# The F-Spot Manual

This is the user manual for F-Spot, a GNOME personal photo manager.

This is the user manual for F-Spot, a GNOME personal photo manager.
2007-2009
Aaron Bockover, Gabriel Burt, Miguel de Icaza, Bengt Thuree
GNOME Documentation Project
Miguel
de Icaza
Aaron
Bockover
Bengt
Thuree
Gabriel
Burt
Alexandre
Prokoudine
Stephane
Delcroix
0.5
2008-09-25
0.4
2008-09-12
0.3
2007-07-26

## Organizing your photos

### Import

You can import photos from your hard drive or your camera. When you import your photos into F-Spot from your camera, it will always make a copy of them, leaving you free to clear your camera's memory. By default, F-Spot will make a copy of photos imported from your hard drive. Uncheck the Copy option on the import dialog or hold Shift when dragging photos into F-Spot if you do not wish to copy them from your hard drive.

By default, F-Spot copies your photos to the `~/Photos` folder. You can change the folder F-Spot uses in Preferences dialog (Edit Preferences ). You can also disable physical copying of images to that directory and make F-Spot only reference to existing files. For that you need to disable checkbox Copy files to the Photos folder.

If there is a tiny chance that some of your photos are already imported from the chosen source, you can use Detect duplicates option. In this case F-Spot will try to find out if exactly this image is already present in the database and thus new copy of it should not be imported.

If all the photos you are importing at one time are from a particular event, or have some other characteristic in common, you can create a tag for them so you can later find them with ease. To do this, follow the instructions from to create a new tag, then when you are importing them, check the button for Attach Tag and choose the tag you created.

F-Spot uses a database stored at `~/.config/f-spot/photos.db`. Note, to access it, use the sqlite3 command. You can also manually specify path to a database by running F-Spot with `-b` option.

After an import, F-Spot will display the pictures of the latest import roll only. Read to learn how to deal with import rolls.

You can also import directly from Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird using Firefox and Thunderbird F-Spot importer extensions written by Pizzach.

### Edit

If you double click or press enter on an image, you enter Edit mode, where you can remove red-eye, crop, and adjust brightness and colors.

#### Versions

When you edit your photos, a new copy (called a version) is created, so your original is never altered. After your first edit to a photo, subsequent edits will modify the same version. If you want to create multiple versions of your photo, perhaps with different cropping or coloring, you can do so via the File Create new version option.

#### Crop

Cropping an image is a great way to improve the quality of a photograph by change how it is framed. You crop a photo by selecting the part of the photo you want to keep. If you want your photo to be the exact dimensions necessary for a certain print size, you can constrain the kind of selection F-Spot will allow you to draw by choosing the appropriate size from the constraint drop down. See the below for details on making a selection on your photo.

##### Crop tool

Once you have made your crop selection, you must click the crop button beneath the image to finalize the crop. If you are working with the original photo, cropping creates a new version your photo.

#### Straighten

Straighten effect is a tool to level a photo, quite helpful for landscapes taken without a tripod, when (imaginary) line of horizon is not at 0°. This tool rotates an image by a specified angle and automagically crops the resulted image, so that you always see a perfect rectangle.

##### Straighten tool

#### Adjust Colors

To adjust the brightness, contrast, and colors of a photo, first click the Adjust the photo colors icon to open the adjustment dialog. Change then some settings and save them with OK.

##### Adjust Colors tool

#### AutoColor

This effect automatically adjusts color levels to make a pretty balanced picture color-wise. It serves best for pictures taken with automatical white balance, when camera didn't manage to do the job well.

##### AutoColor

#### Desaturate

To make a colorful photo a black and white one, open a photo of choice and press Desaturate button.

##### Desaturation tool

#### Sepia

To make a colorful photo look like an old-style picture in sepia tones, open a photo of choice and press Sepia button.

##### Desaturation tool

#### Remove Red-Eye

To remove redeye from a photo, you need to select a zone containing the eyes. You may want to zoom in on the image to accurately select the eyes in the photo. You should be able to correct both eyes on the same person in one shot, or even the eyes from multiple people at once. If this doesn't work for you, or the selected zone contains some vivid red parts (lips, ...) you'll probably have to correct one red eye at a time.

To make your selection, click one corner of the rectangle that will be your selection, and drag your mouse to the diagonal corner and release it. You can resize your selection by dragging its edges, and you can move it by clicking in the middle of it and dragging it to where you want it.

Once you have selected a zone, you can remove the red from it by clicking the red-eye button beneath the photo.

##### Red-Eye tool

You can change the threshold for redeyes detection by changing the gconf key `/apps/f-spot/edit/redeye_threshold`.

#### Soft Focus

In photography sharpening one region of a picture, while blurring all the rest, is a way to make an emphasis and grab attention. It is achieved by using a lens that allows shooting with a short distance in front of and beyond the subject that appears to be in focus. Soft focus effect is a way to emulate such a lens.

##### Soft Focus tool

Click to choose central point of the area you want to be in focus and adjust amount of blurring, then click OK.

#### Sharpen

Out-of-focus photographs and most digitized images often need a sharpness correction. The Unsharp Mask effect sharpens edges of the elements without increasing noise or blemish. To sharpen a photo choose Edit Sharpen... and specify the following values:

- `Amount` — strength of sharpening.

- `Radius` — how many pixels on either side of an edge will be affected by sharpening. High resolution images allow higher radius.

- `Threshold` — the minimum difference in pixel values that indicates an edge where sharpen must be applied. This helps avoiding creation of blemishes in face, sky or water surface.

#### Describe

You can also enter a description of the image by clicking on the text entry box below the image and typing.

Once you have made your crop selection, you must click the crop button beneath the image to finalize the crop. If you are working with the original photo, cropping creates a new version your photo.

#### Adjust Time

In both 'browse' or 'edit' modes, you can adjust the time of one or multiple pictures (Edit Adjust Time). Adjusting the time of multiple pictures at once helps you shift all an import roll if, e.g. the time on your camera is badly set or if you forgot to change it according to DST.

### Tag

F-Spot enables you to organize and enjoy your photos by associating them with various user-customizable tags. A tag is a merely a label. F-Spot comes with default tags to get you started; you are free to change them and add new ones. For example, if you want to create a tag for specific event, you can create a new tag named after that event under the Events tag.

There are many ways to tag photos:

- drag and drop the photo(s) onto the tag

- drag and drop the tag onto the photo(s)

- via the photo's right-click menu

- via the Tags and Edit menus

- by typing them in. Press t to pop up the tag entry bar. Here you can enter the tags, separated by commas.

  You can also use auto-completion in this entry bar: After entering the beginning of a tag name, press Tab to see the first possible completion. You can cycle between other possible completions by pressing Tab again, and backwards with Shift Tab. To confirm the suggested completion and enter a new tag, press ,. By pressing Enter you leave the tag entry bar, possibly confirming the current completion. To abort the auto completion, just keep on typing.

The first photo you associate with a tag will be used for that tag's icon. You can always edit a tag's name, parent tag, and icon by right clicking on it and choosing Edit tag.

You can change a tag's parent by dragging and dropping it where you like. Also, you can edit the name of a tag by selecting it and pressing F2. Lastly, if you have the tag tree widget focused (e.g. you just clicked on a tag), you can start typing the name of a tag, and all the expanded tags in the list will be searched and you'll jump to any matching ones.

You can also change size of tag icons in the sidebar or even make tag icons invisible by selecting preferred option from View Tag Icons menu.

F-Spot can write tags as metadata fields into JPEG files. Tags for various RAW files, PNG, TIFF, and others are written to F-Spot's database. You will have to re-tag these files if you re-import your collection.

## Enjoying your photos

### Browse

You can use the slider widget to browse your photos by month or by directory. To change this setting, go to View Arranged By .

### Search

F-Spot uses search filters to help you better define search criteria.

#### Tags

You can start a search by double clicking or activating a tag from the tag list. Alternatively, you can show the find bar with Find Show Find Bar. With the find bar shown, you can drag tags from the tag view to the find bar.

To find photos that are tagged with both of two tags, activate the first in the tag view or drag it onto the find bar, then drag the second tag and drop it on top of the first. You can also right click on the second tag in the tag view, or use the Find menu, and choose Find With... and select the first tag (or group of tags).

You can drag a tag icon around on the find bar to change from finding it and another tag to finding it or another tag.

You can search for photos that do not have a particular tag by double-clicking on a tag in the find bar. Alternatively, you can right-click a tag in the find bar and select Exclude.

To remove a tag from the search, drag it away from the find bar, or right click and select Remove.

By default, photos tagged Hidden will not be shown. You must explicitly include the Hidden tag in your search to show such photos.

#### Import Rolls

F-Spot remembers what pictures were imported every now and then. Use Find Import Roll Last import roll to limit search to last importing session or use Find Import Roll Select Import Rolls... to make a finer selection of imported photos:

- `At` — to select photos from a particular importing session

- `After` — to select all photos imported begining with a particular importing session

- `Between` — to select all photos imported between two particular importing sessions

Every time you change settings of the filter, the amount of selected photos will appear in the bottom part of the dialog.

When you apply Import Roll filter, in the Find bar you will see Find: Import Roll. Now you can add some other filter to finetune your selection.

If you don't need the Import Roll filter anymore, choose Find Import Roll Clear roll filter to remove Import Roll from search criteria. You can also click the close button (X) of the search bar to discard all the current search options.

The number of displayed rolls in the dialog is defined by the gconf key `/apps/f-spot/import/gui_roll_history`. Default value is 10.

#### Type-to-find

There is also a type-to-find entry. Press / to open it. It cannot be used at the same time as the find bar. You can type queries such as "TagA and (TagB or (TagC and TagD))". At any point, if F-Spot recognizes what you've typed as a valid query, it will update your search. The not operator is not yet supported.

This function will also search for the typed text into photos comments and filename.

### Fullscreen Mode and Slideshows

For fewer distractions and larger display, you can view your photos in full screen mode. You control when to show the next photo or to return to the previous. Enter fullscreen mode by pressing F11 at any time or by pressing the button in the toolbar.

#### FullScreen

In slideshow mode, you can sit back and view your photos as they are presented to you. You can start a slideshow by pressing the button on the toolbar.

#### SlideShow

## Sharing your photos

There are many ways to share your photos using F-Spot. All of the following methods will only share the photos you have selected when you run them.

### E-mail

E-mail your photos directly from F-Spot with the File Send Mail menu.

#### Note 1

The email program used for this is defined at the GNOME level. You can change the default e-mailer for your user using the Preferred Applications tool in System Preferences.

#### Note 2

If some of the photos you'd like to send by email are in a format that F-Spot can't write (e.g. RAW images), the size selection dialog will become insensitive and the originals will be sent.

If you're sending resized pictures, F-Spot will keep the modified versions somewhere in the `/tmp` directory for 30 seconds. It's not an issue with evolution, which makes it's own local copy of the attachments, but could be a bit shorter if you're using Thunderbird. You can change the delay by editing the gconf key `/apps/f-spot/export/email/delete_timeout_seconds`.

### Print

Print your photos with the File Print menu.

### Burn to CD

Burn your photos to CD or DVD with the File Export Export to CD menu.

### Generate a Website Gallery or Folder

The File Export Export to Folder feature gives you three ways to export your images.

- Use Original exports your photos ready for use with Jakub Steiner's free Original Photo Gallery software. If you are unsure about this option, it is probably not the right one for you.

- Use static HTML files exports your photos to an interactive website, ready for you to upload.

- Plain Files exports your images as files within directories, without putting them into a gallery.

### Post to your online galleries

If you use Flickr, SmugMug, 23hq, Tabblo, Facebook, Zooomr or Picasa Web Album, you can post your files directly from F-Spot with the File Export menu, choosing corresponding submenu item.

If you use the PHP software known as Gallery, you can post your photos to your existing album with the File Export Export to Web Gallery menu. You must first enable the Remote module within your Gallery installation.

#### Note for Gallery 2.2 users

The Remote plugin for Gallery should be 1.0.8 or newer.

PennAve is a Python web-application that directly uses F-Spot's database to present a dynamic gallery of your photos and tags.

Conduit is an application that can sync photos that have a particular tag with your Flickr or Picasa Web Album web storage.

## Color management

### What's color management

When you capture a photo and look at it on a display, it looks different than on a camera's preview display or on any other display. It will also look different when you print it. This is because every device has unique color reproduction capabilities.

Color management system (CMS) is a tool to achieve reliable color reproduction for both display and output (e.g. a printer). A CMS relies on color profiles to map original colors to the color that a device can reproduce so that colors will appear the same way everywhere — on a computer LCD monitor, on a print from your local photolab etc.

### What's a color profile

A color profile is a file with either .icc (thus its is often called an ICC profile) or .icm extension that describes how device's colors correspond to a universal description of colors.

There are several types of profiles:

- Input device profile. It's profile for a camera or a profile that an application like XSane embeds into a scanned image.

- Working space profile. It's a profile that describes color space in which all operations are done inside an application. Usually very wide gamut profiles like AdobeRGB1998 or ProPhotoRGB are used for that.

- Display profile. It's a profile for a monitor.

- Output profile. This is usually a profile for you printer.

Currently F-Spot allows setting only display and output profiles. All color operations are done in sRGB color space.

### How to get my screen/printer color profile

There are few ways to get a color profile.

#### From CD or Internet

Many hardware manufacturers put color profiles into CD in the bundle. If you have one (from monitor or printer), you can use it. Or you can download it from the Internet (usually, from support section of the manufacturer's web site). Some camera manufacturers (Nikon, Canon) also provide ICC profiles.

#### Calibrating and profiling

Best results can be achieved by calibrating and profiling devices with a measurement device. It is not so difficult, but it means that you need a spectrophotometer to do all measurements and create an ICC profile.

If you are on Windows or Mac OS X, you can use manufacturer's software coming with a spectrophotometer. On Linux you will have to use either Argyll, which is a set of versatile command line tools, or LProf, which has a graphical user interface.

Please refer to documentation of third party hardware and software vendors for details.

#### Embedding

Image formats themselves (such as TIFF, JPEG, PNG...) may contain embedded color profiles. If color management is enabled, F-Spot looks for such embedded profiles and takes them into consideration.

### How to use color management in F-Spot

Color management in F-Spot can use only RGB profiles at this time (and you can't see other profiles in the F-Spot).

- Copy your color profiles into the `/usr/share/color/icc` or `/usr/local/share/color/icc` directory.

- Enable the color management with the Edit Preferences menu.

- Select Display and Output profiles.

You can use xicc to load ICC profile to display and use the loaded profile from F-Spot. Just mark the checkbox Try to use the system display profile.

## Extend functionality

### What extensions are

F-Spot extensions are means to add new functionality to the application. F-Spot supports two types of extension: exporters (which allow exporting photos to new web services or data storages) and tools (which allow new ways of color correction, duplicate photos finders etc.). Extensions are distributed in form of extension packages.

In the best traditions of not reinventing the wheel extensions can use other extensions, which means that one extension cannot work, if another extension is not installed. This concept of dependance actually means that

- you cannot install an extension, if the extension it depends on, is not present in the system

- you cannot remove an extension on which some other extension depends

### Managing extensions

To manage extensions choose Edit Manage Extensions menu item.

#### Managing extension repositories

Simply put, repositories are extension storages. They can be either network or local. To add a new repository click Repositories button, choose type of the repository you are about to add and provide either URL or path. If the URL or path you specified doesn't contain a description (index) file for extensions, a warning message will pop up to tell you that.

To remove a repository click Repositories button again, choose the repository you are about to delete and click Delete button.

#### Installing and updating extensions

To install an extension click Install extensions... button. In the newly presented dialog

1. Choose repository to install from all known repositories or just one of available repositories.

2. Choose, what extension packages you want to see: All, Only new, Only updates.

3. Click the Update button to update list of available extension packages by given criteria.

4. Choose extensions you want to install/update, click Information to see summary on selected package, if you want to.

5. Click Forward to proceed with installation.

#### Enabling and disabling extensions

You might want to temporarily enable or disable a particular extension package, for example, if the extension is not stable enough to handle a large amount of photos or if menus get crowded with extensions.

In the Manage Extensions dialog select the extension package and click Enable or Disable.

#### Removing extensions

If you don't need an extension you can remove it from the system completely. In the Manage Extensions dialog select the extension package you want to remove and click Delete.

#### Reading summary of extensions

Every extension package contains metadata that provides the following information about the extension:

1. Description, which usually covers puprose of the extension

2. Version

3. Author

4. Dependencies

In the Manage Extensions dialog select the extension package you want to read summary of and click Information.

### Developing extensions

Extend F-Spot document gives instructions on developing your own extensions for F-Spot.

## Shortcuts

### Global Shortcuts

Key | Action
--- | ---
[ | Rotate the selected photos to the left
] | Rotate the selected photos to the right
Del | Remove selected photos from F-Spot's catalogue
Shift Del | Delete selected photos permanently from the drive. If possible, they will moved to trash.
t | View or edit tags for selected photos
F11 | Full screen view
Ctrl I | Displays information about the photo
Ctrl Equals | Zoom-in
Ctrl Minus | Zoom-out
Ctrl N | Import photos
Alt 0-5 | Alt plus a number from 0 to 5 rate the selected picture(s)

### Browse Mode Shortcuts

Key | Action
--- | ---
Ctrl A | Select all
Ctrl Shift A | Unselect all
Arrow keys or H, J, K, L | Move focus
Ctrl-Arrow key | Move the focus without changing the selection
Spacebar | Select or unselect the focused photo
Shift Arrow key | Change the photo selection
Ctrl Shift Left arrow or Right arrow | Add/Remove all photos in the row, in the direction pressed, to the selection
V | Pops up a larger preview of the picture pointed by the mouse
Shift V | Pops up a larger preview and a color histogram of the picture pointed by the mouse

### Tag Shortcuts

Key | Action
--- | ---
F2 | Rename selected tag
Ctrl T | Add tags to selected photos
n/a | Drag and drop tags to move them
n/a | Type a tag's name to jump to it (only works if tag is shown/expanded)

### Edit Mode Shortcuts

Key | Action
--- | ---
Page Up, Backspace, B | Go to Previous Photo
Page Down, Spacebar, N | Go to Next Photo
Arrow keys or H, J, K, L | Go to Previous/Next photo or move around a zoomed photo
R | Go to a random photo
f | Full screen view
0 | Fit the image to the screen
1 | Zoom Factor to 1.0 (1 screen pixel per image pixel)
2 | Zoom Factor to 2.0 (4 screen pixels per image pixel)
Escape | Returns to Browser mode
V | Examine photo with magnifying glass (Loupe). Doubleclick on the Loupe, or type v again to close it.
Shift-Mousewheel | Faster filmstrip scrolling
i | Toggle infobox visibility ''(only when in full screen)''