We now come to an area that is somewhat less well documented or even not documented at all: the flags, catalogs and libraries of gThumb. At first sight I was somewhat confused: what is this all about? But after having a closer look I found out how this system works and once again: very practical!
But first: what causes the confusion? Start gThumb, open a photo folder and the thumbnail images will appear. Press F9 to turn off the tree view on the left, so that more thumbnails fit on your screen. At the bottom right you see three flags but they are somewhat gray and do not seem to be active. Clicking on them leads to nothing.
That changes when you select a thumbnail, or several, and you type Alt+1. Now you have set the green flag; the green flag at the bottom right lights up and is therefore apparently active.
You set the red flag with Alt+2, the black one with Alt+3. 'Un-flag' them with Shift+Alt+1/2/3.
If you click on the green flag at the bottom right, or you type Ctrl+1, all photos with this flag will be displayed. Okay so far. Now close gThumb and start it again and what do you see? Flags gone! Apparently these flags are not saved after closing the program, which raises the question what they are for?
Well, the answer is that you use these flags to select photos during a single gThumb session. When you are ready, click on the green flag and you will see your selection. You can now process this collection in one go, for example reduce the file size and send it to Flickr, or you can make a contact sheet. Or place them in a catalog: select all photos with the green flag (Ctrl+A), right-click and say 'Add to catalog'. In the window that appears you create a new catalog, you give it a name, you click Create and you say Add and close. And ready is Kees! (Dutch expression). Would you think...
But here is Confusion Number 2! Click again on the green flag at the bottom right and you will see your selected photos.
Now click on the Catalogs icon in the top menu bar and you will see... an empty window! Huh? We had just created a catalog, right? That's right, but now you need the tree view on the left again, so hit F9. And yes, our catalog appears at the very bottom of that list! Click on it and you will see - at last! - all the photos that we had placed in the catalog. A child can do the laundry (if it knows how)! (Dutch expression again).
Unlike the flags, these catalogs are saved after closing. So this is a very handy way to create collections, with the big advantage that the photos are not copied over your hard disk to separate folders. And that's the way I used to work. For example, after photographing a concert, I made a folder Selection, in which I copied the photos that I wanted to continue working on. Once finished, I made a new folder Def, which contained the edited photos from the Selection folder. But with this flag and catalog system this is no longer necessary. Once again, again: really very practical and above all: much faster!
Another word about Libraries. This is completely undocumented. Libraries are meant to store Catalogs. It is best to create them in the file tree on the left and not in the Add to catalog window (there is a bug, which has been reported and should be resolved in version 3.7). For example, create the libraries Holidays and Concerts and drag all your concert catalogs and holiday photos from different years to them. Again: handy (but a bit buggy)!
Categories and libraries can be deleted again by clicking on them in the file tree with the right mouse button, then choose Delete. If you have a whole bunch of them, then deleting or reorganizing will be faster by navigating to .local/share/gthumb/catalogs in a file manager. Again, by deleting categories or libraries, you only throw away a collection; your original photos remain untouched. Please note: if you rename a photo within a catalog, the original will also be renamed.
At the moment of writing I am busy with a big photo job: compiling a photo book for my daughter's upcoming 18th birthday! That means that I have to make a selection from eighteen years of digital photography, plus scan a couple of black-and-white negatives (I was active in the dark room until about five years ago - and it still silently calls me...).
I use gThumb for the digital part. In Preferences I first set the size of the thumbnails to 164 pixels, which makes them about 1.8 x 1.4 inch on my screen, more than enough to recognize a photo. After choosing a folder I remove the file tree (F9). Then I flag (Alt+1) the thumbnail image, or I press Enter for a larger view and click Alt+1. While working I hit several times Ctrl+1 to see the photos that I have flagged so far. With Alt+arrow left I go back from the catalog view to the photo folder. When I am done with a folder, I click on Ctrl+1 again, select everything (Ctrl+A), right-click and say 'Add to category', in my case it is called jojo18. I now click on that category and see all the photos I have selected for the photo book so far. Now I can close gThumb and continue again the next time.
Because this involves a lot of work, I have added these catalogs (.local/share/gthumb/catalogs) to my backup program, one never knows.
_____________
5/2019
