Tags and labels are not synchronised between photo versions

[Simon Metcalfe]

Hi All,

In Digikam I use tags to create 'Albums' of related photos from a number
of folders, much like how Albums used to work in Picasa.

It's normal that I might go back and re edit an image slightly, and in
the case of Digikam this usually means deleting the '_v1' file and
editing again.  I've realised however that tags and labels are not
synchronised between each version of an image, which causes some problems.

E.g. if you tag or star an image then create a version of it, the
tag/star will carry over to the new version.  But if you remove the star
or add another tag after an edit is made, only the latest version will
be updated with the these changes.

Therefore if you delete a version (e.g. because you want to make it
better) this reverts your tags and labels to how they were in the
previous version, and thus the image tags, star rating etc. may change
without you knowing.

Maybe I'm used to Picasa where edits are handled independently of tags
and labels, but it makes sense to me that if I tag a photo, and it
always stay tagged regardless of what edits are made.

Does anyone else have any thoughts on this?

Thanks,

Simon

[AndriusWild]

I usually use "exiftool -TagsFromFile" to copy tags from one file to another.

I think if exiv2 has a similar function digiKam we some code tweaks could do it automatically.

If it is not already implemented it sounds like a good wishlist item in bugzilla to me.

On Mon, Jun 5, 2017 at 4:40 PM, Simon Metcalfe <[hidden email]> wrote:

Hi All,

In Digikam I use tags to create 'Albums' of related photos from a number of folders, much like how Albums used to work in Picasa.

It's normal that I might go back and re edit an image slightly, and in the case of Digikam this usually means deleting the '_v1' file and editing again.  I've realised however that tags and labels are not synchronised between each version of an image, which causes some problems.

E.g. if you tag or star an image then create a version of it, the tag/star will carry over to the new version.  But if you remove the star or add another tag after an edit is made, only the latest version will be updated with the these changes.

Therefore if you delete a version (e.g. because you want to make it better) this reverts your tags and labels to how they were in the previous version, and thus the image tags, star rating etc. may change without you knowing.

Maybe I'm used to Picasa where edits are handled independently of tags and labels, but it makes sense to me that if I tag a photo, and it always stay tagged regardless of what edits are made.

Does anyone else have any thoughts on this?

Thanks,

Simon

[Remco Viëtor]

On mardi 6 juin 2017 00:40:06 CEST Simon Metcalfe wrote:

> Hi All,
>
> In Digikam I use tags to create 'Albums' of related photos from a number
> of folders, much like how Albums used to work in Picasa.
>
> It's normal that I might go back and re edit an image slightly, and in
> the case of Digikam this usually means deleting the '_v1' file and
> editing again.  I've realised however that tags and labels are not
> synchronised between each version of an image, which causes some problems.
>
> E.g. if you tag or star an image then create a version of it, the
> tag/star will carry over to the new version.  But if you remove the star
> or add another tag after an edit is made, only the latest version will
> be updated with the these changes.
>
> Therefore if you delete a version (e.g. because you want to make it
> better) this reverts your tags and labels to how they were in the
> previous version, and thus the image tags, star rating etc. may change
> without you knowing.

Does that mean that you change tags/ratings only for the latest edit? Perhaps
because you have configured digikam to only show the latest version?

In digikam, originals and edits aren't considered one unit, but separate
images. So, normally any change gets applied only to those files which are
selected when you make the change. And that implies that changes are not
automatically synchronised between versions. That's a design decision, which
works for me in that I can tag the edited versions separately e.g. for export,
where I most certainly don't want the originals to go with the edits.
(OK, in certain ways originals and edits are considered together, e.g. for
versioning, and for deciding which image to show. But for tagging etc,
originals and edits are independent).

There is an option to group files, and have metadata changes applied to all
members of the group. I don't know if originals and edits are or can be
grouped automatically though (I don't use the digikam editor).

But, if you want your (tag-based) virtual albums to contain only the edited
versions, you have a challenge ahead of you:
you need to have a tag on your edit that is not present on your original
image, but you want all tags to stay synchronised between all versions.
I don't quite see how you can have both at the same time.

[Remco Viëtor]

On vendredi 16 juin 2017 22:41:39 CEST Andrey Goreev wrote:
> I usually use "exiftool -TagsFromFile" to copy tags from one file to
> another.
> I think if exiv2 has a similar function digiKam we some code tweaks could
> do it automatically.
> If it is not already implemented it sounds like a good wishlist item in
> bugzilla to me.

That sounds a bit like overkill in this case, when it would be enough to have
a way to apply changes automatically to all versions of an image (which seems
to be what OP wanted). Also, -TagsFromFile copies *all* metadata tags, unless
you specify otherwise. Not much of a problem between versions of one image,
not nice between different images...

(note: Exiftool tags cover all metadata. Digikam tags are only the /keywords/
the user applies to an image, which is a small subset of Exiftool tags. To
complicate things further, there are at least 3 tags under which keywords can
be stored

But I agree that a way to copy metadata from one image to another could be
very useful, *if* I can select which metadata get copied (at least to a level
where I can select one or more of title/caption, tags, ratings, labels, owner/
rights information, geolocation, ...). And such a copy function must be very
careful /not/ to touch any of the "hardware-related" metadata (original date,
aperture etc.).