store thumbnails in photo directories
Submitted by Adam Dingle
Link to original bug (#716321)
Description
---- Reported by adam@yorba.org 2010-07-05 10:13:00 -0700 ----
Original Redmine bug id: 2250
Original URL: http://redmine.yorba.org/issues/2250
Searchable id: yorba-bug-2250
Original author: Adam Dingle
Original description:
Shotwell currently stores all its thumbnails in the .shotwell directory. This may potentially require a lot of storage for a large collection. It might be better to store the thumbnails in the directories where photos live; that would use less space in the user's home directory. If photos are on an external drive, the thumbnails would end up there which seems appropriate as well.
Related issues:
- related to shotwell - 4489: store thumbnails in heirarchical tree (Open)
---- Additional Comments From shotwell-maint@gnome.bugs 2013-05-01 11:46:00 -0700 ----
History
Comment 1
Updated by rv - almost 3 years ago
If so, make this optional. I prefer my photo directory to stay clean and independant of any software I may use.
Also I'd prefer the thumbnails to be in the standard and shared location (~/.thumbnails or some XDG directory). This directory was created to avoid duplication. I don't understand why it's not used by shotwell.
Comment 2
Updated by Jim Nelson almost 3 years ago
rv,
Shotwell maintains its own thumbnails for two reasons. First, we keep two thumbnail sizes (128px and 360px) so we can offer scalable thumbnails, and because the larger of the two is often used as a preview view when switching to full-window or full-screen mode.
Second, because Shotwell is a non-destructive editor, our thumbnails reflect your photo with all the edits you've made (crop, rotate, color adjustment, etc.) The GNOME thumbnail service is not aware of these edits and thumbnails the file on disk, which we don't edit.
-- Jim
Comment 3
Updated by Adam Dingle almost 2 years ago
- Priority changed from Low to Normal
Comment 4
Updated by Thomas Güttler about 1 year ago
I think it is a bad idea to store the thumbnails near the photos. It is better to store the thumbnails somewhere below ~/.shotwell.
Reason1: If you use a diffent photo tool, it will display the thumbnails, too. If you open the directory ~/Pictures/2012/09/22 with
an other tool you will see all thubnails. That's not what you want.
Reason2: What do you do with read only media?
Comment 5
Updated by Adam Dingle about 1 year ago
Concerning reason 1, we'd probably store the thumbnails in a hidden subdirectory (e.g. '.thumbs') in each directory, so other photo tools would presumably ignore them.
Comment 6
Updated by rv - about 1 year ago
I also think that storing thumbnails in each directory is a bad choice. Thumbnails are not valuable datas and must stay easily 'trashable' if necessary. When I save my library, I want to only save what's important and not thumbnails that take extra space for no use.
And assuming that other photo tools would 'presumably ignore them' seems too optimistic in my sense...
Comment 7
Updated by Joe Bylund about 1 year ago
A couple of thoughts,
I would likely also use more disk space if thumbs are stored with photos. Granted it's not a lot of space, and I could presumably update my rsync to exclude these directories.
Second, I understand thumbnails are used for missing photos, wouldn't this make it more likely that missing photo => missing thumbnail? (imagine user moves directory)
@rv, it should be easy enough to do 'find shotwell_lib_path -name ".thumbnails" -delete {} ;' to remove these directories.
Comment 8
Updated by Adam Dingle about 1 year ago
Joseph, you make a good point about missing photos and missing thumbnails.
I agree that this is all debatable. If we do continue to store thumbnails separately from photos, we might want to store them in ~/.cache.
Comment 9
Updated by Lucas Beeler about 1 year ago
Just an FYI: as of Shotwell 0.13 we do store thumbnails in ~/.cache.
Comment 10
Updated by Jim Nelson 11 months ago
- Target version set to 0.14.0
Comment 11
Updated by Jim Nelson 11 months ago
- Category set to library-mode
Comment 12
Updated by Jim Nelson 11 months ago
- Status changed from Open to 5
- Resolution set to wontfix
I don't think we're going to do this for a couple of reasons. First, a few users here have piped up and said they would prefer the thumbnails are stored in the .cache directory, which we do today. Second, we no longer store mimics (Shotwell developments) in the .shotwell directory, but rather in the filesystem beside the master, and so that source of disk usage actually implements this ticket. Third, using the .cache directory is encouraged for exactly this kind of problem and most GNOME apps do so, including the GNOME thumbnailer. Fourth, I feel this proposed scheme is fragile since, as Joseph pointed out, if the thumbnail exists beside the photos, it increases the likelihood we can't show it when the photo goes missing. If you're trying to find the photo, it's sometimes useful to know what you're looking for.
If there's enough interest in reviving this request, we can re-open, but for the above reasons I feel this is something Shotwell won't implement.
Comment 13
Updated by Charles Lindsay 7 months ago
- Status changed from 5 to Invalid
--- Bug imported by chaz@yorba.org 2013-11-25 21:45 UTC ---
This bug was previously known as bug 2250 at http://redmine.yorba.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2250
Unknown milestone "unknown in product shotwell. Setting to default milestone for this product, "---". Setting qa contact to the default for this product. This bug either had no qa contact or an invalid one.
Version: 0.14.0
Resolution: RESOLVED INVALID