This is the perpetual debate in photo management software: If you want to keep the photos pristine, you have to store the metadata elsewhere. But if you store the metadata elsewhere, other applications may not be able to use it.
As Lucas pointed out, even if we write hierarchical tags to the photo files (which is possible by selecting the option in the Preferences dialog), not all photo apps would understand them. Likewise, one piece of metadata Shotwell keeps for all photos is a list of transformations (rotation, crop, color correction, etc.) If this was stored with the photo, other applications would (or should) honor these transformations when displaying the photo. I don't know of any thorough, open way of storing photo transformations that is widely honored (with the exception of rotation). We certainly don't want to lock anyone in to Shotwell, we just are trying to work through all these requirements in a way that allows most users to get what they want out of it. We do have some tickets that will allow Shotwell to be even more flexible in this regard: http://redmine.yorba.org/issues/1879 http://redmine.yorba.org/issues/3800 http://redmine.yorba.org/issues/3642 -- Jim On Thu, Sep 15, 2011 at 6:19 AM, Stefan Monnier <[email protected]>wrote: > >> why don't you simply check the option to store tags in the pictures > (which > >> should be checked by default in my opinion)? > > I'm really glad your opinion isnt in use :-) > > I use Shotwell because it NEVER writes data to my photos. > > If they are never written to, they will never (barring fs corruption) be > > destroyed. > > This is the only safe default, and all software should be safe by > > default. > > But tags should somehow be written down somewhere in a standard place, > so that you can use the same photos in different applications and the > info you set up in one is available to the other. > I hate it when an application tries to "lock me in" by keeping the data > in a proprietary format. > I think Shotwell should aim to make its database fully redundant, like > a cache, in the sense that it can be reconstructed from the data > in Pictures. > > > Stefan > > _______________________________________________ > Shotwell mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.yorba.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/shotwell > _______________________________________________ Shotwell mailing list [email protected] http://lists.yorba.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/shotwell
