F-Spot Photo Manager

F-Spot photo manager is perfect for importing, organizing, and doing minor touch-ups on your photos. F-spot is continually adding useful photo management features like an easy to use interface, support for 16 file types, device support for hard drive, ipod, and cameras. I love F-spots tagging options that let me organize and group photos plus I can add icons to each tag giving me a visual ID of the category the tag represents.. Another useful part of the F-spot interface is the timeline across the top. This shows photos imported into F-spot in a chronological display which was surprisingly useful. The photo editing features that F-spot offers are a good collection of commonly needed adjustments that can be made to photos. Photos imported into F-spot can be rotated, cropped, resized, and adjusted for red eye all without affecting the original photo. F-spot does this through a versioning feature which I found to be a time saving feature. In the past I may have saved multiple copies before editing as a backup, now that process is not needed. these are just a few F-spot features, you've got to experience the program to understand all of its options completely. Access this photo manager by clicking on Applications -> Graphics - > F-Spot Photo Manager ->

Once the F-spot photo manager window is completely loaded you'll notice a variety of distinctly different areas and options inside the window.

Across the top is a toolbar with numerous options including import, rotate left, rotate right, browse, edit image, full screen, and slide show mode.

Below the toolbar icons you will see the timeline toolbar.

By default no photos will appear in the data base. If photos are added they will appear in the large white display area.

On the left a tag category window appears and if an image is selected the image statistics such as name, version, date, size, and exposure are displayed on the left side of the F-spot main window.

To import photos into the F-spot photo manager select the import icon which looks like this:

You may also select File - > Import

In the import window you can choose to import from a camera or from a folder by selecting from this drop down box.

Once you've located the folder you would like to import select it and F-spot will automatically populate the images into the Import window.

Select the Import button in the bottom right hand corner of the Import window.

After clicking the import button thumbnails of the photos should be automatically displayed in the white display box with the timeline across the top.

Also note that corresponding statistics for the selected picture are displayed on the left under the tag category window.

F-Spot photo manager uses a tagging system to help sort and organize your photos. Each tag in F-Spot is assigned a name and icon and behaves much like a folder because it can be nested inside other tags. One thing that differentiates folders and tags is that images can have many tags assigned to them but can only reside in one folder. After you have tagged many of your photos you'll be able to display only photos with specific tags making navigating and selecting photos that much easier. On the top left side of the F-Spot photo manager window you should see the tag window.

Here you can see a list of existing tags each with its own orange icon. To create a new tag right click on an existing tag and select Create New Tag from the menu.

Next you should see the Create New Tag window. Here you can select the parent tag and the name of your new tag. I am changing the parent tag to Places and naming my new tag Washington, USA as the pictures i am assigning it to are from Washington state.

After clicking on the OK button my tag has been inserted and is visible in the tags window under Places.

After the tag has been inserted into the tag window you can assign it to one of your photos by right clicking on it and selecting Attach Tag to Selection

To edit a tag just right click on the tag in the tag window and select Edit Tag

When the Edit Tag window comes up you can change the icon by selecting the existing icon in the center of the window, or change the parent tag and tag name. When you're finished click OK.

Here are some F-Spot Videos for beginners. These step by step instructional videos cover using tags, editing photos, changing views, importing videos,  and managing extensions. 

F-Spot Video - Using Tags

F-Spot Video - Edit Your Photos

F-Spot Video - Changing the View

F-Spot Video - Import Videos into F-Spot

F-Spot Video - Managing F-Spot Extensions