Date: Sat, 1 Apr 2006 14:34:45 +0100 (BST) From: Alan Horkan <horkana@xxxxxxxxxxxx> > CS browser is just one of those flat-file Microsoft thingies. > Why not incorporate a real relational database? So, my > suggestion is to dramatically improve workflow by developing a > MySQL database companion for Gimp, that allows users to search > and sort large image databases like mine (30,000 digital images). > Images could be tagged while they are being processed, or batch > tagged. Interesting idea. I suspect you would need to sponsor a developer if you really wanted it to happen though. > As director of photography for North American Women's Baseball > League (NAWBL), I know that searching and sorting images can be > very time-consuming work. Using Gimp you could automatically > transfer image metadata to tags. It would be very useful to do a > search involving all the images shot at f/2.8 or f/4.0? All the > photos shot with a particular lens. All the photos shot at ISO > 100, or ISO 800. Photos of Programs like Bibble Pro, Aperture (from Apple) and Adobe Lightroom sound better suited to these tasks of batch processing sets of photos and RAW files. These are seperate and distinct programs from the likes of Adobe Photoshop, Corel Paint, and Macromedia Fireworks. I wonder if trying to shoehorn even more functionality into the GIMP in a clean and organised way is really managable. Check out KPhotoAlbum (http://ktown.kde.org/kphotoalbum/), which previously was named KimDaBa (KDE Image Database). It uses an XML file rather than a relational database for its back end storage, but it has this kind of search capability (including user tagging, date ranges, and EXIF data in the current pre-release snapshot, via SQLite). It's very fast. I have about 12,000 images and there's very little delay on just about any operation. There has been some discussion about using an RDBMS backend for storage vs. the XML backend. My own calculations suggest that at least up to 50,000 or so images there's no need for anything more elaborate, and there are significant advantages to the textual XML storage. That said, merging image storage with image manipulation doesn't feel quite right to me. KPhotoAlbum was designed for one purpose -- to maintain large collections of images with excellent search capability. The GIMP is also designed for one purpose -- to create and edit images. These two functions seem completely orthogonal to me. _______________________________________________ Gimp-developer mailing list Gimp-developer@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx https://lists.XCF.Berkeley.EDU/mailman/listinfo/gimp-developer
