Confused about meta-data templates

[Mark Hayes (Hotmail)]

Hi all,

I'm experimenting with Digikam's meta-data templates as a way of
inputting a lot of metadata early on in my workflow.  I've not played
with it before, but the whole idea seems fairly intuitive so I presumed
that I would be able to sort it out fairly easily.  Nevertheless, I'm
struggling with it - quite a lot really, so wanted to quiz people on how
they used templates.

Firstly, I usually import pictures with Rapid Photo Downloader.  I find
it fast, excellent, easy to use, and able to rename and sort according
to my preferences on import, along with making a simultaneous backup.
For some reason, I have struggled to do the same with Digikam, in
particular using the regex renamer - which must make perfect sense to
coders, but is complete gobbledegook to myself.  The regex renamer seems
to struggle to remove parts of a filename for me - even when I follow
the very simple instructions on the Digikam blog etc.  Ho hum...

I hit on a bunch of problems - so I'll try and break them down a little
to make it more manageable.  Any help you can give on any of these items
is most welcome.

Firstly, setting up a template.  From a UI point of view, I struggled
initially.  The 'Add' button didn't seem to open up a dialogue box to
fill in data - which is what I had expected it to do.  You had to fill
out the data, including a name for the template, before pressing Add to
add it into the list of available templates.  This seems a little
counter-intuitive to me (anyone else too?) and although I eventually
worked it out, being a little quirky just seemed to make it a little
more of an effort.

In addition, I had imagined that a template would be a generally minimum
set of basic "boilerplate" info that you then added to - but how to add
the additional information seems harder than it should be.  I had
thought that you would leave a bunch of fields blank - such as location
and then update them later, when applying the template to the photos.
But when I came to update/apply the template later, I hit on other
problems related to that.

Anyway, the Digikam manual/help-file states that templates can be
applied at downloading.  Since I don't use Digikam to download, this
means that I need to apply the template later.  It took me a while to
find out how.  I had tried selecting photos and then editing metadata
but this doesn't seem to be the right way.  I also looked long and hard
at the metadata tab on the right hand panel.  In the end, I had to
Google it and then surf to the Scribbles and Snaps blog to find out how
to apply it.  Apparently, metadata templates are applied under
"Captions/Tags" panel and then choosing the "Information" tab on the
right hand panel.

I realise that Digikam is a hugely complicated program with a lot to it
- but I really am struggling to understand why template application
would appear there - and not in and around the metadata tab.  Is there a
reason behind that?  What is the main notional separation between photo
metadata and my/your metadata templates that is being applied here?  Why
would they seem so far apart and stuck in such very different locations?

Anyway, so now I found it - but then I came across another problem.
When applying a template, you are not able to adjust any data before
application.  I would have assumed that I could select pictures, select
a template to base my data on, and then make any adjustments necessary
(such as a change of location and country, subject matter etc etc) and
then apply the template with the adjusted data.  But I don't seem to be
able to do that.  I am not able to change any data or add any more data
to the basic template before application.  And now that I have 362
images with the wrong country data (picked up from the template), I am
unsure as to how I can update/change that.

I must be pressing all the wrong buttons because I can't seem to do
that.  Please let me know:  what am I doing wrong?

Finally, I am now trying to adjust the 'country' metadata that I have
now incorrectly embedded in the files.  I have a bunch of photos showing
that they were took in one country, when in fact they were taken
elsewhere on holiday.  So I select all the files again, choose Image >
Metadata > Edit all metadata and I'm presented with a pop-up box with
loads of metadata options.  The interesting thing about this dialog is
that it seems to be for changing only one file at a time - starting with
file number 1 of 362 in this folder, and not a 'template' system that
allows me to change all of the files en-masse.

Anyway, with my first file being a CR2, I'm not able to edit the
metadata.  I'm able to choose from the three tabs across the top - Edit
EXIF, Edit IPTC or Edit XMP - but not able to choose any of the tabs
down the left hand side of that box to edit them.  Fair enough, given
that it's a CR2 file, but then if I click on 'Next' to go to the JPG
version of the same file (in the hopes of changing that metadata), the
system hangs and I am not able to advance to the second picture.  I am
unable to Close the box, either by clicking on Close or on the X at the
top of the window...  Dialogue buttons show no reaction to clicking, but
clicking on the X seems to bring up a KWin warning about non response
and asking me if I want to terminate the application and its child
windows with the loss of all unsaved data.  Humph!!!

It's very repeatable - and I've done it about 10 times tonight trying to
find out how to get all this to work.  I'm on Kubuntu 11.10 using
version 2.1.1 of Digikam on KDE 4.7.4

I'm starting to get concerned that I'm pressing all the wrong buttons
etc.  Thousands of people use Digikam without all the problems that I
seem to get - and I have been trying on and off to use Digikam for four
years... but still struggle to get it up and running.  I give up
frequently but come back just as often because I know that it's great
software that many people use effortlessly.  So what am I doing wrong????!!!

Grateful if anyone can shed some light on this for me.  It really
shouldn't seem this hard for me - and yet, honestly (!! :-) ) I am not
_that_ stupid all of the time...!

Thanks,

Mark.
_______________________________________________
Digikam-users mailing list
[hidden email]
https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/digikam-users

[Guy Stalnaker]

I too am interested in the answers to these questions. I had given up on using templates completely because the documentation does not adequately describe their use and application ( it is actually incorrect, indicating a preference pane that no longer exists). My own query to this list went unanswered.

Guy Stalnaker
[hidden email]
[hidden email]

On Feb 27, 2012, at 8:40 AM, "Mark Hayes (Hotmail)" <[hidden email]> wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> I'm experimenting with Digikam's meta-data templates as a way of
> inputting a lot of metadata early on in my workflow.  I've not played
> with it before, but the whole idea seems fairly intuitive so I presumed
> that I would be able to sort it out fairly easily.  Nevertheless, I'm
> struggling with it - quite a lot really, so wanted to quiz people on how
> they used templates.
>
> Firstly, I usually import pictures with Rapid Photo Downloader.  I find
> it fast, excellent, easy to use, and able to rename and sort according
> to my preferences on import, along with making a simultaneous backup.
> For some reason, I have struggled to do the same with Digikam, in
> particular using the regex renamer - which must make perfect sense to
> coders, but is complete gobbledegook to myself.  The regex renamer seems
> to struggle to remove parts of a filename for me - even when I follow
> the very simple instructions on the Digikam blog etc.  Ho hum...
>
> I hit on a bunch of problems - so I'll try and break them down a little
> to make it more manageable.  Any help you can give on any of these items
> is most welcome.
>
> Firstly, setting up a template.  From a UI point of view, I struggled
> initially.  The 'Add' button didn't seem to open up a dialogue box to
> fill in data - which is what I had expected it to do.  You had to fill
> out the data, including a name for the template, before pressing Add to
> add it into the list of available templates.  This seems a little
> counter-intuitive to me (anyone else too?) and although I eventually
> worked it out, being a little quirky just seemed to make it a little
> more of an effort.
>
> In addition, I had imagined that a template would be a generally minimum
> set of basic "boilerplate" info that you then added to - but how to add
> the additional information seems harder than it should be.  I had
> thought that you would leave a bunch of fields blank - such as location
> and then update them later, when applying the template to the photos.
> But when I came to update/apply the template later, I hit on other
> problems related to that.
>
> Anyway, the Digikam manual/help-file states that templates can be
> applied at downloading.  Since I don't use Digikam to download, this
> means that I need to apply the template later.  It took me a while to
> find out how.  I had tried selecting photos and then editing metadata
> but this doesn't seem to be the right way.  I also looked long and hard
> at the metadata tab on the right hand panel.  In the end, I had to
> Google it and then surf to the Scribbles and Snaps blog to find out how
> to apply it.  Apparently, metadata templates are applied under
> "Captions/Tags" panel and then choosing the "Information" tab on the
> right hand panel.
>
> I realise that Digikam is a hugely complicated program with a lot to it
> - but I really am struggling to understand why template application
> would appear there - and not in and around the metadata tab.  Is there a
> reason behind that?  What is the main notional separation between photo
> metadata and my/your metadata templates that is being applied here?  Why
> would they seem so far apart and stuck in such very different locations?
>
> Anyway, so now I found it - but then I came across another problem.
> When applying a template, you are not able to adjust any data before
> application.  I would have assumed that I could select pictures, select
> a template to base my data on, and then make any adjustments necessary
> (such as a change of location and country, subject matter etc etc) and
> then apply the template with the adjusted data.  But I don't seem to be
> able to do that.  I am not able to change any data or add any more data
> to the basic template before application.  And now that I have 362
> images with the wrong country data (picked up from the template), I am
> unsure as to how I can update/change that.
>
> I must be pressing all the wrong buttons because I can't seem to do
> that.  Please let me know:  what am I doing wrong?
>
> Finally, I am now trying to adjust the 'country' metadata that I have
> now incorrectly embedded in the files.  I have a bunch of photos showing
> that they were took in one country, when in fact they were taken
> elsewhere on holiday.  So I select all the files again, choose Image >
> Metadata > Edit all metadata and I'm presented with a pop-up box with
> loads of metadata options.  The interesting thing about this dialog is
> that it seems to be for changing only one file at a time - starting with
> file number 1 of 362 in this folder, and not a 'template' system that
> allows me to change all of the files en-masse.
>
> Anyway, with my first file being a CR2, I'm not able to edit the
> metadata.  I'm able to choose from the three tabs across the top - Edit
> EXIF, Edit IPTC or Edit XMP - but not able to choose any of the tabs
> down the left hand side of that box to edit them.  Fair enough, given
> that it's a CR2 file, but then if I click on 'Next' to go to the JPG
> version of the same file (in the hopes of changing that metadata), the
> system hangs and I am not able to advance to the second picture.  I am
> unable to Close the box, either by clicking on Close or on the X at the
> top of the window...  Dialogue buttons show no reaction to clicking, but
> clicking on the X seems to bring up a KWin warning about non response
> and asking me if I want to terminate the application and its child
> windows with the loss of all unsaved data.  Humph!!!
>
> It's very repeatable - and I've done it about 10 times tonight trying to
> find out how to get all this to work.  I'm on Kubuntu 11.10 using
> version 2.1.1 of Digikam on KDE 4.7.4
>
> I'm starting to get concerned that I'm pressing all the wrong buttons
> etc.  Thousands of people use Digikam without all the problems that I
> seem to get - and I have been trying on and off to use Digikam for four
> years... but still struggle to get it up and running.  I give up
> frequently but come back just as often because I know that it's great
> software that many people use effortlessly.  So what am I doing wrong????!!!
>
> Grateful if anyone can shed some light on this for me.  It really
> shouldn't seem this hard for me - and yet, honestly (!! :-) ) I am not
> _that_ stupid all of the time...!
>
> Thanks,
>
> Mark.
> _______________________________________________
> Digikam-users mailing list
> [hidden email]
> https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/digikam-users

_______________________________________________
Digikam-users mailing list
[hidden email]
https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/digikam-users

[Andrew Goodbody]

Yes there does seem to be a problem with the fact that you cannot easily
edit metadata applied by a template. This was brought up on the list
recently but I am not sure if a bug was entered about it. At the moment
the solution I use is to have multiple templates but that is not a
solution that will scale well.

Also I do agree that creating templates is quite non-intuitive.

Andrew
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[Jean-François Rabasse]

Hello Mark,

On Mon, 27 Feb 2012, Mark Hayes (Hotmail) wrote:

> Is there anyone else generally interested in this, either specifically
> for Digikam or generally in the Open Source world ?

I am. But I totally agree with what Martin wrote a couple of hours ago.
You just can't expect setup and use a general purpose vocabulary, it's
really too much context dependent.
An indexing system requires, as Martin said, three things :
  a vocabulary,
  + accurate semantics and meanings,
  + a language.

(In my opinion, there's also a fourth aspect: interoperability.
I comment this later on.)

If you don't have the three, your system is potentially dead.
In my job I use controlled vocabularies, they are all English, and they
restrict to strictly defined scientifical areas.
For my personal images I do as Martin does, free tags, but in my
language, French, (weil mein Sohn spricht nicht Deutsch:-)
and with *my* meanings. Can't do otherwise.

Language is very important because we, humans, rebuild meanings from
whole sentences, not just out of context keywords. I live in France,
near Paris, and if I document an image with the following sentence
« Main entrance of the Hilton hotel in Paris », probably any English
reader will understand that the image is of a building and which one.
But now if you extract keywords, entrance - hilton - hotel - paris,
what about a teenager looking for pictures of a well known (and rich)
american woman Paris Hilton ? Will probably be very disappointed with
my picture:-)

And this is the limit of predefined vocabularies, they can be only
contextual. Think of the U.S. movie « Men in black », and what about
an image tagged « Black men » ?
As indexing systems usually drop what is considered as lexical noise,
articles, pronouns, conjunctions, etc., with two keywords *men* and
*black*, you're unable to guess if this relates to an image with
african persons or persons wearing black clothes.
Each word, in a indexing vocabulary, should have one and only one
meaning. So, use context is mandatory.


I also agree with Martin, about locations names. Which spelling ?
We French have the really bad habit to rename all foreign names in
something like a French way. E.g. we call « Londres » the British
capital town London. This suits the case written by Martin,
« As long as the country/city starts with the same letter... »,
because we have 4 same initial letters. But we call « Pékin » the
capital town of China, usually spelled Beijing. Hem:-)
And how many German readers, on that DK list, will recognize the German
town we call « Aix la Chapelle » ?
(Not obvious that it's: Aachen.)


Another problem with indexing is what should be documented ?
Answering "all" is not the good answer because one can probably find
hundreds of keyword for the same image. Indexing cannot be processed
apart from final users (i.e. persons that will do searches on your
index system).
Images banks that offer images for web designers and the edition world
tag all the major colours of their images, because a designer looking
for images will usually have some design and colour scheme criteria
and will search e.g. « woman wearing a red dress, on a blue background »
But an images bank dedicated to wild life will mostly tag represented
animals, lion, springbok, shark, and not always the background colour.
(Even if, in case of a shark, we could expect a blue background:-)


So, Mark, if you plan to sell photos in a future, perhaps the good
initial question would be to whom you wish to sell ?
If you know that, the good way would be to select several professional
keywords lists relating to the future context.
If you don't know, prefer setting up you own tags system and tree, with
maximum informations, for future use. Probably the best vocabulary is
the one that relates to the kind of photos you like to shoot. No one
is all purposes all domains.

About interoperability :
An important thing for future use is how will the tags system be saved
and which application software will need to use it.
And this is an important issue because there's no official and stable
tags schema. Digikam uses a tree structured tags system, and this is
a real help to meanings.
E.g. if I have a Digikam tagged photo with: Localisation/France/Paris,
this seems almost clear. Localisation relates to the place the image was
shot, France is a country, Paris is a town.

But this is Digikam specific, and stored in an application namespace
xmp.digikam.tagslist
Another application reading the image metadata and not aware of specific
Digikam namespaces will find keywords in more standard places, e.g. the
xmp.dc.subject field, or iptc.keywords, but will find only Paris.
The tree structure is lost and the keyword Paris can be a town or the
firstname of a rich american woman, cf. supra.

And if you plan to turn into an images seller, you'll probably need to
set up an images bank, via a web database application.
This will not be Digikam (except if developping CGI tools able to
exploit directly the Digikam DB format).

This is a real problem that, probably, prevents from setting a priori
indexing system for future use.
From my own point of view, it seems better to document images in free
text mode, with detailled sentences, and keep this either in standard
metadata fields, dc.description, dc.subject, etc., or why not in separate
side car infos files. Free text can always be parsed in a future,
extracting keywords and building on demand a tags system suited to such
or such contextual application. (And, when needed, language translations.)

Regards,
Jean-François
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[John Stumbles]

On 28/02/12 13:53, Jean-François Rabasse wrote:

> Language is very important because we, humans, rebuild meanings from
> whole sentences, not just out of context keywords. I live in France,
> near Paris, and if I document an image with the following sentence
> « Main entrance of the Hilton hotel in Paris », probably any English
> reader will understand that the image is of a building and which one.
> But now if you extract keywords, entrance - hilton - hotel - paris,
> what about a teenager looking for pictures of a well known (and rich)
> american woman Paris Hilton ? Will probably be very disappointed with
> my picture:-)

But if you structure DigiKam's tags thus:

places
        France
                Paris
                        Hilton Hotel
                                entrance

then spotty teenager looking for

people
        Paris Hilton
                bodily orifices

will not be disappointed ;-)




Question for the DigiKam gurus here:

Say I have a tag heirarchy:

people
        Bloggs
                Joe
                Jane
                Jill
        Smith
                Andy
                Betty
                Joe

If I tag a picture of Joe Bloggs, by default only the 'Joe' tag seems to
get applied to the image. So how do I search for just Joe Bloggs without
getting Joe Smith? Or does DK 'know' which Joe is which?
       

--
John Stumbles                                    http://stumbles.org.uk
:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:

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[Jean-François Rabasse]

On Tue, 28 Feb 2012, John Stumbles wrote:

> But if you structure DigiKam's tags thus:
>
> places
> France
> Paris
> Hilton Hotel
> entrance
>
> then spotty teenager looking for
>
> people
> Paris Hilton
> bodily orifices
>
> will not be disappointed ;-)

Definitely right, John ;)
I'll consider retagging all my picts of P. Hilton that way.

The problem I mentionned (my comment abour interoperabiity) is that this
tree is Digikam specific, not standard metadata. And should I, some day,
handle the tagged image with another software, not aware of
xmp.digikam.tagslist, the tree structure is lost.

> Question for the DigiKam gurus here:
>
> Say I have a tag heirarchy:
>
> people
> Bloggs
> Joe
> Jane
> Jill
> Smith
> Andy
> Betty
> Joe
>
> If I tag a picture of Joe Bloggs, by default only the 'Joe' tag seems to get
> applied to the image. So how do I search for just Joe Bloggs without getting
> Joe Smith? Or does DK 'know' which Joe is which?

Sounds as the default, for DK, when you tag a picture is to apply only the
current tag "leaf" of the tree. If you wish more, you have to check boxes,
in the tags tab, for Joe and also Bloggs. As far as I could observe, it's
not bottom to top compatible.

Regards,
Jean-François
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[Guy Stalnaker]

Mark,

Thank you for the pointer on how one actually *applies* a template one
has created. You were more persistent than I was -- I gave up after two
days trying to figure it out.

Guy

On 02/27/2012 08:40 AM, Mark Hayes (Hotmail) wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> I'm experimenting with Digikam's meta-data templates as a way of
> inputting a lot of metadata early on in my workflow.  I've not played
> with it before, but the whole idea seems fairly intuitive so I presumed
> that I would be able to sort it out fairly easily.  Nevertheless, I'm
> struggling with it - quite a lot really, so wanted to quiz people on how
> they used templates.
>
> Firstly, I usually import pictures with Rapid Photo Downloader.  I find
> it fast, excellent, easy to use, and able to rename and sort according
> to my preferences on import, along with making a simultaneous backup.
> For some reason, I have struggled to do the same with Digikam, in
> particular using the regex renamer - which must make perfect sense to
> coders, but is complete gobbledegook to myself.  The regex renamer seems
> to struggle to remove parts of a filename for me - even when I follow
> the very simple instructions on the Digikam blog etc.  Ho hum...
>
> I hit on a bunch of problems - so I'll try and break them down a little
> to make it more manageable.  Any help you can give on any of these items
> is most welcome.
>
> Firstly, setting up a template.  From a UI point of view, I struggled
> initially.  The 'Add' button didn't seem to open up a dialogue box to
> fill in data - which is what I had expected it to do.  You had to fill
> out the data, including a name for the template, before pressing Add to
> add it into the list of available templates.  This seems a little
> counter-intuitive to me (anyone else too?) and although I eventually
> worked it out, being a little quirky just seemed to make it a little
> more of an effort.
>
> In addition, I had imagined that a template would be a generally minimum
> set of basic "boilerplate" info that you then added to - but how to add
> the additional information seems harder than it should be.  I had
> thought that you would leave a bunch of fields blank - such as location
> and then update them later, when applying the template to the photos.
> But when I came to update/apply the template later, I hit on other
> problems related to that.
>
> Anyway, the Digikam manual/help-file states that templates can be
> applied at downloading.  Since I don't use Digikam to download, this
> means that I need to apply the template later.  It took me a while to
> find out how.  I had tried selecting photos and then editing metadata
> but this doesn't seem to be the right way.  I also looked long and hard
> at the metadata tab on the right hand panel.  In the end, I had to
> Google it and then surf to the Scribbles and Snaps blog to find out how
> to apply it.  Apparently, metadata templates are applied under
> "Captions/Tags" panel and then choosing the "Information" tab on the
> right hand panel.
>
> I realise that Digikam is a hugely complicated program with a lot to it
> - but I really am struggling to understand why template application
> would appear there - and not in and around the metadata tab.  Is there a
> reason behind that?  What is the main notional separation between photo
> metadata and my/your metadata templates that is being applied here?  Why
> would they seem so far apart and stuck in such very different locations?
>
> Anyway, so now I found it - but then I came across another problem.
> When applying a template, you are not able to adjust any data before
> application.  I would have assumed that I could select pictures, select
> a template to base my data on, and then make any adjustments necessary
> (such as a change of location and country, subject matter etc etc) and
> then apply the template with the adjusted data.  But I don't seem to be
> able to do that.  I am not able to change any data or add any more data
> to the basic template before application.  And now that I have 362
> images with the wrong country data (picked up from the template), I am
> unsure as to how I can update/change that.
>
> I must be pressing all the wrong buttons because I can't seem to do
> that.  Please let me know:  what am I doing wrong?
>
> Finally, I am now trying to adjust the 'country' metadata that I have
> now incorrectly embedded in the files.  I have a bunch of photos showing
> that they were took in one country, when in fact they were taken
> elsewhere on holiday.  So I select all the files again, choose Image>
> Metadata>  Edit all metadata and I'm presented with a pop-up box with
> loads of metadata options.  The interesting thing about this dialog is
> that it seems to be for changing only one file at a time - starting with
> file number 1 of 362 in this folder, and not a 'template' system that
> allows me to change all of the files en-masse.
>
> Anyway, with my first file being a CR2, I'm not able to edit the
> metadata.  I'm able to choose from the three tabs across the top - Edit
> EXIF, Edit IPTC or Edit XMP - but not able to choose any of the tabs
> down the left hand side of that box to edit them.  Fair enough, given
> that it's a CR2 file, but then if I click on 'Next' to go to the JPG
> version of the same file (in the hopes of changing that metadata), the
> system hangs and I am not able to advance to the second picture.  I am
> unable to Close the box, either by clicking on Close or on the X at the
> top of the window...  Dialogue buttons show no reaction to clicking, but
> clicking on the X seems to bring up a KWin warning about non response
> and asking me if I want to terminate the application and its child
> windows with the loss of all unsaved data.  Humph!!!
>
> It's very repeatable - and I've done it about 10 times tonight trying to
> find out how to get all this to work.  I'm on Kubuntu 11.10 using
> version 2.1.1 of Digikam on KDE 4.7.4
>
> I'm starting to get concerned that I'm pressing all the wrong buttons
> etc.  Thousands of people use Digikam without all the problems that I
> seem to get - and I have been trying on and off to use Digikam for four
> years... but still struggle to get it up and running.  I give up
> frequently but come back just as often because I know that it's great
> software that many people use effortlessly.  So what am I doing wrong????!!!
>
> Grateful if anyone can shed some light on this for me.  It really
> shouldn't seem this hard for me - and yet, honestly (!! :-) ) I am not
> _that_ stupid all of the time...!
>
> Thanks,
>
> Mark.
> _______________________________________________
> Digikam-users mailing list
> [hidden email]
> https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/digikam-users

--
"There is only love, and then oblivion. Love is all we have
to set against hatred." (paraphrased) Ian McEwan

Guy Stalnaker
[hidden email]
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[Peter Albrecht]

Hi Mark, Guy,

I use templates to assign copyright and contact information
only. Those are quite static and identical to most images.

Saving the place, where the picture was taken, I use tags.
Those are quite more flexible.

Kind regards,
        Peter

On 03.03.2012 23:59, Guy Stalnaker wrote:

> Mark,
>
> Thank you for the pointer on how one actually *applies* a
> template one has created. You were more persistent than I
> was -- I gave up after two days trying to figure it out.
>
> Guy
>
> On 02/27/2012 08:40 AM, Mark Hayes (Hotmail) wrote:
>> Hi all,
>>
>> I'm experimenting with Digikam's meta-data templates as a
>> way of
>> inputting a lot of metadata early on in my workflow.  I've
>> not played
>> with it before, but the whole idea seems fairly intuitive
>> so I presumed
>> that I would be able to sort it out fairly easily.
>> Nevertheless, I'm
>> struggling with it - quite a lot really, so wanted to quiz
>> people on how
>> they used templates.
>>
>> Firstly, I usually import pictures with Rapid Photo
>> Downloader.  I find
>> it fast, excellent, easy to use, and able to rename and
>> sort according
>> to my preferences on import, along with making a
>> simultaneous backup.
>> For some reason, I have struggled to do the same with
>> Digikam, in
>> particular using the regex renamer - which must make
>> perfect sense to
>> coders, but is complete gobbledegook to myself.  The regex
>> renamer seems
>> to struggle to remove parts of a filename for me - even
>> when I follow
>> the very simple instructions on the Digikam blog etc.  Ho
>> hum...
>>
>> I hit on a bunch of problems - so I'll try and break them
>> down a little
>> to make it more manageable.  Any help you can give on any
>> of these items
>> is most welcome.
>>
>> Firstly, setting up a template.  From a UI point of view,
>> I struggled
>> initially.  The 'Add' button didn't seem to open up a
>> dialogue box to
>> fill in data - which is what I had expected it to do.  You
>> had to fill
>> out the data, including a name for the template, before
>> pressing Add to
>> add it into the list of available templates.  This seems a
>> little
>> counter-intuitive to me (anyone else too?) and although I
>> eventually
>> worked it out, being a little quirky just seemed to make
>> it a little
>> more of an effort.
>>
>> In addition, I had imagined that a template would be a
>> generally minimum
>> set of basic "boilerplate" info that you then added to -
>> but how to add
>> the additional information seems harder than it should
>> be.  I had
>> thought that you would leave a bunch of fields blank -
>> such as location
>> and then update them later, when applying the template to
>> the photos.
>> But when I came to update/apply the template later, I hit
>> on other
>> problems related to that.
>>
>> Anyway, the Digikam manual/help-file states that templates
>> can be
>> applied at downloading.  Since I don't use Digikam to
>> download, this
>> means that I need to apply the template later.  It took me
>> a while to
>> find out how.  I had tried selecting photos and then
>> editing metadata
>> but this doesn't seem to be the right way.  I also looked
>> long and hard
>> at the metadata tab on the right hand panel.  In the end,
>> I had to
>> Google it and then surf to the Scribbles and Snaps blog to
>> find out how
>> to apply it.  Apparently, metadata templates are applied
>> under
>> "Captions/Tags" panel and then choosing the "Information"
>> tab on the
>> right hand panel.
>>
>> I realise that Digikam is a hugely complicated program
>> with a lot to it
>> - but I really am struggling to understand why template
>> application
>> would appear there - and not in and around the metadata
>> tab.  Is there a
>> reason behind that?  What is the main notional separation
>> between photo
>> metadata and my/your metadata templates that is being
>> applied here?  Why
>> would they seem so far apart and stuck in such very
>> different locations?
>>
>> Anyway, so now I found it - but then I came across another
>> problem.
>> When applying a template, you are not able to adjust any
>> data before
>> application.  I would have assumed that I could select
>> pictures, select
>> a template to base my data on, and then make any
>> adjustments necessary
>> (such as a change of location and country, subject matter
>> etc etc) and
>> then apply the template with the adjusted data.  But I
>> don't seem to be
>> able to do that.  I am not able to change any data or add
>> any more data
>> to the basic template before application.  And now that I
>> have 362
>> images with the wrong country data (picked up from the
>> template), I am
>> unsure as to how I can update/change that.
>>
>> I must be pressing all the wrong buttons because I can't
>> seem to do
>> that.  Please let me know:  what am I doing wrong?
>>
>> Finally, I am now trying to adjust the 'country' metadata
>> that I have
>> now incorrectly embedded in the files.  I have a bunch of
>> photos showing
>> that they were took in one country, when in fact they were
>> taken
>> elsewhere on holiday.  So I select all the files again,
>> choose Image>
>> Metadata>  Edit all metadata and I'm presented with a
>> pop-up box with
>> loads of metadata options.  The interesting thing about
>> this dialog is
>> that it seems to be for changing only one file at a time -
>> starting with
>> file number 1 of 362 in this folder, and not a 'template'
>> system that
>> allows me to change all of the files en-masse.
>>
>> Anyway, with my first file being a CR2, I'm not able to
>> edit the
>> metadata.  I'm able to choose from the three tabs across
>> the top - Edit
>> EXIF, Edit IPTC or Edit XMP - but not able to choose any
>> of the tabs
>> down the left hand side of that box to edit them.  Fair
>> enough, given
>> that it's a CR2 file, but then if I click on 'Next' to go
>> to the JPG
>> version of the same file (in the hopes of changing that
>> metadata), the
>> system hangs and I am not able to advance to the second
>> picture.  I am
>> unable to Close the box, either by clicking on Close or on
>> the X at the
>> top of the window...  Dialogue buttons show no reaction to
>> clicking, but
>> clicking on the X seems to bring up a KWin warning about
>> non response
>> and asking me if I want to terminate the application and
>> its child
>> windows with the loss of all unsaved data.  Humph!!!
>>
>> It's very repeatable - and I've done it about 10 times
>> tonight trying to
>> find out how to get all this to work.  I'm on Kubuntu
>> 11.10 using
>> version 2.1.1 of Digikam on KDE 4.7.4
>>
>> I'm starting to get concerned that I'm pressing all the
>> wrong buttons
>> etc.  Thousands of people use Digikam without all the
>> problems that I
>> seem to get - and I have been trying on and off to use
>> Digikam for four
>> years... but still struggle to get it up and running.  I
>> give up
>> frequently but come back just as often because I know that
>> it's great
>> software that many people use effortlessly.  So what am I
>> doing wrong????!!!
>>
>> Grateful if anyone can shed some light on this for me.  It
>> really
>> shouldn't seem this hard for me - and yet, honestly (!!
>> :-) ) I am not
>> _that_ stupid all of the time...!
>>
>> Thanks,
>>
>> Mark.
>> _______________________________________________
>> Digikam-users mailing list
>> [hidden email]
>> https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/digikam-users
>

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