XnView Software

Newbie alert ... I'm just testing XnView for the first time. Very good first impression.

Background: I'm looking for something to help me organize photos
– Across multiple destinations (local and remote fs)
– From two different computers (macOS and Linux)

XnView MP seems really nice for organizing, tagging and moving.

With default settings, it seems all tagging etc. are stored in the XnView.db in .config/xnviewmp?
To be able to work with the same photos from two different computers (mac laptop+Linux desktop), I should change settings to store tagging etc. in XMP? Or do I need some sync'ing of that database? (I assume not, as paths would look differently.)

How about XMP sidecars? Storing in XMP, but not sidecar just stores the same info inside the image files themselves?
Storing in sidecar keeps tagging etc separate? What's the main pros/cons of each?

If I understand correctly, edits (crop, color adjustments etc.) are saved directly to image (save as for different versions), not inside .xmp or database? (Like some image organizers would store versions separate and leave master image untouched.)

Other things I should keep in mind when organizing library across local and network drives?
(I usually keep stuff locally on my laptop for a while, then move it to the network share to save space. Then it would be cool if I could access and organize the same photos on the network share from both Linux and the macOS laptop.)

Hello:

Maybe this post will be a good start.

http://newsgroup.xnview.com/viewtopic.php?f=82&t=33560

flips wrote:With default settings, it seems all tagging etc. are stored in the XnView.db in .config/xnviewmp?
To be able to work with the same photos from two different computers (mac laptop+Linux desktop), I should change settings to store tagging etc. in XMP? Or do I need some sync'ing of that database? (I assume not, as paths would look differently.)

I have a setup where I share the same photos (on a network share) with various Windows machines. This works very well. The main "headache" are the database and thumbnail files. After much experimenting I went for the following setup: one machine is designated as the master, all other are slaves. Every machine has its own local copy of the database and thumbnail files, for two reasons: raw speed and the ability to modify those files at will for "soft" changes (ie those changes that are temporary, like tags etc). All "hard" changes in the database and thumbnail files (ie those I want to persist) are only done on the master and regularly those two files are copied over to the slaves. This works pretty well because it is only two people who work with the photos and we can always sync our changes. Obviously this model does not scale well.

One caveat if you do not plan to share image files but keep local copies: even on Windows the filenames of the photos have to be exactly the same on all machines. If you have a file x:\<somepath>\IMG0098.jpg on one machine and x:\<somepath>\IMG0098.JPG on another, the database sees those as two different files. If the directory layouts on the machines are not similar you can solve that via symlinks.

I (plan to) store all categories in the database, once the importing/exporting of categories to XML files has stabilised. XMP is another option but there are various bits currently not working reliably. Perhaps the next version will bring some changes here as well.

Since one computer is a Mac and the other is running Linux, the file paths would not be similar unless I recreate and mount to /Volumes/share/some/path on Linux ...
But if tags are stored in XMP inside the files or in a XMP sidecar, it should work with separate databases, as long as I sync/refresh the Linux side when I do changes on the Mac?
(If it's stored in files, I/XnViewMP could always just reindex/rebuild the db, I assume.)

(I expect most tagging will be done on the Mac before images are moved to the larger storage on the file server.)

A quick test here. I selected to store stuff in XMP (not sidecar).

Upon opening the same files without the original database, it seems I've kept my tags, but not rating and colour labels. (British, aye? )
Edit: Well, yes, I kept some color tags ... interesting ...

The ratings and color labels I've not gotten used to yet, so I don't know that this will be an issue for me. XMP tagging is nice, because it's picked up by software like Aftershot. (Considering getting/using that for mass-adjusting white balance etc.)

May these (rating & color labels) are the "various bits currently not working reliably", @jonha4711 ?
Or did you have other problems with XMP? (I've only tested with <50 images so far ...)

flips wrote:Since one computer is a Mac and the other is running Linux, the file paths would not be similar unless I recreate and mount to /Volumes/share/some/path on Linux ...

That was why I mentioned symlinks. Before I moved all image files to a network share it was possible for me to create symlinks in such a way that all machines "saw" the same directory structure, regardless of the "real" paths on each machine.

flips wrote:But if tags are stored in XMP inside the files or in a XMP sidecar, it should work with separate databases, as long as I sync/refresh the Linux side when I do changes on the Mac?

In theory yes. In practice I had sometimes (not reproducible though) problems to re-import tags into the database from XMP tags in the images files (I've never tried sidecar files). I know that Pierre is actively working on this and other related areas and I have decided NOT to go down the XMP route but to wait until the textual export/import of categories is stable. I never use colour labels or ratings, just categories.

Thanks, @jonha4711!

I'm also reading through the stuff referenced in the thread @Erixx linked to:

Erixx haxx wrote:http://newsgroup.xnview.com/viewtopic.php?f=82&t=33560

I'm also reading through the stuff referenced in the thread @Erixx linked to:

Erixx haxx wrote:http://newsgroup.xnview.com/viewtopic.php?f=82&t=33560

Done reading!

I'm going to test a bit more storing tags etc. in the files and relying on tags, not DB.
(But definitely keeping the master DB, and also doing some symlinking, yes. )

One more question:
Is it better with or without the sidecar's for XMP?
Why / why not?