pixie - photo management app for minimalists

Dieter@be · 2013-11-29 18:21:53

Hey, I started working on a personal app for managing my pictures and generating albums.
Upon talking about it with colleagues it seems a lot of people struggle with the same problems so this may be just what you need.

the idea is pretty simple:

* small webapp (golang backend + angularjs frontend) that you run locally, it loads pictures from given "source" directories (those source directories are basically copies of the DCIM directories of your camera's, phones, etc)
* using vim-style keybinds you can navigate, and add/remove tags to pictures. the UI is supposed to make this as painless as possible.
* also with keybinds, you can spawn your image editor to create edits of pictures (which go in a different dir) and tag those
* finally, after you tagged pictures, you use shellscripts that go over all files matching certain tags and generate albums from those. For now it just symlinks the originals but I want to add something to resize them as well.

The code is here: https://github.com/Dieterbe/pixie

I had a functioning prototype at one point but then I did an optimisation to only include a subsef of images in the DOM (the active one + 7 before it and after it), and since then "auto scroll to the active picture" is broken. Because of that issue, the app is not very useable right now. But I hope that amongst the people who are interested in the app, there's somebody who's good at DOM/js/angularjs stuff, and could help out with the UI side of things.

firecat53 · 2013-11-29 21:15:09

Trying this out, but I'm completely unfamiliar with Go. Without spending a couple hours wrapping my brain around Go packaging, is there a quick fix for this:

pixie $ go run pixie.go 
pixie.go:10:2: cannot find package "github.com/Dieterbe/gothum/workers" in any of:
        /usr/lib/go/src/pkg/github.com/Dieterbe/gothum/workers (from $GOROOT)
        ($GOPATH not set)
backend/backend.go:8:2: cannot find package "github.com/mattn/go-sqlite3" in any of:
        /usr/lib/go/src/pkg/github.com/mattn/go-sqlite3 (from $GOROOT)
        ($GOPATH not set)
pixie.go:12:2: cannot find package "github.com/stvp/go-toml-config" in any of:
        /usr/lib/go/src/pkg/github.com/stvp/go-toml-config (from $GOROOT)
        ($GOPATH not set)

I've git cloned pixie and gothum, installed go and tmsu-bin (the tmsu package failed installation. This also pulled in go-fuse and go-squlite3). Not sure what to set for $GOPATH and/or $GOROOT. I've got pixie and gothum extracted to ~/.local/tmp.

Looks like an interesting project! Thanks,

Scott

Last edited by firecat53 (2013-11-29 21:16:04)

Dieter@be · 2013-12-01 17:15:45

try this:

export GOPATH=~/go
go get github.com/stvp/go-toml-config
go get github.com/mattn/go-sqlite3
go get github.com/Dieterbe/gothum
go get github.com/Dieterbe/pixie
cd ~/go/src/github.com/Dieterbe/pixie
go run pixie.go

(you can ignore $GOROOT, that just points to where your go install is, and should be set by the go package)

Last edited by Dieter@be (2013-12-01 17:17:10)

firecat53 · 2013-12-01 17:45:44

Ok, that worked (after also getting gothum). I setup a test directory layout like:
/home/firecat53/.local/tmp/pix
->edits
->originals
->wallpapers
->abstract
->nature
........
but I still get the error

WARNING: '/home/firecat53/.local/tmp/pix' not in a format that allows finding an edits dir (needs 'originals' subdir)

Scott

Dieter@be · 2013-12-01 17:50:29

it assumes it will receive the full path to your originals directory, so you would specify for example `/home/firecat53/.local/tmp/pix/originals/wallpapers/nature`, if you decide to make edits of any file in there, it will put them in `/home/firecat53/.local/tmp/pix/edits/wallpapers/nature`

firecat53 · 2013-12-01 18:02:51

Ah, so it doesn't handle an existing directory structure recursively? It needs the full path to the final directory with actual pictures inside?

I still get this error when passing the full path:

WARNING: Failed to create edits_dir '/home/firecat53/.local/tmp/pix/edits/wallpaper/arch/': mkdir /home/firecat53/.local/tmp/pix/edits/wallpaper/arch/: no such file or directory

I'm assuming I shouldn't have to create the edit path manually?

Dieter@be · 2013-12-01 20:05:07

yeah for now it works with 1 dir. this usually works relatively well because I have 1 dir for all my pictures from my phone, one with the pictures from my camera, etc. so i just do both separately, I could streamline this a little bit.

that warning you get is due to one the rough edges it still has. for now it assumes the parent dir (home/firecat53/.local/tmp/pix/edits/wallpaper/) exists. you're best off creating manually `mkdir -p` for now. I should add something to recursively mkdir.
(you're almost there )

Last edited by Dieter@be (2013-12-01 20:05:30)

firecat53 · 2013-12-01 20:56:26

Heh, ok, I still get a 'failed to load' error on the webpage, but all it says on the CLI is:

reading dir '/home/firecat53/.local/tmp/pix/originals/wallpaper/stuckincustoms'

Did I have to manually create the tag database and run gothum to create the thumbnails or will it do that by itself?

Dieter@be · 2013-12-02 04:26:34

firecat53 wrote:

Heh, ok, I still get a 'failed to load' error on the webpage, but all it says on the CLI is:
reading dir '/home/firecat53/.local/tmp/pix/originals/wallpaper/stuckincustoms'
Did I have to manually create the tag database and run gothum to create the thumbnails or will it do that by itself?

can you run a `sudo netstat -nlp | grep 8080`, that will tell if pixie is listening on the port. (with some Go versions, it seems to take some time to start up, not sure why that is, maybe reverse dns lookups or something)
yes, create a db with tmsu (not sure what the command is, but ~/.tmsu/default.db should exist). thumbnails for existing files are assumed to exist (you can do this with gothum or by opening something like gqview, there's a lot of different tools that implement the thumbnail spec), pixie will create the thumbnails for any new edits you make with it.

firecat53 · 2013-12-02 06:24:44

$ sudo netstat -nlp|grep 8080
tcp6       0      0 :::8080                 :::*                    LISTEN      23543/pixie

$ go run gothum.go /home/firecat53/.local/tmp/pix/originals/wallpaper /home/firecat53/.thumbnails/
2013/12/01 21:40:39 no input directory specified
exit status 1

I used imagemagick to create the thumbnails and put them in ~/.thumbnails. At least now Pixie loads the page and shows the picture title and id, but it doesn't load the images and there seems to be a weird scroll issue where the page kind of wiggles when I try to scroll down but doesn't actually move. No CLI error messages. Using Firefox.

Scott

Dieter@be · 2013-12-02 13:19:45

gothum uses "-in" and "-out" flags for those directories.
according to the thumbnail spec the pictures need thubnails that has the path checksum as basename. it's easy to make a mistake with this when doing it manually. and that's probably why pixie can't display the images.

the scroll issue: yep, that's the one i mentioned in the OP. that's a problem I've so far been unable to fix, I'm hoping someone with better angularjs/js skills as me can have a look at it.

firecat53 · 2013-12-02 14:58:47

I'm afraid I haven't been much help here I appreciate your patience, though. I'd be happy to test some more as you advance the project! Wish I could be of more assistance at the moment....

Thanks,
Scott

Dieter@be · 2013-12-17 03:33:26

hey, i was finally able to fix that annoying broken scrolling! it was something intrincate with the angularjs framework. i also fixed the recursive mkdir and a few small things here and there.
i've been playing with it and it seems to be a pretty well functioning prototype now.

Dieter@be · 2013-12-23 05:32:47

hey another update. I addressed your feedback and made pixie more user friendly.
the major changes are that it now automatically generates thumbnails, no need to run a tool like gothum yourself
also i added a bunch of clarifications to the README.
https://github.com/Dieterbe/pixie

karol · 2014-08-13 11:45:38

Pixie has been deprecated in favor of darktable: https://github.com/Dieterbe/pixie/commi … 4bb0417452

Arch Linux

#1 2013-11-29 18:21:53

pixie - photo management app for minimalists

#2 2013-11-29 21:15:09

Re: pixie - photo management app for minimalists

#3 2013-12-01 17:15:45

Re: pixie - photo management app for minimalists

#4 2013-12-01 17:45:44

Re: pixie - photo management app for minimalists

#5 2013-12-01 17:50:29

Re: pixie - photo management app for minimalists

#6 2013-12-01 18:02:51

Re: pixie - photo management app for minimalists

#7 2013-12-01 20:05:07

Re: pixie - photo management app for minimalists

#8 2013-12-01 20:56:26

Re: pixie - photo management app for minimalists

#9 2013-12-02 04:26:34

Re: pixie - photo management app for minimalists

#10 2013-12-02 06:24:44

Re: pixie - photo management app for minimalists

#11 2013-12-02 13:19:45

Re: pixie - photo management app for minimalists

#12 2013-12-02 14:58:47

Re: pixie - photo management app for minimalists

#13 2013-12-17 03:33:26

Re: pixie - photo management app for minimalists

#14 2013-12-23 05:32:47

Re: pixie - photo management app for minimalists

#15 2014-08-13 11:45:38

Re: pixie - photo management app for minimalists

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