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Can you recommend a photo tagging software?

Asked by [ Editor ] , Edited by Fernando C. Estrada [ Admin ]

I’m looking for some software that helps me organize my photos. Ideally I’d like to attach information to the pictures. Examples:

  • Where was it taken? (city, …)
  • What is shown? (people, macro, landscape, …)
  • Specific things? (person X, …)
Easy access to tagging data is essential. That includes:
  • Access from a scripting language such as Python.
  • Searching tags and browsing them in any image viewer (for example using a symlink farm).
  • Using tagging data from different programs (for example geeqie keywords).
  • Easy mass tagging. (I have no clue about how work flow would look like, but it should be fast.)
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7 answers

2

stkris [ Editor ]

F-Spot is popular - and so is the up and coming Shotwell. Featurewise F-Spot is more complete.

http://fspot.org/

http://yorba.org/shotwell/


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helmut
-

I haven’t tried it yet, but it looks promising compared to what I have seen previously. One big disadvantage seems to be that the tag database (sqlite) has to reside at a central place and cannot be managed using a version control system, so I am bound to one computer. Is this solvable, too?

helmut
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I finally got to try it. Since it pulls in mono, it is quite big. I also managed to segfault it once. After this rough start the program looks impressive though. As with shotwell the UI is thought out well. The database is sqlite backed and (unlike shotwell) has a table mapping photos to tags. Also searching for multiple tags is supported. So f-spot gets quite some things right. The biggest missing (and probably most difficult) piece is making the data available to other programs.

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1

paulcarroty [ Editor ]

digikam is the best

NN comments
helmut
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digikam was actually one of the programs I tried. It forces the location of images, so it is ruled out by not being a toolbox. It simply does not adhere to the Unix design principles: One tool for a job.

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1

amlj [ Editor ]

You can use gThumb…
I’m not quite familiar with it, but as far as I know, you can add title, place, date, and massive tags.

But I don’t know about the rest of things you like… As I’m not very familiar with how they work.

But you can install it, and see if you like it.

Hope that helps.

*EDIT* Found you a better choice: F-Spot

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0

lifeisfoo [ Editor ]

I think that the better choice is Shotwell

NN comments
helmut
-

I tried shotwell now (due to its low installation size :–). It solves quite some aspects of the initial question. However it is lacking essential features. The biggest blocker surprisingly is the lack of searching. What comes next is lack of documentation concerning tag access from programming languages. Conclusion: FAIL!

helmut
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Uhm. I also dug in its private .shotwell directory. The .shotwell/data/photo.db is a sqlite database (like f-spot). Tags are stored in TagTable. Each row contains one tag and a comma separated list of image ids. This is a very bad joke for usage of a relational database. m(

helmut
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Did I mention that shotwell is constantly using a full cpu? In how many aspects can this program fail??? Granted: The UI seems to be thought out well with only minor kinks.

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