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Subject: User Photo Attachment available?
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rogetw User is Offline
Posts:2
Occasional Poster
03/09/2010 7:03 PM Alert 

How can I attach my photos of sightings to my entries? This is of primary interest to me.
jjones User is Offline
Posts:3886
Veteran Member
03/09/2010 7:24 PM Alert 

Hi,

There is currently no feature to allow for storing your photos in BD. There exist any number of amateur and professional photo managers for your computer, and for us to try to duplicate that functionality seems duplicitous and we could never keep up with the feature list required (editing, repairing, croping, etc of photos).

You can create user-defined fields (UDFs) for your sightings. What I do is this:

  • I use Windows 7 photo manager to upload, tag and store photos.
  • In BD, I created a Yes/No UDF (labeled Photo) and a Textfield UDF (labeled Photo Location). If I have a photo of a sighting, I check the "Photo" UDF checkbox and use the Photo Location Textfield UDF to store info on how to find it. This can be a filename and directory. Often I don't need this as I can search my photos by date, using the sighting date, to find the photo in question.

Now, I have the best of both worlds. I have a professional photo manager/editor and BD is loosely linked to that photo.

With that said, many users have requested a simple photo store capability within BD so that they can recall and view the photos (without edit, crop, etc features) along with their sightings. We are considering this.

Let us know your thoughts please upon reading this.

Jeff
Birder's Diary Technical Support
cowboyinbrla User is Offline
Posts:210
Veteran Member
03/10/2010 1:22 AM Alert 
Jeff,

For what it's worth, I have mixed feelings on this. On the one hand... I can see the advantage of linking a photo (or several) to a sighting - and for most of us, we'd need multiple photos to be able to link to one sighting record. But if the BD data merely points to a file on the computer, and then we reorganize the files in some fashion, then the links break.

On the flip side, if the sightings record could contain a link, the "creation process" for establishing the link could copy the photo you select to a directory within BD, so that if you moved the original file somewhere else, or even deleted it, the BD copy would remain as long as the BD sighting contained the link. But then, you end up with a LOT of wasted space in the BD data structure. BD probably could, with a third-party tool worked in, resize the photos to something manageable, but then you lose detail.

I certainly wouldn't want to see the files themselves stored as binary objects in the MDB file - that would quickly bloat the file to huge proportions.

So... I'm not sure there IS a good solution. If anything, I think simply allowing the sighting record to point to one or more files on the computer would be sufficient.

Kevin
jjones User is Offline
Posts:3886
Veteran Member
03/10/2010 8:19 AM Alert 

Hi Kevin,

You just went through the same thought process I have everytime I consider this. There are so many downsides to it.

The best design I have come up with is one you touch on above; copy the file to a ".../Birder's Diary/Photos" subdir. No editing features, just link (copies to subdir) and display; and ability to remove. Not sure how beneficial that might be.

Jeff
Birder's Diary Technical Support
meljo User is Offline
Posts:56
Veteran Member
03/10/2010 12:47 PM Alert 

Jeff

I have several dedicated programs that keep my photos by file and/or date, as well as, editing them.  Also, I have so many LARGE RAW, TIF and smaller JPG files that several external drives are needed for backup and storage.  I think it would complicate BD when my other dedicated programs work fine.

However, a photo file link within BD may work for some users.

Mel
rogetw User is Offline
Posts:2
Occasional Poster
03/12/2010 4:25 PM Alert 
Jeff, et al,

Thanks very much for your responses. All your comments track pretty much with my thinking, also. I envisioned some type of dynamic pointer or link sub-routine, which would call an external viewer when requested. It would be much more elegant than having to manually search and select/view each photo. I programmed using Dbase in the '80's, but I don't know what it would entail these days. Some type of utility would be nice.

Roget W
jjones User is Offline
Posts:3886
Veteran Member
03/12/2010 4:32 PM Alert 
I am looking into that Roget. Thanks.

Jeff
Birder's Diary Technical Support
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