HOWTO: F-Spot - importing from camera's memory card to folder of your choice

This is my very first howto (I think that is meant to be an apology in advance if it stinks). Here is my initial post on the subject at skarulis.com.

Situation: you want to use f-spot to import and manage photos instead of gthumb or picasa
Problem(s): 1) when you attach you camera's memory card to your pc, gthumb's photo importer starts not f-spot's 2) using f-spot's import function only allows files to be copied to a default folder /home/$username/Photos and not to the folder of your choice and 3) using Nautilus to delete may not actually free up memory from the card.
Prerequisite: you must have f-spot installed and functioning

HOWTO:
Solving Problem 1.
First, to change from gthumb's importer to f-spot's upon connecting your camera's memory card to your pc, you simply need to edit your preferences in System -> Preferences -> Removable Drives and Media. Go to the Cameras tab. Under the section Digital Camera, you will probably see

Code:

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gnome-volume-manager-gthumb %h

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Change this to

Code:

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f-spot-import %h

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Now, when you connect your camera's memory card to your pc, f-spot will pop up and ask you whether you want to import the photos from the card. However, please note that you must keep the "Copy files to the Photos folder" selected to actually copy the the picture files from your memory card to your pc. This raises Problem 2, which is that f-spot does not give you an option to copy the files to any other location other than a directory named "Photos" under your home directory (e.g. for me it is /home/aleska/Photos).

Solving Problem 2.
Assuming you don't already have a folder in your home directory called Photos that you actually want to keep and use, simply create a symbolic link under your home directory called "Photos" that links to the actual folder you want the photos to be saved under. For me, the folder I save all my photos to is on an attached network storage device that I have mounted to my system (e.g. /mnt/linkstation/Pictures). So, launch gnome terminal and create the symbolic link as shown below.

Code:

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ln -s /mnt/linkstation/Pictures /home/aleska/Photos

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Of course, you will need to replace "/mnt/linkstation/Pictures" with the folder on your system to which you want your pictures saved. Also, you will need to change "aleska" with your username (i.e. your home folder).
So, now you should have things set up so that each time you connect your camera's memory card to your pc, f-spot will launch its import tool and provide you with an easy way to copy files to the picture folder of your choice.
However, that brings us to Problem 3. Because f-spot doesn't provide us with an option for deleting the originals, you have to launch nautilus so that you can delete the files from your card manually. As much of a pain as that is, it still beats trying to delete the pictures through your camera, which can often be laborious and a waste of batteries. The problem is that when you use nautilus to delete those files, it actually creates a trash folder on the card where the files are moved to. So, basically you aren't really deleting, you are just moving the files on the card from one folder to another.

Solving Problem 3
The last part of this howto comes from directly from Ubuntonista at Ubuntu Blog. The steps to enable nautilus to delete for real from the memory card rather than creating and moving the files to a trash folder are simple.
Launch nautilus. Select Edit -> Preferences. Click on the behavior tab. Under the "Trash" section, select the option that reads "Include a Delete command that bypasses Trash". Et voila! Now when you locate your picture files on your memory card through nautilus, simply right click on the selection that you are deleting and select "Delete" as opposed to the "Move to Trash" option, and presto bango change-o, files disappear from the memory card.
Good luck and happy f-spot photo managing!

Great howto! Work excellent on my computer. Thanks!

Excellent! Thank you.

(It's the little things like this that would otherwise add days to my install time!)

Shane

Just a quick note, I never clean my pictures of the SD card.
I reformat it (using the camera menu) everytime I clean it.

The reason is that the FAT system is very fragile, and doing this has resulted in much less problems with the card.

Whohoo, nice howto :).

Btw; I migrated the ~/.gnome2/f-spot/photos.db from f-spot 0.1.11 (dapper version) to the 0.2.1 in my fresh edgy install and I was shocked not all thumbs were displayed. It appears you just have to scroll trough and restart a few times :)

Thanks for the HOW-TO.

Btw., just holding Shift while pressing the DEL key will erase the selected pictures permanently, too.

For Feisty you will need to replace:

Code:

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gnome-volume-manager-gthumb %h

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with

Code:

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f-spot --import %m

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Hi, thanx for the HowTo!

I had just changed the "gthumb %h" for "f-spot %h" which of course didn't work..

But has someone a clue on how to prevent F-Spot from saving all files in that stupid ../2007/5/13/ folder structure? Would be great to have all files in the same folder...

Thanx staubi

Nice howto, thanks :)
in reply to staubi: I kinda like the directory structure it creates.

But it would be better if you could choose how your files are stored (choose path, directory structure, filenames, ...)

Great how-to!

I too would love to change the directory structure used. I've tried hacking f-spot but it is so freaking complicated it might as well be closed source. (Especially if you have to use glade to do anything to the UI.)

My next attempt at circumventing the dated directory structure is going to have G-V-M call my bash script which does an 'rsync -av /media/usbdisk/ /myth/gallery/photos/ && rm /media/usbdisk/DCIM/100*/*' To this script I will add '&& f-spot-import /myth/gallery/photos/' and if I do NOT check copy pictures to photo directory, It will import them into the DB and use their current location.

I keep my photos in the photo gallery of MythTV.

I post back with my results.