Linking vs Grouping

[Russell]

Hi Everyone,

 

I'm reading the "Secrets of Daminion 4" Book - a few good tidbits in there that I haven't used before.

 

One that is new to me is that you can Link images and Group images.

 

First off, the language for "Linking" is really awkward:

• What this item is linked to
  
• Where this item is linked to
  

 

"Where" is generally a geographical term in American English. I think these are trying to say "What this item is linked to" and "What is linked to this item" - but I'm not sure; and I'm not really sure what the difference is... maybe its hierarchical?

 

 

Anyway, I do lots of panoramic images. And many of them are HDR panoramic images.

 

I prefer to physically sort my source images apart from my finished panoramics - and this has me wondering - should I be linking them or grouping them?

 

Say I have a panoramic that is five images wide (I'll call them "Frames) - I'll generally have taken 15 images for this - three different exposures at each of the five "frames". Should I be grouping the HDRs that make up a single frame for the panoramic into one group? So I'd have five groups of three images each, representing each "frame" - and then I'd link that group to the resulting HDR images (five of them)? And then grouping the resulting five HDR images as sources for the finish panoramic? And then link all of those groups to the Panoramic that is finished?

 

I'm really confused, but I see some value to this if I can figure it out. (Some of my panoramics are hundreds of captures).

 

And in general, what's the reason to choose linking over grouping or vice versa?

 

Thanks,

 

Russell

[Sedat]

Hi Russel,

 

 

First off, the language for "Linking" is really awkward:

 

Thanks for the hint about the misleading English wording.

 

 

I think these are trying to say "What this item is linked to" and "What is linked to this item"

Yep that sounds better for me. Let`s see what Murat says.

 

 

...should I be linking them or grouping them?

 

AboutLinking.

 

You can e.g. link all your used frames with the panoramic image you’ve created. This way you will be able to quickly see which frames are used for this particular panoramic file. As this linking works both ways you can also see, for which panoramic image a particular frame was used.

 

So if you click on the panoramic thumb at the small chain symbol, you will see the command “what this item is linked toâ€. This will show you all thumbs which are containing in this panoramic image.

 

And when you click on one of the frame thumbs and choose “Where this item is linked to†you will see the linked panoramic file.

 

So linking is a way to connect items in the catalog.

 

 

 

 

Grouping is more a visual thing.

 

With this you could for instance group all your frames together. That would make the browser much clearer because you would see only two thumbs in the browser. The panoramic thumb and the group thumb of the frames.

[lintujuh]

Hi Russell

 

The linking creates an hierarchical directory tree like structure and you can link "downwards" (What this item is linked to) or "upwards" (Where this item is linked to) in the tree. You can also have overlapping tree structures where one child has multiple parents.

 

I'm not shooting HDR panoramas, just normal ones. I shoot RAW and use a raw editor that creates a sidecar file (lzn file) and I use Hugin to create the panoramas (pto sidecars). I "develop" the RAWs into 16 bit TIFFs with minimal editing and do the final editing on the stiched panorama (16 bit TIFF) that I then convert into a JPG. I'm using a following tree structure for that.

– final panorama (jpg)

--- panorama sidecar (lzn)

--- panorama (tiff)

----- panorama "recipe" (pto) (see thread, for adding non-standard file types in your catalogue)

----- frame-1 (tiff)

------- frame-1 sidecar (lzn)

------- frame-1 RAW

----- frame-2 (tiff)

------- frame-2 sidecar (lzn)

------- frame-2 (tiff)

----- ...

 

The groups don't have a similar structure, they just like a pile of photos and the top photo only visible. You cannot nest the groups and an image can belong to only one group. I usually group the full tree structure under the final panorama so then I have only the final image visible. And like Sedat said, this is a visual thing and it depends what you want to see in your catalog, when you open it.

 

-Juha

[WilfriedB]

Yep that sounds better for me. Let`s see what Murat says.

Trying to understand how linking works, I ran into exactly the same trap as Russel did. To me "Where this item is linked to" does not make any sense. Since this post is almost one year old and neither Murat commented on this nor the terminology was changed, I wonder if there are any thoughts by now?