[digiKam-users] Migration of DigiKam to new PC

[Paul Marfell]

Hi

What is the best way to migrate image files and a DigiKam install from a Ubuntu 19.10 low spec box to a Ubuntu 19.10 higher spec box? At its simplest I could use DigiKam to write metadata to the image files and/or .xmp files, copy the image and .xmp files to the new box, install DigiKam to the new box and point it to the copied image file location. There are approximately 35,000 images.

Is there anything I need to take into account when doing it this way?

If it is not quite as simple as that I have included below a bit of the background for me asking the question.

Recently I was a Windows 10 and Ubuntu 19.10 user. I was still on Windows due to using the Organiser in Photoshop Elements. As a result I was also using GIMP and darktable on the Windows box. After a trial of DigiKam on Windows I decided to use Organiser to write all its metadata to the image files, copy them to the Ubuntu box and start DigiKam on the Ubuntu box. The intention being to be using just Ubuntu - a serious hardware upgrade would also be involved which arrives next week.

Everything seemed to work fine apart from losing the tag hierarchy. I have a lot of wildlife photos and have a tag hierachy:- 

Nature > Birds > Avocet, Blackbird, Blackcap, Swallow, Oystercatcher, .....

Nature > Nature Reserves > St Aidans NR, DMNR, Rodley Nature Reserve ..... 

Nature > Butterflies > Red Admiral, Tortoiseshell, Painted Lady,......

etc. etc.

I have also spent some time adding Face Tags and a People > Family hierarchy.

I am now wondering if I should not have bothered because part of the plan was to get a new higher spec PC with SSD and decent HDD. Am I going to need to redo all that? Should I write the "Nature" and "Birds" tags to files, not just the Avocet tag, to make it easier to rebuild the hierarchy?

It is a bit late in the day but should I have organised tags differently? I have struggled to find suitably detailed and relevant "best practice" guides. Is it a case of "well if you want to get there I wouldn't start from here."? :-)

What is the best way to migrate everything? I will be able to temporarily mount the old HDD with the image files so I could probably give it the same location details as on the old PC.

So far the only migration topics I have found are related to migration from SQLite to MySQL so apologies if this has been answered/covered already. Please point me in the right direction.

Thanks 

Paul

--

[woenx]

Hi,

If I were you, considering you have those photos stored locally, I'd save
all metadata to the files (or to xmp sidecars) and let digikam rebuild the
database on the new installation.

If I understand correctly, until now you used the Organizer in Photoshop
Elements. Is there a way to force that software to write all metadata to
files? I have not personally used that organizer, but a tag hierarchy I made
in Adobe Lighroom was preserved in Digikam (and viceversa). If the metadata
includes the hierarchy, digikam should recognize it and recreate it, just
like you had it before.

It shouldn't more complicated than that.

About the categories... the first principle of a category system is that
they have to exhaustive and mutually exclusive. At the end of the day, the
best way of categorizing things is the one that works for you. Personally, I
have a structure tree for places
(Places/Country/Province/Municipality/Village) and another one for People
(mostly flat, except for a few groups of people, like coworkers, people from
the university, etc. and some day I'll try to hierarchize relatives). Your
categories for nature seem fine. I guess the more elements you have, the
more specific the categories would become (e.g. Lepidoptera instead of
Butterflies), but as I said, do what better suits your needs. Just bear in
mind that modifying something near the root of the category tree will imply
changing metadata for all elements of that tree.

Tell us how it went :)



--
Sent from: http://digikam.1695700.n4.nabble.com/digikam-users-f1735189.html

[Paul Marfell-2]

Thanks for the response. All meta data is written to files. All I need now is for the new PC to be delivered. I have no worries for when it does.

Paul

On Mon, 11 Nov 2019, 20:48 woenx, <[hidden email]> wrote:

Hi,

If I were you, considering you have those photos stored locally, I'd save
all metadata to the files (or to xmp sidecars) and let digikam rebuild the
database on the new installation.

If I understand correctly, until now you used the Organizer in Photoshop
Elements. Is there a way to force that software to write all metadata to
files? I have not personally used that organizer, but a tag hierarchy I made
in Adobe Lighroom was preserved in Digikam (and viceversa). If the metadata
includes the hierarchy, digikam should recognize it and recreate it, just
like you had it before.

It shouldn't more complicated than that.

About the categories... the first principle of a category system is that
they have to exhaustive and mutually exclusive. At the end of the day, the
best way of categorizing things is the one that works for you. Personally, I
have a structure tree for places
(Places/Country/Province/Municipality/Village) and another one for People
(mostly flat, except for a few groups of people, like coworkers, people from
the university, etc. and some day I'll try to hierarchize relatives). Your
categories for nature seem fine. I guess the more elements you have, the
more specific the categories would become (e.g. Lepidoptera instead of
Butterflies), but as I said, do what better suits your needs. Just bear in
mind that modifying something near the root of the category tree will imply
changing metadata for all elements of that tree.

Tell us how it went :)



--
Sent from: http://digikam.1695700.n4.nabble.com/digikam-users-f1735189.html

[Paul Marfell]

Success!

The new PC has arrived. I have installed Ubuntu 19.10 and the important applications - including DigiKam from AppImage. I copied image files from the old PC, created a mount point in home/Pictures, pointed DigiKam at it and hey presto.

The "Nature" tag parent has the children I was hoping for so ALL IS GOOD. This was my major worry which had an easy fix anyway - if it hadn't worked I would have spent a tedious few minutes moving the tags.

I did somehow manage to create a recursive symlink so the same images were showing in /Photos/ then in /Photos/Photos/ and /Photos/Photos/Photos/ Deleting the symlink fixed that.

I'm amazed at the improvement in performance on the new PC so I am a happy chappy.

I am, at the moment, using DigiKam solely for its cataloguing functionality.

Thanks

Paul

On Mon, 11 Nov 2019 at 20:48, woenx <[hidden email]> wrote:

Hi,

If I were you, considering you have those photos stored locally, I'd save
all metadata to the files (or to xmp sidecars) and let digikam rebuild the
database on the new installation.

If I understand correctly, until now you used the Organizer in Photoshop
Elements. Is there a way to force that software to write all metadata to
files? I have not personally used that organizer, but a tag hierarchy I made
in Adobe Lighroom was preserved in Digikam (and viceversa). If the metadata
includes the hierarchy, digikam should recognize it and recreate it, just
like you had it before.

It shouldn't more complicated than that.

About the categories... the first principle of a category system is that
they have to exhaustive and mutually exclusive. At the end of the day, the
best way of categorizing things is the one that works for you. Personally, I
have a structure tree for places
(Places/Country/Province/Municipality/Village) and another one for People
(mostly flat, except for a few groups of people, like coworkers, people from
the university, etc. and some day I'll try to hierarchize relatives). Your
categories for nature seem fine. I guess the more elements you have, the
more specific the categories would become (e.g. Lepidoptera instead of
Butterflies), but as I said, do what better suits your needs. Just bear in
mind that modifying something near the root of the category tree will imply
changing metadata for all elements of that tree.

Tell us how it went :)



--
Sent from: http://digikam.1695700.n4.nabble.com/digikam-users-f1735189.html

--

[AndriusWild]

Great work. Thanks for posting your success story!

Enjoy your new PC.

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.

-------- Original message --------

From: Paul Marfell <[hidden email]>

Date: 2019-11-16 5:04 a.m. (GMT-07:00)

To: digiKam - Home Manage your photographs as a professional with the power of open source <[hidden email]>

Subject: Re: [digiKam-users] Migration of DigiKam to new PC

Success!

The new PC has arrived. I have installed Ubuntu 19.10 and the important applications - including DigiKam from AppImage. I copied image files from the old PC, created a mount point in home/Pictures, pointed DigiKam at it and hey presto.

The "Nature" tag parent has the children I was hoping for so ALL IS GOOD. This was my major worry which had an easy fix anyway - if it hadn't worked I would have spent a tedious few minutes moving the tags.

I did somehow manage to create a recursive symlink so the same images were showing in /Photos/ then in /Photos/Photos/ and /Photos/Photos/Photos/ Deleting the symlink fixed that.

I'm amazed at the improvement in performance on the new PC so I am a happy chappy.

I am, at the moment, using DigiKam solely for its cataloguing functionality.

Thanks

Paul

On Mon, 11 Nov 2019 at 20:48, woenx <[hidden email]> wrote:

Hi,

If I were you, considering you have those photos stored locally, I'd save
all metadata to the files (or to xmp sidecars) and let digikam rebuild the
database on the new installation.

If I understand correctly, until now you used the Organizer in Photoshop
Elements. Is there a way to force that software to write all metadata to
files? I have not personally used that organizer, but a tag hierarchy I made
in Adobe Lighroom was preserved in Digikam (and viceversa). If the metadata
includes the hierarchy, digikam should recognize it and recreate it, just
like you had it before.

It shouldn't more complicated than that.

About the categories... the first principle of a category system is that
they have to exhaustive and mutually exclusive. At the end of the day, the
best way of categorizing things is the one that works for you. Personally, I
have a structure tree for places
(Places/Country/Province/Municipality/Village) and another one for People
(mostly flat, except for a few groups of people, like coworkers, people from
the university, etc. and some day I'll try to hierarchize relatives). Your
categories for nature seem fine. I guess the more elements you have, the
more specific the categories would become (e.g. Lepidoptera instead of
Butterflies), but as I said, do what better suits your needs. Just bear in
mind that modifying something near the root of the category tree will imply
changing metadata for all elements of that tree.

Tell us how it went :)



--
Sent from: http://digikam.1695700.n4.nabble.com/digikam-users-f1735189.html

--

[woenx]

I am glad it worked out!



--
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