Suggestion

[Rellwood]

Lets say for funsies, I want to use a Calibre library to store and manage my photos. Each photo is brought in, and I can make tags, comments, and put the picture date, whatever.

I want to take that photo and make it the cover of the "book" I can easily open the .jpg and see the photo, but I cannot make the .jpg into the book cover and take advantage of the cover browser.

Is this something that can be done?

[kovidgoyal]

Rename the file to cover.jpg

[chaley]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

Rename the file to cover.jpg

Or copy it if for some reason you want to keep the original name.

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by Rellwood

Lets say for funsies, I want to use a Calibre library to store and manage my photos. Each photo is brought in, and I can make tags, comments, and put the picture date, whatever.

I want to take that photo and make it the cover of the "book" I can easily open the .jpg and see the photo, but I cannot make the .jpg into the book cover and take advantage of the cover browser.

Is this something that can be done?

This may be of interest ==>> Media File Importer

MFI is a tool for those who use Calibre for books and find it a friendly and highly flexible environment for classifying and viewing pictures and/or multimedia files.

BR

[Rellwood]

Sweet!~ Thanks!

[Rellwood]

Originally Posted by chaley

Or copy it if for some reason you want to keep the original name.

See what I would most likely do, Is use the "get file name" plugin (if it would work here), and use it to capture the original file name and location. Then I would be able to change the name.

BUT if I change the name to cover.jpg won't every "book" be named "cover"?

[BetterRed]

Irrespective of whether Add books->Reading metadata->Read metadata from file contents rather than file name is checked or unchecked, if I add a JPG to a library via drag drop into the book list I get a book with the file name as Title and "Unknown" as Author, a JPG Format and no cover.

BR

[kovidgoyal]

yup, because calibre cannot read metadata from jpeg files.

[BetterRed]

@Kovid - the intent of my previous reply was to show the OP that they don't need the GetFileName plugin.

Originally Posted by BetterRed

Irrespective of whether Add books->Reading metadata->Read metadata from file contents rather than file name is checked or unchecked, if I add a JPG to a library via drag drop into the book list I get a book with the file name as Title and "Unknown" as Author, a JPG Format and no cover.

BR

And if one wants the image to appear as a cover (in Grid view, Cover browser etc), drag drop the same image on to the Book details panel and it will be added to the book as cover.jpg… even if it's a .TIFF, .WEBP, whatever.

BR

[chaley]

Originally Posted by Rellwood

BUT if I change the name to cover.jpg won't every "book" be named "cover"?

No. The metadata for the "book" remains the same. For me, when I drag the JPG onto the book list I get Title=JPG file name, Author=Unknown.

If you move the file (change the name) to cover.jpg then the book will have a cover. However, it will also have no formats. Save to disk won't work because there is no format available. Neither will View.

If you copy the file, perhaps changing resolution to make it smaller, then the book will now have both a cover and the .jpg format. You can use save to disk to export the photo and View to look at it. NB: you can use @BetterRed's technique for copying the JPG to the cover. With this technique you drag the photo onto the book list to add the picture, then drag the photo again onto the cover in book details to make the image be the cover.