Efficiently sorting photos into directories while viewing them in a fullscreen slideshow?

Question

I'm looking for software which will allow me to efficiently sort photographs into multiple different directories while viewing them with a fullscreen slideshow.

Specifically, I have a collection of approximately 5k photographs, which I need to manually sort into different folders/directories, while viewing them in fullscreen, slideshow like (my family wants to watch too).

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Ideally, I'd like something where I can navigate backwards and forwards between individual photographs, and can then tell the software, with eg. a keyboard shortcut, to move/copy that photo file into a specific directory, and possibly go to / show the next one. I'd also like to be able to define multiple different directories to move/copy files to.

So far, I've tried/looked at:

• Browsing and moving/saving photos This looks promising - however it's based on Windows (Is it possible to use a similar approach on Linux?).

• Using deletion as a way to get rid of / move files I don't want. Most photo viewing software offers quick deletion of files, however this means that there is no way to sort them into multiple categories, which I need.

• Using EXIF ratings: Some software (e.g. Digikam) allows changing/adding a rating, which I could then extract, and sort the files based on, with a shell script. However, I havn't found a way to do this, since some photo viewing apps don't use the EXIF information, but instead use an internal database with no way to get the data out, and I'm not terribly experienced with shell scripts.

Some requirements:

• I'm open to any solution which achieves the desired outcome, that is, the files sorted into different directories, within the requirements.

• Must run on Linux, should ideally be FOSS, and run natively (without Wine).

• Should be reasonably fast. (Some photo management software requires "importing" files, which, with many high-res pictures, can take forever, which is something I don't want.)

Any recommendation?

Answer 1

I would use Shotwell for this kind of task.

Just as described in the link, It can organize your photos according to tags, dates and folders.

When I used it once, I copied all my photos from and old hard drive to ~/Photos. It discovered duplicates and it organized all the photos in directories according to date, like that: ~/Photos/year/month/day/1.jpg

Answer 2

Digikam can do what you want, actually... it is a really powerful software. You just need to create one album for each target folder, then right click on a photo and select move to album. You can even configure a shortcut to this action. It can do a slideshow using a second monitor if you want, and then you can slideshow on one monitor, and perform the moving actions on another. But ask yourself if the full screen slideshow is really mandatory, because you can get a "quasi" full screen with preview image... just disable menus, toolbars and thumbnails bar, then get full screen - you get only some bars on side.