligned and stacked in astro specific software. Is there any way to tell darktable to ignore/hide these file when choosing to import photos.

Maybe not entirely what you want to do but

• DT can ignore .jpg on import (this is obviously something that you don’t need but you can submit a feature request based on it)
• Normally it would try to import recursively - if the .SER and .FIT are in a sub folder they can be skipped this way.
• If none works - you can still import them but have the search functionality in DT to tag them so they are out of the way while work is done on other files.

[kaymann (Randall)]

Fits for planets come in at 10,000 per click (54 fps for 3 minutes). For nebula it is a little more reasonable at 360 per click (2 fpm for 3 hours). SER’s are large but just a couple of clicks and one per click so very easy to ignore. Importing and then deleting multiple thousands is not an option.

So, the only work around is turn off recursive and undo all and then only select all the TIFF and PNG’s.

Hey this is a niche workload so I understand no joy.

[g-man]

If that’s the case. Move the specific files to a folder using a file manager and then Add to Library in darktable.

[kaymann (Randall)]

Easier to hide then unhide as moving is lot of HDD wear and tear

[rvietor]

I suppose you download those fits from a device? And you do need to download them for processing?
In that case, can’t you have the results stored in a sibling directory, from which images will be imported into darktable?

Also, are you sure that moving files causes a lot of HDD wear and tear? Iirc, at least under Linux, moving a file means relinking to a different place in the directory tree, as long as you stay within the same file system (a bit as if you make a second hard link to the file and then delete the original link: that only causes entries in the directories to be rewritten, the file contents aren’t touched, or moved).