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podoc:photo_management

ADDING PHOTOS

When adding photos to Photo Organizer, the software will keep the images in their original format. The thumbnail and the preview will be generated in JPEG format which is customizable by the system administrator. Photo Organizer uses ImageMagick to recognize over one hundered image formats, and DCRaw to decode most digital camera RAW formats. For an up to date list please visit the ImageMagick web site and the DCRaw home page.

Before you can add photos you have to create some folders. You might also want to add your equipment related information and some shooting locations, as these details can be linked to the photos. After you have created your folder, click on the folder name, to view its content, which at this stage should be empty. Click on the “Add Photos” button to bring up the photo upload dialog.

Starting with 2.6 you can upload single or multiple photos via the same photo upload dialog. In case you want to upload a single photo, select the image file and fill in the fields which are displayed in the dialog. You should fill in at least the caption, giving a detailed description about the photo's content, colors, or whatever information which might be helpful when searching for photos. The better job you do during captioning the better the search engine will perform.

After filling in all the data press the “Add Photo” button, which will start the photo upload. In case the upload failed, the system will roll back to the state prior to the upload.

In case you haven't selected a file for upload the system will create an “empty” photo which enables the user to store photo related information and to upload the photo itself later.

ADDING MULTIPLE PHOTOS AT ONCE

To add multiple files, you have to pack all the image files into a zipped tarball. The following formats are recognized by Photo Organizer: “.zip”, “.tar”, “.tgz” and “.bz2”. Along the image files, you might also want to include a file named “data.xml”, containing the photo description that you want to attach to certain photos - for more information regarding XML enabled bulk upload please visit the Tools section. This XML description file doesn't have to be complete. Say you want to upload 10 photos, and so you create a zipped tarball containing the photos and a “data.xml” file. The XML file will describe only three of the photos included in the tarball. Via the file upload interface you select the tarball, and fill out the fields in the dialog with the default image description data (used as default for the photos not described in the XML file. Upon reception of the tarball, Photo Organizer will decompress it and look for the XML file. If found, the software will process first the images described in the XML file, setting the related information and uploading them into the specified folders. Afterwards the software will process the remaining files, setting for each the same information as specified in the upload dialog.

WATERMARKING

The watermarking feature of Photo Organizer puts a visible watermark over each photo you upload. Only the photo previews are watermakred. Thumbnails are not watermarked because these images are generally small and watermarking them would make their visual aspect unacceptable.

In order to watermark your photos, you need to upload your watermark the same way as you would do with any other photo. It is recommended to create Watermarks folder where you store all your watermarks. You have to select the photo which you want to use as a watermark by pushing the Set As Watermark button in the photo's preview. To select a new watermark just push the Set As Watermark button in the preview of your new watermark photo.

Now that you have selected your watermark, go to My Settings menu and click on the Photo Upload tab where you can adjust your watermarking options. You can adjust the brightness of your watermark and the location on the preview photo. As long No Watermarking is selected as your watermark brightness your photos will not be watermarked.

If the watermarking is turned on, in the photo upload dialog the watermark and your watermark options will be also displayed, to warn you that your upload will be watermakred.

You can use the bulk update feature to put new watermakrs over your existing photos.

EDITING PHOTOS

Under Editing Photos we understand modifying the photo related information such as caption, shooting location and data, related equipment… or changing the photo itself to a different one (although this is done via the version control interface).

When editing a photo, all fields will be updated with the current values, so that you can modify the photo related data, which will be saved when the “Save Changes” button is pressed.

You can also use the bulk update feature to update fields for multiple photos at once.

BASIC IMAGE MANIPULATION

Photo Organizer uses the rotate and flip features of ImageMagick to perform basic image manipulation. Normally you should preprocess your images before upload however in certain cases this feature comes very handy. You can rotate your images by 90, 180 and 270 degrees and flip them horizontally and vertically. In case an image has multiple version, the transformation will be applied only on the version currently being viewed.

When manipulating images, only the thumbnail and the preview is affected, the original high resolution image is left unchanged to preserve image quality.

REMOVING PHOTOS

A photo can be removed at any time from the system, however this will also remove all related information such as photo submissions, dupes and the image files themselves. To prevent accidental photo removal, you have to remove a photo in two steps (except the versions that are removed instantly). During the first step you will move the photo into a special folder called Trash. The second step is to visit the Trash and examine the photos marked for deletion. Then, by pressing the “Empty Trash” button, all photos in the Trash folder will be removed, without any further questions and recovery options.

RETRIEVE THE ORIGINAL

The system stores a photo in three formats. A thumbnail, a preview and the original. The thumbnail and the preview are generated during photo upload, they are scaled and sharpened while the original photo is left untouched.

To retrieve the original photo go to the folder and click on the thumbnail to view the photo details. Then click on the preview and save the displayed file. If you just click on the preview, the browser will display the original file.

MANAGING DUPLICATES

This feature makes no sense for digital users, but those using slides, will find it extremely useful. The software was designed so that it can manage multiple physical copies of the same slide (also refered as dupe). When a new photo is added into the system, the first dupe will be automatically created. This is labelled as the “Original” because it's not really a dupe.

Each photo and all of its duplicates will have a unique identifier assigned by the system. This consists of a 6 and a 2 digit number having the following format:

“123456-12”

which refers to the 12th duplicate of the photo 123456. The system can store 42billion pictures, each having 42billion duplicates, so should someone take more than 999999 pictures or make more than 99 duplicates, the format is automatically extended to fit the extra numbers. The six-two digit format has been chosen because the bar code was most readable in this format.

Adding a new duplicate to the system, is very similar to adding anything else (described in the equipment section in more detail) and will automatically assign a new identifier. The information related to the physical copy (submission history or storage location) is stored per duplicate.

When deleting a duplicate this will remove the duplicate related information like submissions, but will leave the original photo and it's related information in place.

VERSION CONTROL

This feature allows you to store multiple variations of the same photo, while having one reference in the system. The first version is created when a photo is uploaded, which also becomes the master version (since it's the only one). Should you apply some color or perspective correction on a photo and you want to keep the new version along the original, you can add a new version, and upload the new version via the version control interface.

At this point you will have both versions listed. You can assign a short remark to each version (say the color correction curve settings) and you can view each version by clikcing its version identifier. Moving the mouse over the version identifier link will display the version's thumbnail in a popup tooltip.

The master version will be used whenever printing the photo or displaying it in folders and albums. You can change the mastership by editing a non master photo and setting the master flag to yes. This will move the master flag to the newly selected photo. The system does not allow the removal of the master version, since you have to have at least one entry as long the photo exists in the system.

Naturally when removing a photo, all its versions are removed.

RANKING PHOTOS

Each photo can be rated by its owner and other PO users. Each user can rate any picture once and they can also modify or remove the rating at any time. The system will calculate the photo's overall rating, which can be used to sort photos while displaying folders, albums.


SEE ALSO

podoc/photo_management.txt · Last modified: 2007/08/03 20:14 by pizza