Deleting / hiding photos

[mrm]

@Rodger

I then clicked “re-sync this asset” in photostructure, but the picture remains in my photostructure library.

As long as there is an asset file variant, the asset won’t be removed. You can see where PhotoStructure thinks all the variants are by opening the asset info panel (tap “i” or click the i in the upper right).

@Rodger

Does this mean I have to delete the picture twice for it to go away?

Yup! You’ll need to delete both files. Total PITA, I know. Supporting hide/delete (this feature) will be the next thing I build.

@Rodger

this is a bug, a feature that’s not implemented yet, or an opportunity for end user education

It’s certainly a feature that’s not implemented yet. Until it’s implemented, I guess it’s an opportunity for education?

Anyway, I’ll get this built as soon as I ship v1.0.0, which should be tomorrow.

[bjarte]

@mrm

Yes. If you enable the require make and model setting, for example, if you just visit a screenshot, say “resync this asset,” and then navigate away, you’ll find that asset is no longer there.

I have the same issue as @bartv, I have a lot of screenshots I don’t want to clutter up my photographs.

I set PS_REQUIRE_MAKE_MODEL=true a few days ago, and when I resync individual screenshots, they disappear from PhotoStructure, as you said. But do I have to resync each image individually?

I still see loads of screenshots in the general views of PhotoStructure (for example among the thumbnails in the main view of the application).

Is it just a matter of waiting for PhotoStructure to get through all my images again? I have tried restarting sync a couple of times. I’m not sure if there are fewer screenshots than before, but they are definitely not gone completely.

[mrm]

Ah, I see. Well, there are several solutions:

0. PhotoStructure will automatically re-sync assets that are visited with the asset info panel open. (No, this isn’t documented or even discoverable: it was an experiment to help me debug locally, and I don’t think it’s generally a great idea (?), but at least for the time being, this is how PhotoStructure works).

1. Run a “library rebuild”: it’s already in the product, and it’s easy for you to start (via the nav menu), but it’ll take a while and do a bunch of work that isn’t necessary.

2. You can run a sync --force manually via the command line for the affected directories. Know that you can give sync as many files and directories on the command line as you need, and they don’t need to be directories currently in your “scan paths”. The --force tells sync and sync-file to disable the “no-op” filter that skips over files are “already in sync” (if their mtime and size match what’s in the database), and actually re-import the files.

./photostructure sync --force /path/to/dir1 /path/to/dir2 ...

3. In the future, PhotoStructure should somehow remember what settings were configured at some point in time, and if the settings change, prompt the user

You’ve changed settings since your last sync. Would you like to rebuild your library to make the new settings take effect? This may take a while.

[ OK ]   [ cancel ]

This would cover the use case of people upgrading to PLUS from LITE, as well as changes like setting requireMakeModel.

[bdillahu]

Found this chain looking for existing “hiding” feature requests… looks like the discussion pretty rapidly moved toward how to delete, but I would like to resurface the “hidden” flag concept.

I think there are two levels to this, probably… one is the “user access”, lock pictures behind a password, they are absolutely not to be seen except by approved users.

But then there is a lesser level. Some pictures I may want to keep, but they just aren’t very flattering, or the content is just a little offputting (I have a picture of a friend who had suffered an injury and sent me a picture - I want to keep it, but I don’t really want it popping up in the random display list).

Not sure it’s high up the priority list, but thought I would toss it out there as another use case to mull over.

[Ramblurr]

Another use case for hiding are photos of documents, receipts, or other one-off photos that I want to keep around “just in case”, but really don’t ever want to see when scrolling through the timeline view or other views.

In other software the term “archive” is often used to hide items like this.

[mrm]

This feature will ship in v1.2!

I decided on using “archive” terminology instead of “hide” as it aligns with Google Photos. (the icon for “hide” and “show” aren’t exactly intuitive, either).

Archived and trashed assets are not shown in tag galleries, nor are they shown in streams or when navigating left/right by date.

Here’s a sneak peek of the button bar for an unliked, unarchived, and undeleted photo:

After toggling all of the options:

And on mobile, here’s the menu:

New nav menu items:

Search will include an “action bar” when viewing deleted assets, which will include a “empty trash” button that actually deletes files from the filesystem. I’m building that bit today.

[bdillahu]

I nearly hate to ask, but any chance to have an option that disables or hides ‘trash’? In terms of making sure a family member can’t trash something?

Accidentally archiving something is annoying… trash isn’t.

[mrm]

I’ll add a setting that contains a pass phrase needed to empty the trash, that shouldn’t be hard.

Edit: I misunderstood the request.

The next release will have 2 new boolean settings to disable the asset view’s remove from library and delete buttons, and 2 additional boolean settings to disable the “actually do it” buttons on the “recently removed” and “recently deleted” views.

[avdp]

@mrm I think @bdillahu asking for settings to disable the delete capability completely. That sounds like a reasonable request, but eventually what will probably be needed is some sort of admin login for edit/delete/archive. Without login, everything should probably be read-only.

edit: it doesn’t need to be anything fancy like implement full fine-grained user/group/role management. Just a simple login with passphrase setting to enable edit capabilities.

[mrm]

@bdillahu

have an option that disables or hides ‘trash’?

I’ve added this to the next build. Thanks for the suggestion!

[mrm]

I’ve also added “remove from library”, so now there are three buttons to make an asset to away from tag galleries and (most) search results:

	Not visible in tag galleries or search	Removed from library	Removed from disk
archive
remove
delete

Note that for “remove” and “delete” the operations aren’t “executed” until someone clicks the “remove assets” or “empty trash” button from the search page—only then do the records get moved into an exclude list of SHAs (so they’re not imported again by accident) and, for deleted assets, all variations get deleted from (mounted) disk(s).

I thought about having an automatic “trash is emptied automatically” feature, but I’m shelving that idea for this release.

[mrm]

I just wrote up the official documentation for this feature:

How to archive, remove, and delete photos and videos in your PhotoStructure...

As always, if you find anything odd or confusing, or have any other suggestions, know that I’m all ears.

[bdillahu]

Could you clarify what metadata field is used for ‘liked’?

[mrm]

I answered this here:

Ability to quickly favorite a photo while browsing

Sure: it’s a bit involved! If a user has liked (or un-liked) an asset via PhotoStructure, and the asset file variations nor their sidecars have not been touched since that action was made, that value wins. Otherwise, PhotoStructure looks for a number between -1 and 5 associated to the Rating metadata tag (see the XMP specification: (this supports a value from 0 to 5, or -1 for “rejected”) in both files and sidecars. “First one in wins”: PhotoStructure first looks at the “best” asset file…

[rgrandy]

I like the implementation of deleting images. It seems to work quite well and is nice for curating my collection. I think mulitple/bulk select in the grid view would be amazing to combine with the delete/hiding of photos.

[spants]

The multiple select in grid view is very important to me - I can see alot of files to delete or hide and to go into each file is a real pain!

[mrm]

@spants

The multiple select in grid view is very important to me

Absolutely, me too. I will get to it, I promise! Be sure to vote on any/all of these features: https://forum.photostructure.com/tag/bulk

(and if you have thoughts or suggestions for any of them, please do share!)

[organizeme]

How feasible is it to refresh the Trash page after successful deletion so it shows an empty Trash, instead of displaying the images that were just deleted? Is this even something other people would want to see after emptying the trash?

[mrm]

@organizeme

How feasible is it to refresh the Trash page after successful deletion

Absolutely doable–I’ll make that change now. Thanks for the suggestion!

[nuk]

Some comments / questions on these statements:

@mrm

…The records get moved into an exclude list of SHAs (so they’re not imported again by accident) and, for deleted assets, all variations get deleted from (mounted) disk(s).

PhotoStructure | How to archive, remove, and delete photos and videos in your PhotoStructure library
When you click “Empty trash”, PhotoStructure only deletes currently-mounted files.
Files on unmounted drives are not deleted later.
PhotoStructure tries to follow the principle of least astonishment.
By only deleting all file variations that are currently mounted and deletable, we avoid the unpleasant situation some months in the future where you mount a previously-imported volume and PhotoStructure starts deleting a bunch of asset variations in the background (that you may since have decided to keep, and restored from backup).
If you want to be able to delete asset variations on new volumes that you’ve previously deleted within PhotoStructure, ask on discord and let’s talk about it!

I prefer mentioning this here in the forum rather than in Discord just for easier future reference…

You provide a very good reason that PhotoStructure shouldn’t automatically delete newly-imported images. But, I think an “Import Purgatory” would still be appropriate. “Import Purgatory” means the previously-deleted assets are imported directly into the Recycle Bin, but in a distinct section with separate buttons for restoring or deleting versus the regular buttons for everything else in the Recycle Bin.

I suspect that most often, users would want to re-delete previously-deleted assets, and would not be restoring accidentally-deleted assets from a backup as you suggest. Re-encountering previously-deleted assets in the PhotoStructure library is also astonishing behavior, for users who specifically remember deleting that asset and who imported a large folder of images from e.g. a family friend who happened to have many family photos that were duplicates, but mixed in with some photos that were new.

In any case, I definitely usually will want to re-delete previously-deleted assets. I use the chat application Telegram and have configured it to automatically save all sent/received photos and videos. There are legitimate images I’ve shared on Telegram that I simply don’t want saved to my PhotoStructure library, for example temporary screenshots of maps and webpage forms. I do not want to have to re-delete them every time Telegram redownloads the image into my saved folder, and I re-import the updated directory of saved images into PhotoStructure with mostly-old but some new images. I want PhotoStructure to automatically re-delete and re-de-duplicate the assets.