Shotwell thumbnails not shown for raw photos in results

[Andrew McCarthy]

On 64-bit 12.10 (quantal) with unity-lens-photos 0.8-0ubuntu1.

For search results that include raw photos (.CRW files in my case) the thumbnails are blank. The update_search_results() method looks for files in the thumbnails folder that have the same extension as the source file. However, at least for my files, Shotwell's thumbnails are .jpg and so aren't seen.

A basic patch to fix my situation, attached, simply also checks for .jpg thumbnails (so it checks thumb0000000000001234.jpg after failing to find thumb0000000000001234.crw). A more thorough fix might be to check for thumb0000000000001234.* perhaps?

[Ubuntu Foundations Team Bug Bot (crichton)]

The attachment "Quick fix for raw thumbnails that also checks for thumbnails ending with .jpg" of this bug report has been identified as being a patch. The ubuntu-reviewers team has been subscribed to the bug report so that they can review the patch. In the event that this is in fact not a patch you can resolve this situation by removing the tag 'patch' from the bug report and editing the attachment so that it is not flagged as a patch. Additionally, if you are member of the ubuntu-reviewers team please also unsubscribe the team from this bug report.

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[David Callé (davidc3)]

CR2 and NEF files are correctly handled by the Dash on my end, I'm wondering why CRW are failing...

This bug would be ideally fixed on Dash side, but I'll add your fix here in the meantime.
Thanks!

[Andrew McCarthy (andrewmccarthy)]

Yes, fixing CRW would be best, as I also get a blank preview image (which this patch can't help). I'll see if I can figure out what's going on. It may be that my CRW files have no embedded JPG preview. Thanks.

[David Callé (davidc3)]

For raw file previews, the Preview thumbnail generator used by the Dash doesn't handle all types of raw files, so the lens is using the "*_shotwell.jpg" file Shotwell generates in the same folder as the raw file. A file it generates only when the raw is double clicked in Shotwell.

One way to fix it would be to use the largest available thumbnail (thumbs360/) in the Preview when the file is not supported, which is obviously quite hard to check, and could also introduce the need to maintain a hardcoded list of raw file extensions.
Ideally, we could ask the Dash devs for a Unity method to check if an extension is supported in the Dash (results and previews).

I will file a Unity bug for this and raise the subject next week at UDS.