Topic: Tool to view and search local images via tag?

Posted under e621 Tools and Applications

Is there, by any chance, some kind of program which allows me to search and view images I've downloaded and tagged using a tool eg. e621updater? I can't seem to find any here, and don't see the point of tagging without one...

Updated by OneMoreAnonymous

1. I use TMSU. On Linux and OSX it supports a VFS mount, meaning you can browse the filesystem to perform a given search -- the path tags/foo/bar/ holds the files that are tagged both foo and bar. more complex queries like 'foo but not bar' are accessed via query: query/foo not bar/. "Link with details":https://github.com/oniony/TMSU/wiki/Virtual-Filesystem. On Windows, VFS is not available(yet), so you have to use the tmsu files command to get the list of files matching your query, and feed it into an image viewer which supports file-lists. (the 'tmsu files' equivalent of tags/foo/bar above is tmsu files foo bar) IIRC e621updater supports TMSU tagging. 2. I remember someone said the basic Windows Image Viewer had tagging support, but I hardly use Windows so I can't comment further. 3. Someone else used Lightroom. It may be the case that opensource parallels like darktable, or even DigiKam, have similar tagging functionality.

Updated by anonymous

I'm checking out Darktable and DigiKam. Darktable is almost the kind of thing I want, but I can't seem to find a way to search the tags. Maybe digiKam will work, hopefully. I'm mostly wanting to be able to search via tag the way you can here, eg. I type "Pokemon" and "Female" and get all images with females and pokemon, stuff like that.

Updated by anonymous

In another thread I mentioned Hydrus Network, and it seems to be a lot like what you want. It seems to be like a file organizer with a booru interface, besides being able to download from actual boorus, sharing tags etc.

Other than that, it seems most image viewers these days have a tagging system like the old workhorse Picasa, and there're a few utilities exclusively for tags. I tried several of the latter, and I confess I didn't like the UX in any of them. Boorus are so simple that I got spoiled, I guess.

savageorange said:
2. I remember someone said the basic Windows Image Viewer had tagging support, but I hardly use Windows so I can't comment further.

If only. Universal file tagging is just about one of the most useful things they could have added to Windows, so of course, they'll never do it. JPG files, among others, have always supported tags, and as it happens, Windows' search engine allows you to search using them, but the tag interface is just a little text field in the middle of the files' Properties, in the Details tab. Since there's no native utility for this, tagging is a chore and not viable for file management without 3rd party utilities... which means you can't use these tags with Windows' search engine. Perhaps the most annoying part, these tags get stored in the file's metadata and thus alter it. That's just plain untidy.

Updated by anonymous

I just finished a big, hand-holding guide for Hydrus here. I made one before, but that managed to get associated with my imgur account in spite of all efforts to prevent that... deleted.

Updated by anonymous

OneMoreAnonymous said:
Universal file tagging is just about one of the most useful things they could have added to Windows, so of course, they'll never do it.

Windows 7 was going to have a tag-based file system but it was dropped because it was too slow (WinFS). Microsoft or someone else may try again in the future. I'm surpised Linux doesn't have one, but as said eariler, there are vritual file systems like TMSU.

Updated by anonymous

abadbird said:
I just finished a big, hand-holding guide for Hydrus here. I made one before, but that managed to get associated with my imgur account in spite of all efforts to prevent that... deleted.

Neato burrito, thank you. I hadn't gotten started on it for lack of time to set it up, now I'll give it a shot.

Updated by anonymous

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