Technical newbie questions

[Henning Spruth]

Hi,

I'm new to digikam and would like to better understand its underlying
principles before entrusting it with my digital photo collection.

From playing with the tool and looking into the database schema with the
sqlite3 utility, I'm making the following educated guesses about digikam's
album management:

1. In essence, digikam manages image files in a directory structure under
its "Album Library Path".

2. An album is identical to a directory below the album library path. Any
change to the album hierarchy in digikam is directly reflected to a change in
directory structure.

3. When adding images or importing folders, the images are copied into the
album library path.

4. A central function of digikam is to maintain an index of the files in the
album library and the image properties (tags etc.) in its sqlite database.

5. Thumbnails for the album view are not stored on disk, but always generated
on the fly.

6. When setting the "album library path" to an existing directory structure
containing images in a hierarchy, it will scan the structure and recognize
the existing levels as albums. It will not modify the directory structure
except for creating a digikam3.db at its root.

I'd be grateful if somebody could tell me if my assumptions are correct.

Sorry if this is already clarified elsewhere - I browsed the documentation and
FAQ section on digikam.org but couldn't find it.

Many thanks!

Henning


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[Duncan Hill-5]

Henning Spruth wrote:
> 1. In essence, digikam manages image files in a directory structure under
> its "Album Library Path".

Correct.

> 2. An album is identical to a directory below the album library path. Any
> change to the album hierarchy in digikam is directly reflected to a change in
> directory structure.

Yes, but don't change the structure outside of digikam.  The properties,
tags etc are based on file path, so moving them without digikam doing it
means that the image counts as a 'deleted' image, and it then picked up
new.  There's a bugs.kde.org entry on solving this.

> 3. When adding images or importing folders, the images are copied into the
> album library path.

Pretty much.

> 4. A central function of digikam is to maintain an index of the files in the
> album library and the image properties (tags etc.) in its sqlite database.

Pretty much.  There's also the showfoto application (part of the
package) that does image manipulation.

> 5. Thumbnails for the album view are not stored on disk, but always generated
> on the fly.

IIRC, digiKam uses the KDE thumbnail system, which caches thumbnails
based on md5 signature or md5 digest of name or similar.

> 6. When setting the "album library path" to an existing directory structure
> containing images in a hierarchy, it will scan the structure and recognize
> the existing levels as albums. It will not modify the directory structure
> except for creating a digikam3.db at its root.

Pretty much.

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[Gilles Caulier-2]

Le Samedi 27 Mai 2006 08:36 AM, Duncan Hill a écrit :

> Henning Spruth wrote:
> > 1. In essence, digikam manages image files in a directory structure under
> > its "Album Library Path".
>
> Correct.
>
> > 2. An album is identical to a directory below the album library path. Any
> > change to the album hierarchy in digikam is directly reflected to a
> > change in directory structure.
>
> Yes, but don't change the structure outside of digikam.  The properties,
> tags etc are based on file path, so moving them without digikam doing it
> means that the image counts as a 'deleted' image, and it then picked up
> new.  There's a bugs.kde.org entry on solving this.

Excepted that some Albums properties are stored in database.

>
> > 3. When adding images or importing folders, the images are copied into
> > the album library path.
>
> Pretty much.
>
> > 4. A central function of digikam is to maintain an index of the files in
> > the album library and the image properties (tags etc.) in its sqlite
> > database.
>
> Pretty much.  There's also the showfoto application (part of the
> package) that does image manipulation.
>
> > 5. Thumbnails for the album view are not stored on disk, but always
> > generated on the fly.
>
> IIRC, digiKam uses the KDE thumbnail system, which caches thumbnails
> based on md5 signature or md5 digest of name or similar.

No Henning. The files are stored in hdd to your ~./thumbnails folder. It
shared between digiKam and konqueror. Nota : i have a patch to fix the
problem about wrong rotated thumbs generated by konqueror (JensB if you read
this message (:=))))

>
> > 6. When setting the "album library path" to an existing directory
> > structure containing images in a hierarchy, it will scan the structure
> > and recognize the existing levels as albums. It will not modify the
> > directory structure except for creating a digikam3.db at its root.

Yes to stores metadata unsupported by image file formats and albums.

Gilles
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