In my opinion, the import from device dialog could offer some minor improvements, to streamline our workflow,
So what’s my question?
After selecting the photos to import in the import dialog, and pressing the OK button, I’d love to see darktable download and organize my photos (be it raw or jpg) to :
Home / pictures / Canon600d / ddmmyy-hhmm
Dt can determine the camera name by reading the Metadata (ideally the first photo of our import queue) , and get the numerical value of day, month, year, hour, minute from date
Let’s consider we’ve more than one camera and we import new photos to develop at different times, then this little folder structure adds a very simple yet useful way to organize photos
I know dt isn’t a file manager, but I belive some minimal file management capabilities are essential even for dt and - if easily to implement, we shall do a little test at least. To find out if it’s useful we need to provide this option in first place - I could provide my piece of code I use all times, but it’s written in Applescript, not in lua.
So my idea here is, to ask if somebody is willed /interested to build a script to streamline the importing process.
Creating this folder structure outside of dt is repetitive and could be automated.
As @guille2306 said, there are other programs that can do what you want. RapidPhotoDownloader is a very user-friendly one. I use Geeqie and a custom python-script to do my importing/sorting. There are different philosophies on what features to add to a program.
Most of DarkTables users are on Linux. On Linux and other UNIX-derivatives it is more common to tie several separate programs together instead of implementing all required features in one mega-program. On Mac and Windows, mega-programs are more common. I think that the DarkTable developers should avoid the temptation to add features in DarkTable that replicate other external programs.
On Mac, I can deal by myself with most digital issues or needs I have, to :
eliminate superfluous software
to merge processes so that I don’t need other software
Or i download one software to trash 2 or more software
Given my suggestion is fool-proof and I use it myself all times I’m not day dreaming but asking for a more streamlined experience to trash my own script and use only dt to do the task.
Basically my script reads the camera type from the first photo to import to create a folder and extracts some data from date to create a sub folder. I don’t think this code is gonna bloating dt
Usually the problem is not the bloat, but the management of the feature and the expectations of users post-introduction. I’m not saying this would be the case, but existing a more complete solution to do it (and with a developer fully dedicated to it), I think it’s better to use that and keep just a minimal feature set in darktable.
I would argue that having two pieces of software that do two very different things in an efficient way is better than two half-implemented features in a single software. But each one has it’s opinions on that.
Understood, however we’re taking about peanuts. Anyway, often we don’t know what works, till we experience it. Maybe a poll could help.
I think most people look at actions, words often cause just noise even if everything is explained in plain sight. Especially the open source dedicated people are a lovely stubborn community, I think this sparks a lot of curious ideas
If there is anything more controversial in FOSS than adding non-core features, is removing them (probably better done on master?)
Yeah, maybe a poll about the typical workflow would help.
While this idea is sound, it has been suggested many times before. Moving files is a serious matter, too serious for darktable, the developers say, so they won’t add it.
I personally use exiftool, and I’ve been using exiftool since before I was a DT user.
with osx you can use the on board camera Import and you can pair it with exif renamer.
And if you take a look at its configuration settings, you can imagine that it needs some effort to include these into darktable …
it’s a novel but things shall be clear now
(probably better done on master?)