Coming from Picasa Desktop - help

[bjnovick]

Great program, but I need a little help.  My family used to use Picasa to manage our photos.  One feature heavily used by my significant other in Picasa was the albums.  As many of you probably know in Picasa Albums are a virtual collection of photos.  This enabled her to group pictures for sharing with family by an event or purpose without physically changing how the photos are organized on disk.  For instance, a grouping for a 2016 Mother's day calendar and another one for our yearly family holiday card.  The same photo could exist in both "albums".  In digikam, albums represent what is on disk so it does not work for this purpose as we do not want the same file to exist in two places.  Then you would need to rate them, tag them, etc... in multiple places as they would be independent copies.  

I tried to simulate how Picasa does albums by using tags and just creating a tag called "ALBUM - XXXXXX" for each of the albums we have and then having her use the tag view.  However, in Picasa my wife could sort the albums by date or other properties.  When you get a lot of these it is very useful.  Hence, tags do not really work as there is no sorting capability for tags, just a search for a tag name.  I don't believe Digikam should change how it does Albums, but I wanted to find out is if I have somehow missed something key in how you are supposed to do something like this in Digikam. Is there an equivalent object/method in Digikam but just with a different name?  Anyone have any suggestions on how to do this?            

[Hans-Peter huth]

On Sat, 15 Oct 2016 09:01:49 -0700 (PDT)
bjnovick <[hidden email]> wrote:

> Great program, but I need a little help.  My family used to use Picasa to
> manage our photos.  One feature heavily used by my significant other in
> Picasa was the albums.  As many of you probably know in Picasa Albums are
...
I have the same use cases like you and agree that we need something in
addition to disk based albums. Question to the developers: how hard would it
be to implement a "virtual album" which just lives in the data base and
holds references to images in other albums? I think that would solve the
issues. Shall we file a "wish"?

HP


--
--------- 8< -------------
Why taunt me? Why upbraid me? I am merely a genius, not a god.
(Nero Wolfe)
Meine Bilder: http://jalbum.net/a/1456383

[Simon Frei]

For this use case I use tags. So I have a root tag called usage and then
several tags relating to presentations, galleries, events, ...
Thus you can use the tags left sidebar and select this tag to see all
these images. In that sense this can be understood as a "virtual album".

On 15/10/16 19:58, Hans-Peter wrote:

> On Sat, 15 Oct 2016 09:01:49 -0700 (PDT)
> bjnovick <[hidden email]> wrote:
>
>> Great program, but I need a little help.  My family used to use Picasa to
>> manage our photos.  One feature heavily used by my significant other in
>> Picasa was the albums.  As many of you probably know in Picasa Albums are
> ...
> I have the same use cases like you and agree that we need something in
> addition to disk based albums. Question to the developers: how hard would it
> be to implement a "virtual album" which just lives in the data base and
> holds references to images in other albums? I think that would solve the
> issues. Shall we file a "wish"?
>
> HP
>
>

[Hans-Peter huth]

On Sat, 15 Oct 2016 20:43:52 +0200
Simon Frei <[hidden email]> wrote:

> For this use case I use tags. So I have a root tag called usage and then
> several tags relating to presentations, galleries, events, ...
> Thus you can use the tags left sidebar and select this tag to see all
> these images. In that sense this can be understood as a "virtual album".

Correct, thats also what i do (and the OP). Works more or less fine.

But tags are written to the images or xmp files and thus trigger backups.
And if you have lots of tags, you probably don't want even more tags. These
tags then may have same names, e.g. i have 'river' and 'calendar/river'
which makes typing tag names slightly less comfortable. If you want to show
all images with a tag, you either search or select a album tree root and
filter for the tag. Works, yes, but not as comfortable as simply selecting
an album.

For me, it does therefor not feel right to use tags for this.

HP

--
--------- 8< -------------
Why taunt me? Why upbraid me? I am merely a genius, not a god.
(Nero Wolfe)
Meine Bilder: http://jalbum.net/a/1456383

[bjnovick]

Yes, that is what I have done also.  The problem is that tags can not be sorted in any way because they do not have properties (i.e. creation date).  What we were used to being able to do is to sort alphabetically and find the album we want if we knew the name AND/OR sort by date and then scroll down and find what we want if we knew the approximate time frame.  The tags only partially work as you can find by name, but not date.  Like most, I created a tag called "Album" and then all other albums as subtags underneath.  However, when you have 100+ albums (and growing) it becomes difficult to find what you want.  Hence why I was hoping there was a better way.        

[Anders Lund]

lørdag den 15. oktober 2016 19.58.38 CEST skrev Hans-Peter:

> On Sat, 15 Oct 2016 09:01:49 -0700 (PDT)
>
> bjnovick <[hidden email]> wrote:
> > Great program, but I need a little help.  My family used to use Picasa to
> > manage our photos.  One feature heavily used by my significant other in
> > Picasa was the albums.  As many of you probably know in Picasa Albums are
>
> ...
> I have the same use cases like you and agree that we need something in
> addition to disk based albums. Question to the developers: how hard would it
> be to implement a "virtual album" which just lives in the data base and
> holds references to images in other albums? I think that would solve the
> issues. Shall we file a "wish"?
>
> HP

 
You could just use tags for that :)

Kindly,
Anders

[Boudewijn]

On Saturday, October 15, 2016 9:04:39 PM CEST Hans-Peter wrote:
> On Sat, 15 Oct 2016 20:43:52 +0200
> Simon Frei <[hidden email]> wrote:
> > On Sat, 15 Oct 2016 09:01:49 -0700 (PDT)
> > bjnovick <[hidden email]> wrote:

> > > I tried to simulate how Picasa does albums by using tags and just
> > > creating a tag called "ALBUM - XXXXXX" for each of the albums we have
> > > and then having her use the tag view.  However, in Picasa my wife could
> > > sort the albums by date or other properties.

> > For this use case I use tags. So I have a root tag called usage and then
> > several tags relating to presentations, galleries, events, ...
> > Thus you can use the tags left sidebar and select this tag to see all
> > these images. In that sense this can be understood as a "virtual album".
>
> Correct, thats also what i do (and the OP). Works more or less fine.
>
> But tags are written to the images or xmp files and thus trigger backups.
> And if you have lots of tags, you probably don't want even more tags. These
> tags then may have same names, e.g. i have 'river' and 'calendar/river'
> which makes typing tag names slightly less comfortable.
> If you want to show all images with a tag, you either search or select a
> album tree root and filter for the tag. Works, yes, but not as comfortable
> as simply selecting an album.
>
> For me, it does therefor not feel right to use tags for this.

It is not an issue for me, but I can recognize the use of being able to filter
and sort tags more extensively than is possible now. The first two points you
mention (backups, duplicates) I think are side effects that one could come
around.

The issue actually mentioned by bjnovick can not so easily be worked around.
Advanced search gives a lot of options to find images, and one could save the
search as a virtual album (thus not needing tags as virtual album per se), but
it still lacks this 'meta sorting' ability. I do not know Picasa, so maybe the  
text below is totally besides the point ;-)

All filtering and search options I can think of, help me to zoom in to a
specific image, but not multiple specific groups of images (take, "all those
images in the first week of all past holidays").
To take this convoluted example further: imagine I wished to have an album for
each first week of every holiday, I could add a tag "first week of the
holiday". I start sorting, filtering and searching all my images, working from
now back to the past. I apply two tags each time: "FWOTH" and a filterable
timetag, ccyymm. Each album is defined by the intersection of those two tags
(FWOTH and 199807. Ah, the first week lasted from 19980728 to 19980804,
anyway, lets not make things more difficult)

Next week I recall that I want to show you the FWOTH-album that I had been
working on at the end of the evening, so I know it must be far in the past.
Now what? Filter on tag FWOTH and date "everything before 2004"? That gives a
whole bunch of pictures, but not an easy way to bring up the 5-star virtual
album (I don't want to give each picture 5 stars, and tags don't have meta-
properties).

Looking at the tags-table, I imagine it difficult to start adding this
ability. Am I looking in the right place at the data/database/
dbconfig.xml.cmake.in ? It says:

CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS Tags (id INTEGER PRIMARY KEY, pid INTEGER, name
TEXT NOT NULL, icon INTEGER, iconkde TEXT, UNIQUE (name, pid))

CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS Tags (id INTEGER PRIMARY KEY NOT NULL
AUTO_INCREMENT, pid INTEGER, name LONGTEXT CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_bin
NOT NULL, icon INTEGER, iconkde LONGTEXT CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_bin,
lft INT NOT NULL, rgt INT NOT NULL, CONSTRAINT Tags_Images FOREIGN KEY (icon)
REFERENCES Images (id) ON DELETE SET NULL ON UPDATE CASCADE, UNIQUE(pid,
name(100))) ENGINE InnoDB;

Could you give some examples of how virtual albums are used in everyday life?

Best regards,

Boudewijn

[bjnovick]

First, thanks for everyone's input!  I imagine with the end of life of Picasa there are many others like me who are looking for solution.  I checked out almost all the other options, but none seem to be as close as Digikam is.    

Let me give you all a little more details on the workflow for our family.  I take the photos, download them to our archive, and organize them into a structure on disk.  Currently we have about 75000+ photos.  I tag them with key information such as who we visited, where we visited, event that I took them at (i.e. dance recital, etc..), key family moment, etc...  At that point the images can be searched and are organized.  Great, I can do the same in Digikam and in some cases even more efficiently!    

However, that is not the end of the story.  Sometime later, my wife wants to create what is equivalent to a photo album or scrap book that you might find on your coffee table.  This gets shared with others either through slideshows/email/web or sent off to be printed and sent to family members.  She has no interest in how the photos are stored on disk.  She wants the "virtual" album to exist and be persistent so a year or two or 20 from now, when she wants, she can look back and see what photo's were used.  She is going to pick from the pool of photos and is not trying to organize the photos.  Picasa has 2 things in the view that makes this easy: 1) a Folder/Tree section which is equivalent to Digikam's Albums.  It can be traversed just like the album view in Digikam  2) a "Picasa Album" section which shows a virtual collection of photos.  It is these virtual collections that are more akin to the coffee table photo album.  

In picasa these are the total steps she needs to take:

1) Click create album and give it a name
2) She searches through the pictures I have taken by either traversing the tree structure or searching tags.  When she finds a photo that she wants she puts it in a tray by hitting a short cut combination (I don't remember the key combo).
3) When she is done collecting the ones she wants she right clicks and selects something akin to "send to album"  

Thats it.  She is done.  No great expertise required.  Later, she can sort the albums by date or when you do a search it includes album names.  

In digikam a virtual album through the predefined searches seem like it might partly fit the bill, but it is a bit more complicated and conceptually different:

1) Create tag "ALBUM - BLAH BLAH"
2) Find photos and add ALBUM BLAH BLAH tag.  When you have a lot of tags this becomes harder to do as the tag list gets quite large.  However, when I showed tags to my wife it immediately became confusing as a photo can gets multiple tags and then all show up at once and when choosing a tag the tag list is rather long as we have lots of tags.  This can be partly worked around by using subtags but still not the prettiest view.    
3) Create an advanced search that looks for ALBUM BLAH BLAH
4) Save search as virtual album

Why not just select photos and click "Add to virtual album"? Also, you might consider calling it something else instead of an Album since in Digikam Album already has a specific purpose.  Maybe "ScrapBooks" as this is more equivalent to scrap booking.

[Eduard Zalar]

Thank you very much for this excellent discussion!

I am also coming from Picasa Desktop and I also miss this "Virtual Album" feature.  It was so easy to pick up the pictures for desired use cases like:

* Sending some (but not all) photos to the family.

* Select photos for printing

* Select photos for a collage

* for uploading to an online album

etc.

Additionally, my standard tree structure is not the same as the name of a virtual album.

I sorted my pictures in a timely manner using \year\year-month-day ID

But a virtual album was able to link photos from different folders and had a completely different name like: "holiday in austria"

So what could be done now to file a feature request for digiKam and find other supporters?

bjnovick <[hidden email]> schrieb am So., 16. Okt. 2016 um 07:18 Uhr:

First, thanks for everyone's input!  I imagine with the end of life of Picasa
there are many others like me who are looking for solution.  I checked out
almost all the other options, but none seem to be as close as Digikam is.

Let me give you all a little more details on the workflow for our family.  I
take the photos, download them to our archive, and organize them into a
structure on disk.  Currently we have about 75000+ photos.  I tag them with
key information such as who we visited, where we visited, event that I took
them at (i.e. dance recital, etc..), key family moment, etc...  At that
point the images can be searched and are organized.  Great, I can do the
same in Digikam and in some cases even more efficiently!

However, that is not the end of the story.  Sometime later, my wife wants to
create what is equivalent to a photo album or scrap book that you might find
on your coffee table.  This gets shared with others either through
slideshows/email/web or sent off to be printed and sent to family members.
She has no interest in how the photos are stored on disk.  She wants the
"virtual" album to exist and be persistent so a year or two or 20 from now,
when she wants, she can look back and see what photo's were used.  She is
going to pick from the pool of photos and is not trying to organize the
photos.  Picasa has 2 things in the view that makes this easy: 1) a
Folder/Tree section which is equivalent to Digikam's Albums.  It can be
traversed just like the album view in Digikam  2) a "Picasa Album" section
which shows a virtual collection of photos.  It is these virtual collections
that are more akin to the coffee table photo album.

In picasa these are the total steps she needs to take:

1) Click create album and give it a name
2) She searches through the pictures I have taken by either traversing the
tree structure or searching tags.  When she finds a photo that she wants she
puts it in a tray by hitting a short cut combination (I don't remember the
key combo).
3) When she is done collecting the ones she wants she right clicks and
selects something akin to "send to album"

Thats it.  She is done.  No great expertise required.  Later, she can sort
the albums by date or when you do a search it includes album names.

In digikam a virtual album through the predefined searches seem like it
might partly fit the bill, but it is a bit more complicated and conceptually
different:

1) Create tag "ALBUM - BLAH BLAH"
2) Find photos and add ALBUM BLAH BLAH tag.  When you have a lot of tags
this becomes harder to do as the tag list gets quite large.  However, when I
showed tags to my wife it immediately became confusing as a photo can gets
multiple tags and then all show up at once and when choosing a tag the tag
list is rather long as we have lots of tags.  This can be partly worked
around by using subtags but still not the prettiest view.
3) Create an advanced search that looks for ALBUM BLAH BLAH
4) Save search as virtual album

Why not just select photos and click "Add to virtual album"? Also, you might
consider calling it something else instead of an Album since in Digikam
Album already has a specific purpose.  Maybe "ScrapBooks" as this is more
equivalent to scrap booking.



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Sent from the digikam-users mailing list archive at Nabble.com.

[Noeck]

I use tags (and colors and flags) for all these purposes:

Tags for location (Austria, Vienna), author (me), event (holiday), day
or night time, kind (portrait, selfie, landscape, ...), season, ...
Tags for publishing on the web and other audience.
Colors for the best photos I want to show in a slide show, but I could
use tags, too.
Flags for images to be sorted.

How is that different from the virtual albums you are looking for?
The only thing I see, that is difficult: Separating between tags that
are stored in the file and tags that are only present in the database.


I always found it to be a major strength of DigiKam that there is one
major sorting criterion: the file location on disk. It's good to have
the database and different ways to look at me photos and sort them. But
I always know where they are stored. And if the database would crash or
I would abandon DigiKam, the pictures are still sorted and the tags are
still stored inside the pictures. Thats a kind of interoperatability and
robustness that I like. For all secondary criteria, I can built up
simple or complex hierarchies of tags.

Best,
Joram


Am 16.10.2016 um 13:56 schrieb Eduard Zalar:

> Thank you very much for this excellent discussion!
>
> I am also coming from Picasa Desktop and I also miss this "Virtual
> Album" feature.  It was so easy to pick up the pictures for desired use
> cases like:
> * Sending some (but not all) photos to the family.
> * Select photos for printing
> * Select photos for a collage
> * for uploading to an online album
> etc.
> Additionally, my standard tree structure is not the same as the name of
> a virtual album.
> I sorted my pictures in a timely manner using \year\year-month-day ID
> But a virtual album was able to link photos from different folders and
> had a completely different name like: "holiday in austria"
>
> So what could be done now to file a feature request for digiKam and find
> other supporters?
>

[bjnovick]

Digikam does not have one sorting method, it has many.  The sorting methods are in the view menu and sort albums / sort images sub menus.  I think what you really like is that all information is stored in the files.  I agree with this and in the ideal case there would just be a way for digikam to interpret a special tag.  For instance, if tag value starts with virtual-album then the image would show in a virtual album with whatever comes after the tag.      

The tag examples that you give are exactly how tags and colors and ratings are supposed to be used.  It is how I use many of them today, yet still find it insufficient.  Primary Reason: In digikam you can do things with albums that you can not do with tags.  These include things like sorting, counting/displaying the number of images in the album, etc...    Reason 2: It makes something that should be simple complicated  Reason3: It is very easy to forget.  For instance if you tag with three colors each for a different slideshow then 12 months from now you need to remember blue = reason1, red = reason2, yellow = reason3.  

There is already the concept of a virtual album, but it is only through a search.  What is the difference between a virtual album where you select specific images and on in which it is through a search (i.e. the query is item is A,B,C versus the query is item contains "tag")?  You could probably simulate this the same way.  Enable a user to create a virtual album with a name and what digikam does is create a virtual album where search is "find the following images ()"  As users add images, the search becomes "find the following images (A,B,C,D,etc...)"

   

[Noeck]

I think you misunderstood me. By primary I meant the kind of sorting
that is the most visible outside Digikam on the file system. Yes, tags
stored in files are nice, but I meant the file system because that's the
important part for my external backup strategy, for external scripts and
in case I switch a computer or hard drive. I want to know where a file is.

Of course, Digikam can do different 'primary' sortings. On the left
side, there are several types of sorting that can be further filtered on
the right.

> are supposed to be used.  It is how I use many of them today, yet still find
> ... insufficient.  Primary Reason: In digikam you can do things with albums
> that you can not do with tags.  These include things like sorting,
> counting/displaying the number of images in the album, etc...    

I don't get that. On the left side pane, the second entry below the
albums, I see that: Tags that are sorted just like albums
(alphabetically), you can have a hierarchy, the number of images per tag
are listed in brackets. And in the menu you have a tag management.

The other reasons are quite personal, I don't use colors much, for instance.

> There is already the concept of a virtual album, but it is only through a
> search.  

What do you mean by search? On the left pane you can select tags just
like albums. I see no difference there. On the right you can filter for
further criteria.

Cheers,
Joram

[bjnovick]

I think the best way to explain this might be to give you a challenge:
1) Create a tag for a virtual album each day for the next 3 days (call the tag whatever you want, but start it with VA for Virtual Album).  This will simulate creating virtual albums over a period of time (pretend each day is a year and the tag name represents an event/scrapbook for which you want a collection of your photos)
2) Tag some images with the tag that you created for that day.  Make sure to have some images that have tags for multiple days

Challenge: On the fourth day use a search try to find the tag (not the images) that corresponds with year 2 (i.e. the tag you created on the 2nd day).  The trick - you are not allowed to use the name of the tag because by year 4 you have forgotten the actual names!  The only thing you remember is when you created it.  I surmise that the only way you will be able to do this is to include date information in the name of the tag, which is very undesirable as it relies on everyone in the family sticking to the format (i.e. VA - 2/2/2015 - MyGreatParty).  

I have tried using the tag method, and also the Picasa way, Lightroom, Acdsee, PhotoDirector, Shotwell, etc way. (each of these have other reasons why they don't work for my family)  Let me ask - if tags and file storage structure work, why do so many DAM/Photo Organizing programs have concepts like Virtual Albums/Scrapbooks/PhotoGroups/Events?    

One way to solve the backup issue is to store VA information in the DB AND in what is equivalent to a sidecar file.          

[Boudewijn]

On Tuesday, October 18, 2016 1:24:24 PM CEST bjnovick wrote:
> Challenge: On the fourth day use a search try to find the tag (not the
> images) that corresponds with year 2
It's a nice exercise and I try to think along a bit. Deep in my heart I _know_
everything can be achieved using intersections of nested tags ;-)

The end goal is of course to find the images, or is it really the name that is
important?
I mean, would it be my sister in law calling my wife, and asking "Dear, what
_was_ the name again of that marvelous virtual album that you sent two years
ago?" (the name is important), or would it be along the line of "Tonight I
want to show a slideshow containing all of the pictures in that album with the
photo of my daughters with the stray kitten" (the images are important, and I
realize I want to show that set, because this morning I made another scrap
album with this very same picture).

I am not trying to make your case difficult, still trying to find how I could
use this to my advantage :-)

Best regards,

Boudewijn

[Noeck]

And if I used virtual albums instead of tags, I would still have to
remember the name, wouldn't I?

And yes, my folders (albums) are called like that: 2015-02_MyGreatParty
Hence, no need for virtual albums as they are 'real' (folders).

But in the end, my view is totally irrelevant, I am also just one
Digikam user. I will drop out of this discussion.

Cheers,
Joram

[Eduard Zalar]

I think this is a question of usability.

Of course, you can use tags to solve this issue.  But you could also use tags for geo locating your pictures.

So why digiKam has a separate geo location functionality?

It is because most of us do not want to enter the latitude and longitude values in meta data tags.

You can click on a map and digiKam ensures that the correct tags get the correct values.

The same is the case with face/person tags.

It would be tedious to provide the necessary values in tags to mark a face in the picture and associate it with the name of the person.

So digiKam has a specific UI to simplify the handling of person tags.

And it has a specific structure tag to group all persons together.

So, coming back to the "Virtual Albums", this would be a feature which could avoid having knowledge about "album" tags.

It could just simplify the grouping of photos.

The disk folder contains the "original data".  All the pictures I have taken.

But perhaps I want just some of them to send, other to present, and a union of them to upload to a web album, etc.

"Virtual Albums" could help in grouping the necessary pictures without having knowledge about how to use tags or even structured tags.

It's like having a presentation slide deck for different people - for the management, for developers, etc.

Some slides are the same, but not all. But still I want to have all slides in one presentation file because they all belong together.

OK, that are my thoughts about this topic.

Finally, the maintainers of digiKam have to decide if they want to introduce such a feature or not.

Regards

Eddie

Noeck <[hidden email]> schrieb am Mi., 19. Okt. 2016 um 22:08 Uhr:

And if I used virtual albums instead of tags, I would still have to
remember the name, wouldn't I?

And yes, my folders (albums) are called like that: 2015-02_MyGreatParty
Hence, no need for virtual albums as they are 'real' (folders).

But in the end, my view is totally irrelevant, I am also just one
Digikam user. I will drop out of this discussion.

Cheers,
Joram

Le 20/10/2016 à 00:02, Eduard Zalar a écrit :

> So, coming back to the "Virtual Albums", this would be a feature which
> could avoid having knowledge about "album" tags.

It looks like your "virtual albums" are similar with what soft link do
in Linux

With Dolphin (Kde) you can copy/link

I already used this from the OS. Not tested in digikam, though, nor Windows

jdd

[christian graesser]

Hi, that is really an interesting thread.
I use for presentations a tagged collection of images: my virtual album.

Here is my problem. I would like to have an oder of the images in the presentation differs from sort by date or name. I would like to move the selected image in the thumbnail view to change the order and finally save this order or save that virtual album.
How can i do that?

Any tips/ tricks?

Best regards
Christian

On 20 Oct 2016 9:10 a.m., "jdd" <[hidden email]> wrote:

Le 20/10/2016 à 00:02, Eduard Zalar a écrit :

So, coming back to the "Virtual Albums", this would be a feature which
could avoid having knowledge about "album" tags.

It looks like your "virtual albums" are similar with what soft link do in Linux

With Dolphin (Kde) you can copy/link

I already used this from the OS. Not tested in digikam, though, nor Windows

jdd

[bjnovick]

Exactly.  It is a usability issue.  Tags can be made to do just about anything with the right naming conventions and with enough effort.  However, it is not ideal for all situations.  Even virtual albums in the current incarnation is probably not really sufficient as it seems like they only show up in the search menu.    

[Carsten Fuchs]

Hi all,

Am 2016-10-18 um 22:24 schrieb bjnovick:
> I have tried using the tag method, and also the Picasa way, Lightroom,
> Acdsee, PhotoDirector, Shotwell, etc way. (each of these have other reasons
> why they don't work for my family)  Let me ask - if tags and file storage
> structure work, why do so many DAM/Photo Organizing programs have concepts
> like Virtual Albums/Scrapbooks/PhotoGroups/Events?

I (too) am a former Picasa user and a new digiKam user, and so far get
along with tags very well, especially thanks to digiKam's features like
"Timeline" in the left sidebar and others. Combining tags and metadata
with these search and filter features seems to cover the described use
cases (as far as I understood them) for virtual albums well.

Please keep in mind that I'm still new to digiKam and maybe not enough
of a power user to have explored and experienced the limits of what
digiKam can do. Also, my albums are named like "yyyy/yyyy-mm-dd mother's
birthday", which helps me with organization a lot. And I have not yet
explored saved searches enough to really know how much they can act as
virtual albums (although it seems to me that virtual albums should be
implemented with saved searches).

Alas, what I really like about digiKam's albums is their straight
relationship to folders on disk. There is never any confusion about
this, and it helps a lot with working with the images outside of
digiKam, even if for nothing else but backup purposes.

It's probably purely subjective, but what I would really really not like
about a virtual albums feature was if they weakened and mixed with the
album's clear concept, introducing confusion where currently there is none.

Maybe it's just a matter of naming (i.e. it should *not* be "virtual
albums", as has already been suggested) and a matter of presentation.
But in a software as feature rich as digiKam, I think that avoiding
feature overload (or maybe, user overload ;-) ) is an important factor.

Best regards,
Carsten