64 LXF249May 2019 http://www.linuxformat.com
TuTorials Organise photos
on the first and last days to select them all, then
choose Events > Merge Events.
The photos will then be grouped together under a
single event that’s named according to the date(s) it
occurred on. Select this, right-click and choose Rename
Event to give it a more memorable name – it’ll remain
organised by month and year to help you locate it in
future. If you want to add a comment – basically a
description packed with keywords you can use to locate
the event later if necessary – right-click the event name
and choose ‘Edit Event Comment...’Organisation options
It’s also possible to label photos individually or in
selected batches. You can add titles, comments and
tags (keywords), all of which can help you find them.
Select a photo or group of photos and you’ll find options
for adding a title and comment under the Photos menu,
while the Tags menu enables you to both add new tags
and modify existing ones. Tags are a good way of
adding locations to your photos; you could for example
make it a rule to include a village/town, county/state
and country, so Ventnor, Isle of Wight, or Vancouver,
British Columbia, Canada for example.
You can also rate photos from one to five stars,
enabling you to rank your photos or even simply sort
your photos from best to worst. Look under Photos >
Set Ratings for the options available to you.
One final tool allows you to flag individual photos.
The photo’s thumbnail is marked with a small grey
exclamation mark, enabling you to draw attention to it
for whatever reason you like – for example, marking
photos that need correcting. Right-click a photo or
selection of photos and choose ‘Toggle Flag’ to switch it
on or off as required. When you’ve flagged one or more
photos, you’ll be able to view them all together by
selecting Flagged under Library.
By default, all of these changes have no impact on
the files themselves, but you may find that embedding
the metadata into the files could be useful, because it
makes that data available to other applications. To do
this for all the files in your collection, simply choose Edit
> Preferences and tick ‘Write tags, titles and other
metadata to photo files’. To apply it to individual files
only, you’ll need to export the file (see below).Shotwell’s image editing tools
Not all photos comes out perfectly, and Shotwell offers
some tools to help you make certain improvements.
As already stated, these changes are all non-destructive- the underlying file isn’t changed, so you can
experiment to your heart’s content without worrying
about ruining the original file.
Individual changes can be undone as you make them
in the usual way with Edit > Undo, or you can remove all
of them at any time by opening the image and choosing
Photos > Revert to Original. If you perform any edits,
hold Shift to view the photo in its original, unedited form
for comparative purposes at any time. If you do make
significant improvements to your photos that you’d like
to keep, you can save the edited version to disk: choose
File > Export and choose any option other than
‘Unmodified’. You’ll also have the option to export any
metadata you’ve attached to the picture. Either save
your copy to a new location or overwrite the original.
from file or camera, and Folders, which is useful if you
don’t keep all your photos in a central location. One final
option for browsing is tags, which is based on keywords
that are attached to individual photos. These can be
anything you like – a place or person, for example, and
the benefits of clicking them are obvious.
These viewing options form the crux of Shotwell’s
organisation tools. Let’s begin with Events. As we’ve
seen, by default Shotwell uses days to create individual
events, but you can create your own named events that
can either span multiple days or split an individual day
into two or more parts (for those busy days when you
cram in two or more engagements).
If you’re splitting a single day into two or more
events, simply select the day, then hold Shift as you
click on the first and last photo you wish to group into a
single event, before choosing Events > New Event. If
you’re creating an event from photos spanning more
than one day you’ll need to select the month in which
they appear under Events (or the year, if the event is
split across two or more months). From here Shift+clickwanttobackup
yourShotwell
library?Because
thumbnails
aregenerated
automatically,
allyouneedto
doisbackup
thedatabase
file– you’llfind
thishidden
awayunder
~/.local/share/
shotwell.
VisittheFaQ
athttps://
wiki.gnome.
org/apps/
Shotwell/FaQ
forcomplete
details.expaNDSHotwell
Shotwell’scapabilities can be increased through the use of plug-ins,
someofwhichare provided with the program. These are managed
viatheEdit>Preferences > Plugins tab, and you’ll see there are three
categories:DataImports, Publishing and Slideshow Transitions.
Thesearetheonly plug-ins currently published and available for
Shotwell,andthey do change over time – for example, an option to
publishtoFacebook was recently removed as it no longer works.
Youcanseethe current status of Shotwell’s plugins by taking a trip
tohttp://bit.ly/lxf249shotplugs, where you’ll discover that the
obsoletePicasaWeb Albums plug-in is in the process of being
updatedtosupport publishing to Google Photos instead.
Ifyoufancywriting your own plugin, visit http://bit.ly/
lxf29shotplugs2 for a complete guide to doing so. After completing
yourplug-in,open your /Home folder in Files and create the following
folderpath:~/.gnome2/shotwell/plugins. Copy your plug-in file to
hereandrestartShotwell – the plugin should now be available.Manage Shotwell’s
plug-ins from the
Edit > Preferences
dialogue. All
currently available
plug-ins can be
found here.Select a month
under Events
and you’ll see a
summary of all
events in that
period.