Let me explain my use case: I usually make some drawings on paper of the geometry theorems that I’m studying. I take a photo of the drawing and then use Anki’s Image Occlusion to hide the formula of the theorem. Sometimes I make a mistake and I need to edit the photo. For example, in the note below, I made a mistake and I wrote “α” (Greek small letter alpha) inside the triangle instead of “θ” (Greek small letter theta), which is the letter used in the formula shown at the bottom.
To fix my mistake, I would need to open the image in an image editor installed on my Android device, cover the “α” and overwrite it using the pen tool of the image editor. The problem is that Anki doesn’t show the path of the image that is used by Image Occlusion, so I don’t know which file among the 2000 files in the folder collection.media is the image for that specific note.
I found a workaround:
- Select the note
- Export as *.txt
- Open the *.txt file using a text editor/viewer
- Get the basename of the image from the *.txt file (in the screenshot below, the path of the image used in Image Occlusion is
20251110_223052(3).jpg)
I wish I didn’t have to follow so many steps to get the path of the image.
I have an idea: Show an uneditable field called “Image basename” above the button “Edit Occlusions” that show the basename of the file (see GUI mockup below). This information is enough for the user to find the file in the folder collection.media.
Why don’t you add text in the IO editor, or even better use MathJax?
@ZornHadNoChoice
Why don’t you add text in the IO editor?
I tried adding text in the Image Occlusion editor and I noticed that I can’t change the font family, foreground color or background color. If I added text that way, it would disrupt the common font style of the image. Personally, I feel uneasy when reading text with multiple styles while reviewing cards.
If it were possible to edit the image with an app that provides many features (e.g. https://f-droid.org/es/packages/ru.tech.imageresizershrinker/ ), the user would have way more options to edit an image (e.g. draw on a picture using many brushes, using a pipette, change brightness, saturation, etc.).
or even better use MathJax?
In the past, I was often caught up figuring out how to write specific symbols in LaTeX and my grades dropped noticeably. For this reason, I decided to restrain myself from using LaTeX while studying or taking notes. I know some people have mastered writing LaTeX on the fly (e.g. Gilles Castel’s article), but that’s not the case for me, so as of now I prefer writing math on paper.
Apart from that, I spend most of my time in a public library and I don’t have a desktop computer/laptop with me, I only have a tablet with a pen.
For the reasons mentioned above, when I find a mistake in some of my occlusion notes, I still prefer to edit them by using my tablet pen in an external image editor.
I came up with an improvement to the idea that I mentioned in my first message: Show a button “Edit image with…” next to the image filename so that the user can choose his/her preferred image editor. See GUI mockup below.
I came up with this idea because I noticed that “Fossify Gallery” (link in F-Droid) allows listing all image editors when pressing the “Edit” icon in its GUI. For demonstration purposes, I recorded a video to show how I use “Fossify Gallery” and “Image Toolbox” (link in F-Droid) to edit an image.
(I had to upload it to Wikimedia Commons due to file size limitations of forums.ankiweb.net)
In the video, …
- you can see the behavior of “Fossify Gallery” when pressing the “Edit” icon in its GUI. The button “Edit image with…” from my GUI mockup should have this specific behavior.
collection.media has a single file, so it was easy to find the file in “Fossify Gallery”, but in my actual collection.media folder, I have more than 1000 images, so it is difficult to find the image if the filename is not known. Even if the filename is known and the files are sorted by name, it might take some seconds to find the specific file, that’s why I believe that having the button “Edit image with…” would come in handy for some users.
For the record, I was able to overwrite the image in collection.media using these two editors: “Image Toolbox” (shown in the video) and the built-in image editor provided by “Fossify Gallery” (not shown in the video).
You can add MathJax on your tablet. Also, you don’t need to add the MathJax in real time during a lecture, you can convert your hand written notes into MathJax when you have time.
Another alternative to your setup is to simply use a basic note type with the diagram image on the front and the equation image on the back. No image occlusions needed. You can easily replace the images in the note editor.
You can add MathJax on your tablet.
Thanks for your advice. I’ve considered using MathJax in the past and I came to the conclusion that writing on paper is more favorable for my routine/temperament.
The reason: During lectures, I take notes on paper. When I go to the library to review the content of the lecture, I prefer using my hand because that’s what I’ve been using for the past 4 hours, so my ability to write formulas by hand is more trained than it is to write formulas on a tablet keyboard. I don’t think I will be using MathJax in my notes in the near future, because I feel like it it adds too much friction for my use cases.
Another alternative to your setup is to simply use a basic note type with the diagram image on the front and the equation image on the back. No image occlusions needed. You can easily replace the images in the note editor.
Thanks for your suggestion. I didn’t think of it.
I still think that using Image Occlusion is more suitable for my use cases because when I create Image Occlussion cards, I follow these steps:
- Crop image in Gallery
- Press “Share” > “Anki” > “Image Occlusion”
- Add as much occlusions as I need (I usually add 1-3 occlusions and use the option “Hide One, Guess One” or “Hide All, Guess One” as I find more suitable.)
If I were to do it the way you suggested, I would need to follow these steps for each information I want to quiz myself.
- Crop image for “Front” in Gallery
- Press “Share” > “Anki” > “Add image”
- Switch to Gallery
- Crop image for “Back” in Gallery
- Press “Copy to clipboard”
- Paste it in “Back”
For me, a huge time saver are the options “Hide One, Guess One” and “Hide All, Guess One” from Image Occlusion. If I were to do replicate this behavior using the method you suggested, I would need to follow the steps I mentioned above for each note. I know I can “Toggle sticky” for the “Front” card, but I can see myself forgetting that it is toggled on and adding notes with the wrong “Front” card.
For this reason, I still think that Image Occlusion is more convenient and flexible when creating notes for my use case.
I still feel strongly about my viewpoint: It would be convenient for some users if Anki showed the button “Edit image with…” above the “Edit Occlusions” which I mentioned in this message.
Well then, there is at least a better workaround for you until someone implements your suggestion: change the note type in the editor and you’ll see the hidden “Occlusion” and “Image” fields.
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@ZornHadNoChoice Thanks! I didn’t know that. I tried what you said and I found another workaround which allows me to copy the filename: “Copy note”, then change note type and the path is shown in a field. See video below.
I will use this workaround for the time being.
I wish AnkiDroid would show the button “Edit image with…” in the editor for “Image Occlusion” notes.
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I don’t want David’s response to be lost from this discussion: Reddit - The heart of the internet .
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