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First of all, apologies if I'm annoying with my many (and long) suggestions lately. Let me know if I should cut down on them. I just want the software to improve and I hope my idea will help in some way.

Currently, you have two options for how the pur file handles images:

1. Embed images directly into the pur file. This will make the file more portable, but the file size will increase as a result.

2. Link local images to the pur file. From what I understand, it saves the absolute file path, not the relative file path relative from the pur file. The file size of the pur file will be small as a result, but it's "less" portable because the file paths obviously break if you move the images somewhere else and/or rename them on your computer.

Both have their pros and cons, however, the linking method has a "flaw" (sorta), as noted by the admin recently: images with remote links (not local file paths) will still be embedded, meaning the pur file will be bigger as a result because the images are saved directly into the file.

Here's the link for that topic: https://www.pureref.com/forum/read.php?5,1209

One of my two suggestions here would be to implement this feature, to be able to link to remote images without having them embed into the pur file. That way, you can have the best of both worlds: a portable file that isn't bloated.

If this becomes a feature, you would unfortunately have a problem with link rot, similar to when a file path is broken. Leading into the next suggestion, I want to propose a third option for how the pur file could handle images to prevent link rot: upload and link images.

When you select that option, you need to choose a cloud storage service, like Google Drive or Dropbox, then you connect your pur file with your profile on those services. You pick a folder on that cloud storage service and from now on, if you paste an image into the pur file, it will upload that image to that folder and use the resulting link for the file.

Sure, you could still get link rot if you remove the file from the service, but at least you have full control over the link, and you can keep your pur file slim. You could even rename or move the file in the cloud storage service, the link will stay the same.

What do you think about linking remote images and the use of cloud storage services? The latter is probably much harder to add, but how likely is the implementation of the former?



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 2018-09-20 18:45 by ZOAG.

We're always glad to hear our users suggestions and opinions so please don't worry about giving many suggestions :)

As we said in the other thread remote image linking is something we have considered adding so it would probably be good. And as you say, integration with cloud storage could also be a lot of work but definitely something that would be worth looking into.

If cloud storage integration isn't possible how about having a feature in PureRef that is just called "Export and relink to exported images" or something similar? That would then save all images, both linked and embedded, to your selected location(could be a cloud storage) and then relink all images to link to that location.

So instead of the file being uploaded as soon as you drop it into a scene, you instead have the option to export all the images in the scene, either to a local directory or a cloud storage service, and THEN relink the images to that new location? Sounds like a good alternative, however, if you decide to include something like that, you should have a good way to distinguish between new and old images.

Example: I have a scene with five images and I decide to export and relink the images to a new location, let's say to Google Drive. Later, I add two more images, which I want to export and relink to the same location... but I forgot which images aren't exported yet. 8) It would be useful if the five already exported images have a blue border, while the two not-yet-exported images have a red border for example. Or maybe a little icon in the bottom right corner or something like that, just something to keep track of which images were exported and which aren't.

Personally, I wouldn't mind if I could associate a PureRef file with a specific export location, so the file is always up to date on which images were already exported and relinked.

Just as a side note, you should probably implement something that allows you to name images that were pasted directly from image editing software. Right now, if you export them, you just get ".png". Would be a shame if you exported them all somewhere and they all get non-existent filenames.

We'll keep your suggestions in mind when we get to implementing something like this, thanks!

Not sure if this is the right thread for this, but I'd also like to cast a vote for relative file paths for external images. I sync my reference folder between three computers, and I believe currently the only way to use a PureRef board across computers is to embed the images in the .pur file itself. I'd like to be able to keep them external, so I can maintain my folder structure for organization and also use Finder tags in MacOS.

If you have your images locally on disk, relative to the .pur file in the same structure on all your computers you should be able to select to not embed local images in the settings, or is this not working for you?