imgtag

imgtag is a lightweight and minimalist desktop application for tagging and searching a collection of image files.

You may want to give it a try if you like the idea of "booru"-style imageboards but would like to:

• Run it locally for personal use
• Use your own filesystem as the backend
• Avoid the overhead of a running a full web stack or embedded browser

Here is an example of a gallery query by multiple tags, which should give a rough idea of what this thing is about:

imgtag is written entirely in Python 3.7, using the Qt framework (via PySide2) for the UI and peewee as an ORM. All metadata is stored in a SQLite database.

All development and testing is done on Linux. Since Qt is cross-platform, it probably runs on OS X and Windows without problems, but this is not tested.

Usage

Quickstart

Set the desired root directory for images in config.ini:

...
[filesystem]
root_dir = /path/to/your/pics
...

Run it (dependencies are automatically installed):

$ make run

Views

imgtag currently has two primary views, each corresponding to a UI tab:

1. File view: Rate and tag images via a simple filesystem tree
2. Gallery view: Query images by arbitrary combinations of tags and rating

Data model

The data model is kept as simple as possible to allow easy scripting. Essentially, images have a many-to-many relationship with tags. Image filepaths are also cached in the database for faster lookups.

Image tags created in imgtag can be easily ported other applications with simple queries, e.g.,

select file.name, tag.name
from filetag
inner join file on filetag.fil_id = file.id
inner join tag on filetag.tag_id = tag.id 

Caveat on filenames

Filenames are used as unique identifiers. For example, two files located at cats/image.jpg and dogs/image.jpg respectively will be treated as the same image. A workaround - in lieu of ensuring filename uniqueness, e.g. via MD5 hashes - may be to maintain a parallel collection of symlinks with unique filenames. This may be added as feature in the near future.

Miscellany

Design goals

• Core functionality should be minimal but easily extensible or scriptable for custom functionality
• Should not modify the actual files in any way
• Should be decently scalable via caching, lazy loading, etc.

Contributing

PRs are welcome - please run make fmt and make lint before commits.