Blender image manager

I think this post should be divided into multiple ones. It really is a collection of proposals around a theme, but still multiple proposals, and each have different things to be discussed and voted about them.

Meanwhile, a few things to point out.

Images used in shaders are not visible in the Outliner or organized in any structured way.

They are not visible in the "view layer" mode but they are visible in "blend file" and "data api":

It could be a nice to be able to see them in "view layer" or "scene" modes (we already see materials, modifiers, object data, so why not).

When working with multiple textures, searching for the right one becomes slow and confusing.

I get that the data-block search is a bit limited, but could you elaborate how it is confusing? It's just a searchbar.

Opening images always resets the file browser path, instead of remembering the last used location.

I could be wrong, but AFAIK that's because there isn't a specific browser dialog for picking specific data types like images, it's all the same. One minute it fetches an image, then the next a video, the next a blend file, having a consistent system to make each of them remember the last folder they went in seems tricky.

However, we do have some QOL to help with that:

• If you open the browser dialog from an existing path, it will open in that path. E.g. if you open the render path, or an existing image texture.
• It has a "Recent" panel that shows the last folders you picked from:
  

Exporting images is not very intuitive.

This would need to be elaborated

Image Browser / Manager Panel – a place to see all images used in the project, move or reassign them, preview them, and quickly locate their source files.

What do you mean exactly by "move or reassign them" ?

As for locating or replacing their source files, the outliner in data-api can do it, though it could be made easier. And any place that show an image with a browse icon will browse where that image is. The image editor also have some tools for that in its sidebar:

Texture Sets / Groups – a way to group related maps (Albedo, Roughness, Metallic, Specular, Normal) into a single “texture set,” visible and manageable like Collections in the Outliner.

This needs elaborating. Collections are basically a nestable tagging system, that doesn't sound like anything useful in that context.

Maybe a more interesting solution would be to have image texture nodes have an option to work with a pbr texture set, similar to how it can automatically work with an image sequence or UDIM tiles without us having to fetch each single frame or tile.

But then you would have to manage how to plug this in shaders, should it have an output socket for each image? How do you deal with cases where you don't want all images of the set to be included? Or resolution variants? How do you deal with different color spaces?

Better Integration with the Shader Editor and Image Editor – images could remain editable in the current editors, but also be organized in a separate manager.

I'm not sure what you mean exactly here. Images should not be editable in a shader editor, that's not the job to be done.

Optional .blend-Independent Asset Paths – similar to Unreal’s Content Browser, allowing projects to reference textures in a structured way instead of embedding everything into the .blend file.

What do you mean "in a structured way"?

Also images that you fetch from your storage aren't "embeded" in the blend file unless you specifically ask for it.