I often tend to shoot in burst mode.
For example during a of moment of our son while he is playing or having fun, having a 1-2 seconds 10fps burst or not often decides between a “nice to see” and a “develelop, print and frame”.
However, these series usually become imported unfiltered into darktable (unless the photos have technical flaws like extrem overexposure or subject out of focus) resulting in collections containing hundreds or thousands of photos of only a few distinguishable motives.
This is where grouping comes into play.
Similar photos become grouped which helps to easier keep track in lighttable and make rating faster. Making use of the autogroup lua script helpes to initially group bursts within a defined time frame but usually some manual grouping is still required as well as a first manual selection of the “group leader” (which shall become visible in lighttable if “group view” is enabled).
Sometimes it happens, that - accidentially and for various reasons - unrelated photos become grouped.
Then it would be nice to be able to filter the collection according to it’s group ID and ungroup unrelated photos. Unfortunatly that is not possible (yet?). Instead i have to make all members of the group visible (by clicking on the folded frame icon) which again gives me a mixed collection of grouped and ungrouped photos. Also it is quite hard to visually detect group members from other surrounding group leaders since an unfolded group only has a thin , surrounding yellow line as visual indicator.
Overall I think there is some room for improvement regarding to grouping.
Here is a small wishlist:
- setting for “folded group picture preview” instead of the small group indicator
- improve visuals to better distinguish group members from other groups if unfolded (might be already possible via css?)
- ability to filter by group ID in collection module
- group mode: “zoom into” group making all non-group members invisible or at least less present
What are your thoughts?
Is anyone using groups at all?
Do you have similar workflows and ran into issues as well? If yes, how do you workaround?