Image Library

Important notice!

This project is archived and thus no longer maintained as of 17/09/2024.

A rebooted version with more features is available at https://github.com/Darmo117/ImagesLibrary.

Description

Image Library lets you manage images by associating tags to them.

Main features:

• Tag images
• Search tagged images
• Replace/move image files while keeping all associated tags
• Manage tags (create, remove, associate type)
• Tag completion in queries and image tags editor
• Export query results as “playlists” (XML files)
• Apply pattern-based transformations to images paths
• Replace a tag by another on all concerned images at once
• List similar images (hash-based)
• Fully translated interface, available in English, French, and Esperanto
• Integrated SQL console
• Database auto-update

Installation

Image Library is not available on PyPI. Might be some day… I dunno… When I take the time to look into that.

Version 4.0+

Download the attached zip file in the release then unpack it where you want to install the app. Once unpacked, run the setup.sh (Linux users) or setup.bat (Windows users) file to install all required dependencies.

Version 3.1 and prior

You need to build the application in order to use it. To do so, run build.py and wait for it to complete. Once it is done, go into build/ and copy the application directory (Image-Library/) where you want to.

Updating

Delete all files and directories except database (library.sqlite3, may differ if changed in config file) and config (config.ini) files. Once done, follow installation instructions. Discard the new config.ini file if you want to keep the previous configuration.

For versions 4.0+, database files are automatically updated. A backup of the old version will be created under the name <file name>-old_<old version>.sqlite3. For instance, updating the file library.sqlite3 from version 3.1 will create the backup file library-old_3.1.sqlite3.

Usage

Main application

Launch on Linux

Simply run ./ImageLibrary.py. If it does not work, you might need to change file’s user rights: chmod u+x ./ImageLibrary.py.

Launch on Windows

Just run python3 ImageLibrary.py.

Registering images

Go through the File menu and click on Add Files to add images or Add Directory to import all images from a directory; or you can simply drag-and-drop files or directories into the main window.

You should see a dialog window with a preview of an image and a text field. This text field is where you have to type the tags for the displayed image. Once you’re satisfied, click on Apply & Continue or Finish to go to the next image. You can click on Skip to skip the current image and go directly to the next one.

While editing tags, you can choose where to move the current image by clicking on Move to…; the path is then displayed next to the button.

If the application found similar images already registered, a button labelled Similar Images… will appear above the text area. It will show a list of similar images, ordered by decreasing estimated similarity. You can select one of these images and copy its tags by clicking on Copy Tags (Warning: it will replace all tags in the text box).

Searching for registered images

You can search for images by typing queries in the search field. Syntax is as follow:

• a will match images with tag a
• a b will match images with both tags a and b
• a + b will match images with tags a or b or both
• -a will match images without tag a
• ext:"png" will match images that are PNG files
• name:"*awesome pic*" will match images whose name contains the string awesome pic; the * character matches any character, 0 or more times
• path:"/home/user/images/summer?.png" will match images with paths like /home/user/images/summer.png, /home/user/images/summer1.png, /home/user/images/summers.png, etc.; the ? character matcher any character 0 or 1 times
• similar_to:"/home/user/images/house.png" will match all images that are similar to /home/user/images/house.png (if it is registered in the database)

Special tags accept two types of values: plain text, in between " and regular expressions (regex) in between /.

As seen in the examples above, plain text values accept two special characters, * and ? that match respectively 0 or more, and 0 or 1 characters. You can disable them by putting a \ before (e.g.: \* will match the character * literally). You also have to escape all single \ by doubling them: \\. For instance, to match all images whose path begin with C:\Users\me\images\, you will have to type path:"C:\\Users\\me\\images\\*". If a path or file name contains a double quote, you have to escape it in the same way: \".

Regular expressions follow Python’s format. See this page for explanations of the syntax. Note that you have to escape all / too, as this is the delimiter.

More complex queries can be written by grouping with parentheses.

Example:

a (b + c) + -(d e) ext:"jp?g"

Here’s how to interpret it:

• a (b + c) returns the set of images with both tags a and b and/or both tags a and c
• -(d + e) ext:"jp?g" = -d -e ext:"jp?g" returns the set of JPG images without tags d nor e; note the ? to match both jpg and jpeg extensions

The result is the union of both image sets.

The application also supports compound tags, i.e. tags defined from tag queries (e.g.: tag animal could be defined as cat + dog + bird). You cannot tag images directly with compound tags, they exist only for querying purposes.

External command line tool

An external SQLite command line interface is available to interact directly with the database. Use with extreme caution as you may break the database’s structure and render it unusable by the app.

Linux: Run ./ImageLibrary_cmd.py. If you get errors, refer to Launch on Linux section.

Windows: Run python3 ImageLibrary_cmd.py.

Configuration file

The following configurations can be modified in the config.ini file. If the file does not exist, launch the application at least once to generate it.

• Section [Database]:
  • File: path to database file; can be absolute or relative to the app’s root directory
• Section [Images]:
  • LoadThumbnails: true or false to load or not thumbnails (can be changed from app)
  • ThumbnailSize: thumbnail size in pixels (can be changed from app)
  • ThumbnailLoadThreshold: maximum number of thumbnails that can be displayed without warning when querying images
• Section [UI]:
  • Language: language code of app’s interface; can be either en for English, fr for French, or eo for Esperanto

Found a bug?

If you encounter a bug or the app crashed, check the error log located in logs/error.log and see if there’s an error. You can send me a message or open an issue with the error and a description of how you got this error, that would be really appreciated!

Documentation

Soon…

Requirements

• Python 3.8 or above (Will not work with older versions)
• PyQt5 (GUI)
• Lark (Query parsing)
• SymPy (Query simplification)
• scikit-image (Image comparison)
• OpenCV2 (Image comparison)
• Pyperclip (Copy text to clipboard)

See requirements.txt for up-to-date list.

Author

• Damia Vergnet @Darmo117