[sf-perl] shuffling large numbers of image files

[Bill Moseley]

On Mon, Oct 16, 2006 at 09:57:47AM -0700, Rich Morin wrote:
> The first step is to capture the files on a single (500 GB) disk, in
> a manner that retains the origin information (i.e., media type and
> external inscriptions).  This will result in a tree of the form:
> 
>   .../Old_Media
>     Zip_100s
>       A Big Project, 2001
>         Big Project #1
>         Big Project #2
>         ...
>       A Quick Sketch, 2000

I guess what I'd do is not worry so much about where they are stored,
and rather create a database to store all the meta, including Exif
data if available.  If the files have reasonable time stamps (or dates
in Exif) I'd use that to organize them on disk (e.g.
/images/YYYY/MM/).  You should not need to move the images once they
are on the disk.  The database can be used to group the images as
needed.

Perfect application for Catalyst -- if they want it web based.  You
could have fun with Ajax drag-n-drop and edit-in-place boxes, too.

Then crunch away at thumbnail generation and from then on out manage
the entire thing like a normal database application.  I might put the
thumbnails in the database.

I installed Gallery2 last night.  You might want to play with Gallery
and get a look at the database tables it creates and look at how it
organizes things in albums and its permission system.  Gallery is PHP
based and I have yet to find PHP source that doesn't make me squirm.
;)

-- 
Bill Moseley
moseley at hank.org