[digiKam-users] Importing from a local folder

[Dougie Nisbet]

I'm retrying digikam after years of using shotwell (and previously f-spot). After initially importing my original images in their original location (~100,000) I'm now trying to import and copy from a local folder.

My workflow with shotwell is something like:

Images in /store1/images/YEAR/MONTH/DAY

New images somewhere local, e.g. /home/dougie/in

I rarely, if ever, import directly from a camera or memory card. I prefer to do an  initial pass, using something like geeqie, on my incoming photos to weed out unwanted images. I may also add some geolocation information.

In shotwell, the import process would copy and relocate according to photo date into /store1/images/YEAR/MONTH/DAY. I can't see how to do this in digikam.

I've found:

1. If I click on the Import option on the menu bar, digikam attempts to look at my (unmounted) external USB drive where I store backup images. It freezes the import window during this. However, during this time I can see some rename options on the Import window, I just can't do anything with it.

2. If I disconnect my USB drive (the only way I could figure out how to stop digikam looking at it), the Import option on the menu bar is unavailable. The options on the Import drop-down menu are of little use.

From the searching I've done, I've seen various suggestions, including Ctrl-I (no effect). The 'Add Images' and 'Add Folders' options are greyed out.

I considered adding ~dougie/in as a collection, but I suspect it would leave the photos in place, whereas I want them imported and renamed and copied to /store1/images.

Thanks for any help,

Dougie

Running Digikam 6.1.0 on Debian Stable using digikam-6.1.0-x86-64.appimage 

[Remco Viëtor]

On mercredi 29 mai 2019 11:29:04 CEST Dougie Nisbet wrote:

> I'm retrying digikam after years of using shotwell (and previously
> f-spot). After initially importing my original images in their original
> location (~100,000) I'm now trying to import and copy from a local folder.
>
> My workflow with shotwell is something like:
>
> Images in /store1/images/YEAR/MONTH/DAY
>
> New images somewhere local, e.g. /home/dougie/in
>
> I rarely, if ever, import directly from a camera or memory card. I
> prefer to do an  initial pass, using something like geeqie, on my
> incoming photos to weed out unwanted images. I may also add some
> geolocation information.

Digikam can also add the geolocation info, and scrolling through the images to
weed out unwanted ones is easy. I usually use the green/yellow/red flags to
mark images to keep/review/throw away on a first pass (using shortcuts to
navigate and tag), then select all red flags for deletion in one step.

> In shotwell, the import process would copy and relocate according to
> photo date into /store1/images/YEAR/MONTH/DAY. I can't see how to do
> this in digikam.

Sorry, no idea how to do this in Digikam. I usually download from card (where
images are stored in 1 directory/day) to the directory where i want them.
Those directories are named <yyyy[mm[[dd]]>_<short title>, with subdirectories
as needed, which means I *can't* use an automated naming system. Finding
images by date is easy, and I use tags to describe the content.

I don't know Shotwell, so I can't really comment on your . But I find that I
can do the weeding, renaming, tagging, and geolocation (using GPS tracks) from
within Digikam with no problem.

It also depends on the number of images you treat per session or per week/
month: I've had occasions where I  imported several hundreds of images per
session, 2000+ for the event and that went fast enough for me to present a
selection the next day or so.

> I've found:
>
> 1. If I click on the Import option on the menu bar, digikam attempts to
> look at my (unmounted) external USB drive where I store backup images.
> It freezes the import window during this. However, during this time I
> can see some rename options on the Import window, I just can't do
> anything with it.

Is the directory with your backups registered with Digikam as a collection?

> 2. If I disconnect my USB drive (the only way I could figure out how to
> stop digikam looking at it), the Import option on the menu bar is
> unavailable. The options on the Import drop-down menu are of little use.
>
>  From the searching I've done, I've seen various suggestions, including
> Ctrl-I (no effect). The 'Add Images' and 'Add Folders' options are
> greyed out.

When I use the "Import" menu (on Digikam 6.1.0) with no external media
attached, I do get the "Add Folder" option, just options concerning external
media are grayed out. And there's no reason to have the "add images" and "add
folder" options grayed out, normally...

> I considered adding ~dougie/in as a collection, but I suspect it would
> leave the photos in place, whereas I want them imported and renamed and
> copied to /store1/images.

You can still move the images around within and between collections from
within Digikam.

Remco

[Dougie Nisbet]

Thanks for the detailed reply. Much appreciated.

On 29/05/2019 11:43, Remco Viëtor wrote:

On mercredi 29 mai 2019 11:29:04 CEST Dougie Nisbet wrote:

I'm retrying digikam after years of using shotwell (and previously
f-spot). After initially importing my original images in their original
location (~100,000) I'm now trying to import and copy from a local folder.

My workflow with shotwell is something like:

Images in /store1/images/YEAR/MONTH/DAY

New images somewhere local, e.g. /home/dougie/in

I rarely, if ever, import directly from a camera or memory card. I
prefer to do an  initial pass, using something like geeqie, on my
incoming photos to weed out unwanted images. I may also add some
geolocation information.

Digikam can also add the geolocation info, and scrolling through the images to 
weed out unwanted ones is easy. I usually use the green/yellow/red flags to 
mark images to keep/review/throw away on a first pass (using shortcuts to 
navigate and tag), then select all red flags for deletion in one step.

Yes I sometimes do something similar in Shotwell, marking for later deletion. I've not explored Digikam's geolocation possibilities yet but generally I do this in Windows using the geosetter program which I like. My two sources are usually iPhone and DSLR. Usage is not consistent - the occasional event (several hundred photos) then normally just a few each day. Probably not too difficult to change my habits to manually store them in date folders.

I've found:

1. If I click on the Import option on the menu bar, digikam attempts to
look at my (unmounted) external USB drive where I store backup images.
It freezes the import window during this. However, during this time I
can see some rename options on the Import window, I just can't do
anything with it.

Is the directory with your backups registered with Digikam as a collection?

No. In fact the drive is not even mounted by default. In fact I'd forgotten all about it until digikam spotted it. I have a nightly script that runs overnight that mounts and unmounts it for the backup. It does have an entry in /etc/fstab though.

2. If I disconnect my USB drive (the only way I could figure out how to
stop digikam looking at it), the Import option on the menu bar is
unavailable. The options on the Import drop-down menu are of little use.

 From the searching I've done, I've seen various suggestions, including
Ctrl-I (no effect). The 'Add Images' and 'Add Folders' options are
greyed out.

When I use the "Import" menu (on Digikam 6.1.0) with no external media 
attached, I do get the "Add Folder" option, just options concerning external 
media are grayed out. And there's no reason to have the "add images" and "add 
folder" options grayed out, normally...

I considered adding ~dougie/in as a collection, but I suspect it would
leave the photos in place, whereas I want them imported and renamed and
copied to /store1/images.

You can still move the images around within and between collections from 
within Digikam. 

Yes this is something that's impressed me a lot so far. It looks like I can even rename files and digikam will cope quickly and automatically. I often rename image files automatically using a script based on the image tags. This is helpful if I want to store them somewhere else - e.g. Dropbox - and perform searches for particular photos.

Remco

Dougie

[Remco Viëtor]

On mercredi 29 mai 2019 15:21:16 CEST Dougie Nisbet wrote:
> Thanks for the detailed reply. Much appreciated.
>
No problem
>
> Yes this is something that's impressed me a lot so far. It looks like I
> can even rename files and digikam will cope quickly and automatically. I
> often rename image files automatically using a script based on the image
> tags. This is helpful if I want to store them somewhere else - e.g.
> Dropbox - and perform searches for particular photos.

I avoid renaming images from outside Digikam once they are in the Dk database:
I use raw format almost exclusively, and it's very easy to forget renaming the
sidecar files used to store the metadata in parallel with the database, as I
use darktable as my main editor. And the sidecar allows transfer of metadata
between the two programs (not perfect, as some fields are used in a different
way, like color tags).
Also, I don't know what happens with a jpeg that is renamed from outside
Digikam...

Of course, renaming on export/copy shouldn't be a problem.

As for searches, Digikam as a very powerful search function named "advanced
search", but it's perhaps not the easiest to learn (as there are a lot of
searchable fields, and several ways to combine fields).

Remco