[digiKam-users] Help with this use case, please.

[vaarticus]

Today, I am going to set up a NAS with the intention of collecting all of my photos from various sources and getting them centralized. I would like to use digiKam for this, but I am new to the platform and need help with the best way to do this. 

Pointing me to a good instructional resource if perfectly fine. I have done some browsing of YouTube, the digiKam manual... and I am just not positive what the best approach is. 

Step One: Find everything. 

I'd like to be able to plug in an external drive, have digiKam find all of the photos from the drive, copy those folders/photos to the NAS. Rinse, repeat. I'm hoping this can be somewhat automated so that I can spend my time on Step Two. 

Step Two: Organize what I found. 

Once I have everything co-located, I'd like to be able to go in and organize, cull, and long-term manage those images.  (this will likely be the time consuming, manual review process). 

Is digiKam the right tool for this? Any tips on how to achieve this? I'm sure if I was more familiar with digiKam this would be a trivial task. It's pretty powerful, but I only know how to do one thing with it really... I've been using it to make my selections from camera memory cards after a shooting session.  I haven't really started using it for photo management. 

Thanks a bunch!  

Chris

[Sveinn í Felli-2]

Þann 23.3.2021 10:53, skrifaði Chris Poldervaart:
> Today, I am going to set up a NAS with the intention of collecting all of
> my photos from various sources and getting them centralized.
----
> Step One: Find everything.
>
> I'd like to be able to plug in an external drive, have digiKam find all of
> the photos from the drive, copy those folders/photos to the NAS. Rinse,
> repeat. I'm hoping this can be somewhat automated so that I can spend my
> time on Step Two.

Guess there are two different methods possible:
Setup the NAS on the network, make a folder on it a main collection in
Digikam, and shovel in your images [1].
Or to make things faster; temporarily connect your NAS to your computer
as an USB3-drive, let this be a temporary main collection [2], and
shovel in your images.

[1]: Also here are two different methods; First is to plugin the various
external drives as USB-media, choose to import from each drive into your
folder structure on the NAS. This imports only supported images, and (I
think) ignores any folder structure on the media you import from.
Second method is to temporarily connect the external drives as a
collection, and in digiKam left-hand Album-panel you move corresponding
folders into your main collection/directory structure. For some reason
this *moves* the folders/files, copying is not on offer in my setup.
This imports all files in those folders, not just images, so it's
perhaps quicker just using a file-manager.

[2]: People on this mailing-list have been seen re-assigning
mount-points of collections via some sqlite-editing, just to keep the
databases for thumbnails, fingerprints, etc. and same some time
(considerable for large collections). Easiest is of course to redefine
your main collection, once you have unplugged the NAS and put it back on
the network (and then go outdoors and play for a while).

> Step Two: Organize what I found.
>
> Once I have everything co-located, I'd like to be able to go in and
> organize, cull, and long-term manage those images.  (this will likely be
> the time consuming, manual review process).

This is what digiKam is the right tool for ;-)

Just a couple of hints; the main directory structure is important;
depending on your workflow you may prefer it to be based on dates, or
cameras, or subjects or whatnot. Don't forget that in digiKam there are
tags and categories and ratings and stuff that transgress directory
structure, and can serve as virtual folders/collections for whatever you
want.
Plan for the future...

> I've
> been using it to make my selections from camera memory cards after a
> shooting session.  I haven't really started using it for photo management.

IMHO, photo management should be a lifestyle ;-) It can be a tedious
work, especially when the "I'll do it later" attitude has been prevalent
for some time.
There can be such joy in finding relevant images with the minimum of
effort, just because they were tagged, categorized and organized...

Just thoughts,
Sveinn í Felli

[vaarticus]

Thanks for the assist. 

I tried to use digiKam to migrate just the photos and videos from my other storage device (figuring I'll go through the documents and other random stuff separately).  I assumed that using the import tool (Add Folders) would migrate only those relevant files.... but when I did that it copied everything.  I let it run overnight and killed it this morning, because it was moving all of the random crap rather than just photos and videos.  

I like how the Add Folders option keeps the folder structure, which is what I'd want, but I need to figure out if there is a way to only add the photos/videos from those folders. If I choose import from memory card, I can see it seems to only show media files, but when I download them it doesn't honor the folder structure and dumps them all in one folder. 

This is fantastical fun. :-) 

On Wed, Mar 24, 2021 at 6:37 AM Sveinn í Felli <[hidden email]> wrote:

Þann 23.3.2021 10:53, skrifaði Chris Poldervaart:
> Today, I am going to set up a NAS with the intention of collecting all of
> my photos from various sources and getting them centralized.
----
> Step One: Find everything.
>
> I'd like to be able to plug in an external drive, have digiKam find all of
> the photos from the drive, copy those folders/photos to the NAS. Rinse,
> repeat. I'm hoping this can be somewhat automated so that I can spend my
> time on Step Two.

Guess there are two different methods possible:
Setup the NAS on the network, make a folder on it a main collection in
Digikam, and shovel in your images [1].
Or to make things faster; temporarily connect your NAS to your computer
as an USB3-drive, let this be a temporary main collection [2], and
shovel in your images.

[1]: Also here are two different methods; First is to plugin the various
external drives as USB-media, choose to import from each drive into your
folder structure on the NAS. This imports only supported images, and (I
think) ignores any folder structure on the media you import from.
Second method is to temporarily connect the external drives as a
collection, and in digiKam left-hand Album-panel you move corresponding
folders into your main collection/directory structure. For some reason
this *moves* the folders/files, copying is not on offer in my setup.
This imports all files in those folders, not just images, so it's
perhaps quicker just using a file-manager.

[2]: People on this mailing-list have been seen re-assigning
mount-points of collections via some sqlite-editing, just to keep the
databases for thumbnails, fingerprints, etc. and same some time
(considerable for large collections). Easiest is of course to redefine
your main collection, once you have unplugged the NAS and put it back on
the network (and then go outdoors and play for a while).

> Step Two: Organize what I found.
>
> Once I have everything co-located, I'd like to be able to go in and
> organize, cull, and long-term manage those images.  (this will likely be
> the time consuming, manual review process).

This is what digiKam is the right tool for ;-)

Just a couple of hints; the main directory structure is important;
depending on your workflow you may prefer it to be based on dates, or
cameras, or subjects or whatnot. Don't forget that in digiKam there are
tags and categories and ratings and stuff that transgress directory
structure, and can serve as virtual folders/collections for whatever you
want.
Plan for the future...

> I've
> been using it to make my selections from camera memory cards after a
> shooting session.  I haven't really started using it for photo management.

IMHO, photo management should be a lifestyle ;-) It can be a tedious
work, especially when the "I'll do it later" attitude has been prevalent
for some time.
There can be such joy in finding relevant images with the minimum of
effort, just because they were tagged, categorized and organized...

Just thoughts,
Sveinn í Felli

[vaarticus]

I ended up using Robocopy to get the images migrated.  As much as I wanted to use digiKam for that, it either hung up, or copied non-image files that I didn't want to move. So... for those looking to do something similar, this is working out great. 

RoboCopy.exe "[source folder]" "[target folder]" *.jpg *.jpeg *.jpe *.jif *.jfif *.jfi *.png *.gif *.webp *.tiff *.tif *.psd *.raw *.arw *.cr2 *.nrw *.k25 *.bmp *.dib *.heif *.heic *.jp2 *.j2k *.jpf *.jpx *.jpm *.mj2 *.svg *.svgz *.ai *.eps /S /COPY:DAT /MT:8

Once I get the images migrated, I'll look at using digiKam to re-organize them. 

On Wed, Mar 24, 2021 at 8:21 AM Chris Poldervaart <[hidden email]> wrote:

Thanks for the assist. 

I tried to use digiKam to migrate just the photos and videos from my other storage device (figuring I'll go through the documents and other random stuff separately).  I assumed that using the import tool (Add Folders) would migrate only those relevant files.... but when I did that it copied everything.  I let it run overnight and killed it this morning, because it was moving all of the random crap rather than just photos and videos.  

I like how the Add Folders option keeps the folder structure, which is what I'd want, but I need to figure out if there is a way to only add the photos/videos from those folders. If I choose import from memory card, I can see it seems to only show media files, but when I download them it doesn't honor the folder structure and dumps them all in one folder. 

This is fantastical fun. :-) 

On Wed, Mar 24, 2021 at 6:37 AM Sveinn í Felli <[hidden email]> wrote:

Þann 23.3.2021 10:53, skrifaði Chris Poldervaart:
> Today, I am going to set up a NAS with the intention of collecting all of
> my photos from various sources and getting them centralized.
----
> Step One: Find everything.
>
> I'd like to be able to plug in an external drive, have digiKam find all of
> the photos from the drive, copy those folders/photos to the NAS. Rinse,
> repeat. I'm hoping this can be somewhat automated so that I can spend my
> time on Step Two.

Guess there are two different methods possible:
Setup the NAS on the network, make a folder on it a main collection in
Digikam, and shovel in your images [1].
Or to make things faster; temporarily connect your NAS to your computer
as an USB3-drive, let this be a temporary main collection [2], and
shovel in your images.

[1]: Also here are two different methods; First is to plugin the various
external drives as USB-media, choose to import from each drive into your
folder structure on the NAS. This imports only supported images, and (I
think) ignores any folder structure on the media you import from.
Second method is to temporarily connect the external drives as a
collection, and in digiKam left-hand Album-panel you move corresponding
folders into your main collection/directory structure. For some reason
this *moves* the folders/files, copying is not on offer in my setup.
This imports all files in those folders, not just images, so it's
perhaps quicker just using a file-manager.

[2]: People on this mailing-list have been seen re-assigning
mount-points of collections via some sqlite-editing, just to keep the
databases for thumbnails, fingerprints, etc. and same some time
(considerable for large collections). Easiest is of course to redefine
your main collection, once you have unplugged the NAS and put it back on
the network (and then go outdoors and play for a while).

> Step Two: Organize what I found.
>
> Once I have everything co-located, I'd like to be able to go in and
> organize, cull, and long-term manage those images.  (this will likely be
> the time consuming, manual review process).

This is what digiKam is the right tool for ;-)

Just a couple of hints; the main directory structure is important;
depending on your workflow you may prefer it to be based on dates, or
cameras, or subjects or whatnot. Don't forget that in digiKam there are
tags and categories and ratings and stuff that transgress directory
structure, and can serve as virtual folders/collections for whatever you
want.
Plan for the future...

> I've
> been using it to make my selections from camera memory cards after a
> shooting session.  I haven't really started using it for photo management.

IMHO, photo management should be a lifestyle ;-) It can be a tedious
work, especially when the "I'll do it later" attitude has been prevalent
for some time.
There can be such joy in finding relevant images with the minimum of
effort, just because they were tagged, categorized and organized...

Just thoughts,
Sveinn í Felli