Is there an easy way to open the file manager with a particular raw (or sidecar) file selected?
Sometimes I want to copy/rename, etc. and am hoping to find a shortcut that will let me get to the right spot.
Instinctively, I keep right-clicking, hoping to see more menu options. In particular, this seems natural in the lighttable view.
It’s particularly challenging, since sometimes I’m on different machines and using a portable drive.
Thanks.
Tac
I don’t think there is such an option.
Is that something that can be added with a Lua script?
Seems like a good candidate for such a script.
you can rename files from within darktable. ah no only “move” right now. rename should be easy to add I guess. (for the selected image drop down)
Thanks. The ability to open in the file manager would allow people to do all the file management there, rather than replicating file management in dt.
I know it’s a bit messy, because of the naming rules for the sidecar files. I’ve always been somewhat surprised that the sidecar files have to be named with a version number, rather than a version string. That is, I’d like to simply name my sidecar file “photo_bw1” instead of assigning the version name to bw1 and having the file be called “photo_04.CR2.xmp”.
I’m working on an application that asks people to upload their sidecar file, and it’s kind of a pain to get to it. In darktable, you duplicate the image (optionally), make your changes, and then you need to find the associated sidecar file and drag-and-drop it. There’s a lot of hovering over the file, which usually has some numeric name, and then you need to remember where the file is located, navigate to it, remember the file name and version number, then find the sidecar file.
Renaming in darktable would have the advantage that you do not have to reimport your directory because DT can rename the file and the DB entry at the same time.
Good point.
I’d still like quick access to the raws and sidecars for archive/exchange. BTW, how do you rename in dt?
There is a lua script, OpenInExplorer, which does that. There is also a script to rename files.
Indeed, being able to open a picture file location in file manager would be handy, but like tacman1123 is saying, there would still be the problem of updating dt database and sidecar to reflect the changes done in the file manager.
Historically, It seems that there is (was?) a strong opposition from dt devs to integrate proper file management support, for these more or less convincing reasons (at least to me): they don’t want to “touch” ( alter) the file in any way; users should just use their OS file manager to do so; developing file manager capabilities is not a priority and needs resources (which is true), etc.
The reality is that currently, dt has already some half-baked file management capabilities: you can move, copy or delete (trash) files and you can find a moved (missing) directory. All these operations, when done in dt, will update the internal database. And when you think about it, it means that dt is performing some operations on the file (even trashing it), so the argument of not wanting to “touch the file” is somewhat hard to follow…
So basically, what’s missing in terms of file management is “only” to be able to rename files and directories and move directories within dt, in order to have the database and (if needed) the sidecars automatically updated. (of course, I totally understand that it would need a dev to be willing to spend time/efforts to do so…).
For reference, see the dt FAQ on file management: faq | darktable
And here’s a fun one (April fool’s joke): File management | darktable
hmm there’s some quite out of date stuff in that FAQ. For example it still says you can’t change the module order.
Yeah, I see the near hostility regarding file management. But I just want to FIND the folder where my images (raw, sidecar, and exported) are stored. A simple “Open in Terminal” or “Open File Manager”.
My process now: Open the “Image Information” block. Triple click on the “full path” contents. Open a terminal. Do ls , delete the dot extension replace with *. Now I have the file and the sidecars. But I need to go to the specific sidecar I was working on. So go back to dt, open the duplicate manager and find the number, say “2”. Go back to the terminal and add _02..xmp, I have the sidecar.
I can open the file now with xdg-open, and drag it to my application (A “Edit My Raw”/“play_raw” style website).
But I also want the jpeg for this file. So I select the sidecar in lighttable, and click on “Export”. I get a 2-second flash of the filename that was written. Now I want to find that file, so I can upload the jpeg associated with that sidecar. Where is that file? So I triple-click on target storage and see that it’s in (FILE_FOLDER)/darktable_exported/(FILE_NAME), and on_conflict is set to create a unique name. If I click on the icon next to that, I open the file manager at my home directory, so that doesn’t help.
At this point, I’m thinking “I must be missing something!”, a simple task like finding the sidecar and associated exported image takes many steps, and there appears to be no way to even know what the name of the image that was exported is to view in another application. Especially if the create unique is set.
Am I missing something?
Thx,
Tac
OK, but if we forget changes, just access? I export a file and want to know what the name of the file is so I can open it, print it, whatever.
Ah, I see the “version” is in the “image information”. But not version_name, which would be helpful.