Therefore, with red, yellow and green, I represent the status of editing, which is easy to remember and did not change over years. But what the other colours meant two years ago, I cannot remember.
I’m wondering: is there some sort of standard for those color labels? How should I use them?
Right now it seems I have used red, yellow, purple and white. I think those are various “collections” that I built across the Darktable “collections”: for example, I used “red” to designate pictures reserved for a calendar project and yellow for a series of portraits that I would offer someone. I have basically no idea what purple and white (!?) are. But I guess it’s okay to have those labels ephemeral right now…
Update: white circles are local copies, not the same but the UI elements do look quite similar…
(I must admit I’m using those labels because I find the Darktable tagging interface a little too hard to use, so much so that I completely stopped tagging pictures since I switched (a long time ago!) from Shotwell.)
That aside: dear Pixls! Do you use color labels for? What for? How and when? Thanks!
Hm, to add to my quote above, I occasionally use the other colours as replacement for a “flag” feature to mark a selection of the pictures shown, e.g. those I want to use for a special purpose “right now”.
It would be of tremendous help if one could attach meanings to the labels that would be saved with the xmp file. Therefore, the meaning could change, but one would understand the meaning after 2 years. Unfortunately, my feature request supply is used up this year already . I mean, just a module in lighttable where you can assign a string to the colours which is valid until it is replaced by a new one, and stored in the xmp when a label is clicked.
I don’t know if there’s a common standard, but I use them to mark images that I’m processing at the moment. I just use whatever makes sense for that session, and I can figure out what the colors mean if I come back to it at a later date.
eg. if I’m bracketing, I’ll mark different stacks with different colors, so that when I go back to export them I know which ones are which.
I’ll also use them to keep track of which styles or edits have been applied to which photos, or which ones have been exported. (eg. I’ll work on some photos, start the export and then mark them green, then go back and edit some others. When I need to export the new images I know which ones haven’t been exported because they don’t have a colour.)
Btw, I am very happy with the “copy_attach_detach_tags” lua script, I assigned “c” and “v” for copy and paste and it is extremely useful to tag people on my photographs. Furthermore, the “quicktag” lua script is of particular help as well, but I would wish to give it even more power by temporary overriding key bindings instead of using fix ones, and by the ability to store tag groups for reuse.
yeah i played with the copy_attach_detach_tags script and didn’t find it that useful. i didn’t know about the quicktag one either, but it doesn’t quite do what I want… I’m going to resist the urge to go into details about the tagging situation of Darktable here though to keep the focus on color labels.
Color label use came very organically for me… like I literally put zero thought into. I’m not sure it makes sense, but:
red: intend to work on this. i often filter on red just to see what I thought was OK. I should probably use more star ratings.
red + yellow: edit started, but not anywhere near finished
red + yellow + green: edit started and I like the direction it is going
yellow + green: almost there, if I look at the edit and don’t change it, remove the yellow
green: good to go. finished.
purple: export for processing in another application (I try to bundle this with a tag like “gimp” or “gmic” or whatever the next tool is, so I know what to look for on my file system.)
Actually, I just remembered a way I have to deal with this. I saved a preset in the collect images module for a specific color and time range and gave it a name. It’s a little clunky to find again but it at least allows me to get some idea of why I was using that label.
I really like how you use combos of color labels, I’ve been too used to LR’s format where you can only use one at a time. I forget that DT lets you use multiple. The only thing I would want is to be able to just view those photos with labels or specific color labels.
Right now I’m using a combination of color labels and stars. Color labels to tag those that need editing or that should be uploaded to social media. Stars mark those that are for sharing publicly.
// I have used stars to keep track on progress and chosen ones
*: Intend to work on this
**: Already at least somewhat processed
***: Ready
****: Ready, for special purpose
*****: ?
Red: Only picture series & special projects: a prospect
Yellow: Alternative for a green-labeled
Green: Only picture series & special projects: chosen photo
Blue: My wife’s pick
Purple: contains data, greycard shots etc.
Green: done, the final version (usually also starred from 1-5, i.e. 1-3.5)
Yellow: alternative for a green-labeled
Red: has to be done urgently, some day
Blue: “projects” that had to be done and uploaded somewhere for some reason
Purple: very special for personal reasons; could be printed some day
Orange: suggestions, to be edited
Pink: a work in progress, might be waiting for software upgrades
Cyan: test pictures with issues, often used for experiments
Brown: worse than dren, but are to be kept for personal reasons
Purple: Scarlett Johansson in a bikini, and similar
. I mean, just a module in lighttable where you can assign a string to the colours which is valid until it is replaced by a new one, and stored in the xmp when a label is clicked.
