Today I explore the program F-Spot. It’s an image multi-tool – you can rate, tag and index your images, store or export them and even do some editing with it.
You find the F-Spot homepage at f-spot.org.
F-Spot is a program for Linux and the Gnome desktop environment. But there are more programs out there for other Linux flavours and operating systems. For some you can even pay money. 
I hope that I concentrated enough on the work flow and not the specialities of this program. The work flow should be the same under all programs. Import, rate, delete the bad stuff, tag and store or post process further.
The TOC
00:20 Introduction (Bremen, site of shooting)
03:30 Open StreetMap
04:00 Insering the memory card and importing the images
06:20 Add a general tag to the import
07:30 Looking around in F-Spot
10:40 Merge JPEG and RAW images to one entry
11:50 Different modes of F-Spot
14:00 Help files
14:20 Burst trick and Browse mode
15:00 Rating the images
16:00 A glimpse into edit mode
18:10 Rotate an image
18:30 Rating revisited
19:20 Fullscreen mode
20:30 Select by rating
22:00 Deleting the un-stared images
22:30 Tagging the images
23:30 Adding a tag to the cloud
24:30 Excluding images with a certain tag from the view
26:10 Edit a tag – name and icon
27:00 AirShelters. musicians and peace
31:00 Summing up – what can F-Spot do
33:40 Web site design help wanted
Open Street Map provided the map of Bremen.
In the forum we are planning a new design for this web site. More specific, we plan and Daniel does the work. A big thank you to you, Daniel! Please check out the progress at our playground and give us some tips here in the comments or in the forum.
If you have filled out the registration forms in the forum and got no mail with the confirmation link to click at – please send me an eMail at info@meetthegimp.org. There is a problem with the mail on some servers.
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Oh, a correction. I just found out that this was a shelter for the population. The FLAK shelter is a different building, never recognized it as an ex military site.
It’s #2 in this http://www.relikte.com/brm_flak/index.htm – used today as a winter storage for rowing boats – I assume the ones for hire on the circular pond (Emmasee) in the Bürgerpark.
Rolf: I was wondering a bit how you edit your screencasts? I miss a good videoeditor on Linux. I am using Ubuntu and would make screencasts too if there was a better videoeditor…
Bengt, you can find what programs Rolf use at
http://meetthegimp.org/about-me-and-this-site/
Great thanks Conny…
I’m looking forward to this episode. I was always a bigger fan of DigiKam but there’s something about F-Spot’s simplicity that I long for.
Give what keyboard you can increase and decrease the size of a pencil
I was very interested in the video and can see that FSpot could be very useful so I loaded it up and was surprised to see that what I got was quite different to the shot you showed. To start with there was no side bar although in View, Components, side bar was ticked. I had a look at the menus and noticed, for example, Loupe was greyed. I believe that I use the same version of Ubuntu as you do so what crafty additions have you been making?
My abject apologies. I started clicking around on images and, I know not how, but side bar is there Loupe works and all seems well in the world. Now for a serious look at FSpot.
I have spent quite a bit of time today playing around with FSpot and I must say how easy it is to handle with a bit of practice. I notice that if the images are all RAW then, of course, there are no options available under right click, Open With. These only become available with the jpeg images.
The next thing to get to grips with is to be able to transfer the selected RAW image into UFRaw and Gimp for post-processing. When I select right click, Develop in UFRaw, nothing happens. Could this be because I do not have UFRaw as a separate application but part of GIMP? However, if I have Gimp open as well as FSpot and drag the image into GIMP, UFRaw opens. So, is this the best way to proceed? I feel sure that there must be a better way and look forward to some suggestions.
You’ll have to wait fo next weeks show – or install the standalone package.
Thanks for nothing, you know I always wait for next week’s show.
*lol* @ littletank: I have exactly the same problem with digiKam but I have UFRaw as a stand-alone installed… So I will have to wait until next week as well…
Mathias, this sounds like a BUG.
Hi Rolf,
Got a question here. As experienced before, does f-spot still duplicate your photos after importing? That’s the very feature I don’t like ’cause it gets to much space on the hard drive. I’ve tried using Gwenview and I like it for it only search your folder with images. No duplications made.
Your thoughts. Will watch your video now.
Mathias, can I suggest that you check to make sure you have DevelopinUfraw installed in f-spot. You can check by going to Edit -> Manage Extensions -> Tools.
Andrew, F-spot is not a viewer, but an ImageDatabaseAndMore tool. You can specify the location where to store the images, but F-Spot stores the image at that location. It is only a waste of space if you import from your harddisk and don’t delete the images you have copied into F-Spot.
F-Spot doesn’t encode the images in any way, you can access them with any tool you like. But leave them there, unless you want to break your database.
@ littletank: Thanks for the answer. But I use digiKam instead of F-Spot. I only mentioned it since it seemed to me the same issue
@ Rolf: Yes, looks like a bug. I am really waiting for the next release, where a lot of such bugs will be fixed…
Ups, sorry… It’s not the RAW files, it’s the XCF files that can’t be opened from digiKam…
F-Spot ignores XCF also.
THIS HAS TO BE CHANGED!!!!!!eleven!!
hey Rolf,
nice show, nice tutorial, and it has a story to tell. here’s some notes I’ve written down during the show:
- in “Browse” mode, you can apply the various editors to a set of pictures, like desaturate few images at once. But check also the “Edit” pane in “Edit” mode, containing some more (and more usefull) editors
- you had some issues figuring which was the current image on the filmstrip. the current one has a 1px highlight and is at the middle
- in addition to 0-1-2, you can zoom with the mouse wheel too
- for speed tagging, type ‘t’, and you’ll have a entry at the bottom allowing you to type the tag name (with tag completion) instead of having to find it from the tree on the left
I’ll keep more tricks for the follow-up episode
Stephane, current F-Spot maintainer
I enjoyed this episode very much but the quality was getting to me so I was glad
when you called it quits. It was a pleasure to listen to what followed and I really
enjoyed the picture you had up during the last part. I am still struggling with the
elements of style, but am starting to be able to recognize things I like in pictures.
I just watched episode 8 and I appreciate the efforts you have put into increasing
the quality of these webcasts over time. As someone else said somewhere, they
always have a nice ‘homey’ feel to them where your teaching style really comes to
the fore.
That said, can you have some pity on us poor geeks who are not accomplished
photographers and share some of your photographic thoughts? For instance, if
you are comparing noise correction or different images, you will say “Well, I like
this one better” with no explanation of WHY. For those of us who are only starting
to be able to recognize noise it would be nice to have some qualitative thoughts
on which variation of it is better.
This was merely meant as some small feedback; I hope you are properly resting
your eyes and that they are well on the mend. I am sure we all appreciate your work
and are grateful for it. I personally use digikam as a KDE user, but was very much
interested in a gnome alternative. They are in many ways very much the same, and
this episode was quite relevant.