More RAW workflow options - Geeqie

In the previous article, I tested some RAW processing with a moderately complex workflow due to the camera (XZ-10) not being supported currently by Darktable so I had to convert to DNG etc...

I now have installed geeqie, supposedly it can view also RAW files and thus could be used for culling images even before importing/processing them.

So I empty the card to a folder outside Shotwell's monitored library folder and try geeqie.  And geez yes for that purpose it works very well.  I tried with the XZ-10 pictures already mentioned above and some new DNG from the Pentax K-r.  I had shot a few in rapid sequence (5 pic/sec) and Geeqie allowed me to zoom in on the subject, and *really* fast scrolling (also with the mouse wheel) to check which are the best ones.  The others can be deleted from Geeqie directly before any import.

Geeqie also can add keywords to the RAW files.  It has a hierarchical keyword structure and keywords (aka tags) can be added to one picture at a time or (using right-click) to all selected pictures from the current folder.

Keywords and other metadata are stored in .xmp files (can be switched on in the Preferences).  Geekie keeps track of these files and pairs them in the GUI with the appropriate RAW file name.  Same for JPG files if any (not in my case today as I was shooting RAW only).  Pretty neat.

Other metadata that can be set from Geeqie include a title and a description.  It is also possible to set these fields on a single or on all selected images (right click) or add to existing field values instead of replacing them.

Importing into Shotwell: none of the metadata show up :-\ because probably shotwell doesn't even try to read the .xmp file.  Shotwell created the usual _DNG_embedded.jpg files.  They're about 1.6 Mb in size (larger than those from the XZ-10 thus for the same resolution, still not very big but I couldn't really get bigger ones out of the box with Darktable).

Opening with Darktable, importing the DNG files from the folder, tweaking a bit then exporting with or without a suffix: Shotwell imports (after a restart) and sees the metadata from Darktable.  So far so good.  Keeping 1 star for the DNG and setting 2 stars for the JPG : so I can work on tweaking metadata a little bit more if needed before upload.

Cleaning up: rejecting and deleting a few bad ones in Shotwell deletes the DNG_embedded jpg and the DNG files, but also creates an empty DNG_shotwell.jpg (!) and doesn't remove the .xmp files.  And Darktable still needs a separate cleanup step (which will remove the .xmp files then).

Conclusion: the JPG files are not paired with the RAW in Shotwell, they contain metadata and are developed by the RAW processor.  However the whole workflow is still pretty much a chore.  And each image appears twice in Shotwell of course.