split an album into sub-albums

[Luca Ferrari]

Dear all,
using digikam 4.2.0 what is the best way to split a grown album into a
few subalbums without loosing tag and metadata? I don't find any
automated tool in the program/manual to do such a split, and I'm not
sure if moving physically files will prevent metadata loss.
Suggestions?

Thanks,
Luca
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[tosca]

Just select your pictures, and right-click 'Move to album' (or drag and drop). You'll have the option to create a new album if I remember well.

Marie-Noëlle

2015-09-14 17:48 GMT+02:00 Luca Ferrari <[hidden email]>:

Dear all,
using digikam 4.2.0 what is the best way to split a grown album into a
few subalbums without loosing tag and metadata? I don't find any
automated tool in the program/manual to do such a split, and I'm not
sure if moving physically files will prevent metadata loss.
Suggestions?

Thanks,
Luca
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[Luca Ferrari]

On Mon, Sep 14, 2015 at 6:35 PM, Marie-Noëlle Augendre
<[hidden email]> wrote:
> Just select your pictures, and right-click 'Move to album' (or drag and
> drop). You'll have the option to create a new album if I remember well.

The new album option is disabled unless I'm within an already existing
album. What I would like to do is to make a set of sub-albums root
albums, so that from:

- photo
  - 2015
  - 2014

I will have:
- 2014
- 2015

The point is that on-disk I'd like to still have the photo grouped
within the "photo" tree, but not having the "photo" dir included as a
whole album, rather each content of the dir as several albums. The
reason for this is that I'd like to split photo in smaller albums, so
that I can archive them easily.
Is that possible or am I misunderstanding the album concept?

Luca
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[Andrew Goodbody]

On 15/09/15 07:37, Luca Ferrari wrote:
> The point is that on-disk I'd like to still have the photo grouped
> within the "photo" tree, but not having the "photo" dir included as a
> whole album, rather each content of the dir as several albums. The
> reason for this is that I'd like to split photo in smaller albums, so
> that I can archive them easily.
> Is that possible or am I misunderstanding the album concept?
>
> Luca

No, it is not possible, digikam will only show the underlying file
system. If you want to split the albums up then you will need different
directories.

Andrew
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Le 15/09/2015 08:37, Luca Ferrari a écrit :

> The point is that on-disk I'd like to still have the photo grouped
> within the "photo" tree, but not having the "photo" dir included as a
> whole album, rather each content of the dir as several albums. The

I'm not sure I understand exactly what is your problem, may be you can
simply change the collection root?

jdd

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[tosca]

You need to declare the highest level(s) you want in Digikam as a collection(s). After that, any sub-folder or sub-sub...-subfolder will be accessible in Digikam.

And folders outside collections can be exported to using the menu 'Exporter vers un ordinateur distant' (should something like 'remote export' in english).

Marie-Noëlle

2015-09-15 8:37 GMT+02:00 Luca Ferrari <[hidden email]>:

On Mon, Sep 14, 2015 at 6:35 PM, Marie-Noëlle Augendre
<[hidden email]> wrote:
> Just select your pictures, and right-click 'Move to album' (or drag and
> drop). You'll have the option to create a new album if I remember well.

The new album option is disabled unless I'm within an already existing
album. What I would like to do is to make a set of sub-albums root
albums, so that from:

- photo
  - 2015
  - 2014

I will have:
- 2014
- 2015

The point is that on-disk I'd like to still have the photo grouped
within the "photo" tree, but not having the "photo" dir included as a
whole album, rather each content of the dir as several albums. The
reason for this is that I'd like to split photo in smaller albums, so
that I can archive them easily.
Is that possible or am I misunderstanding the album concept?

Luca
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[Martin Burnicki-2]

Luca Ferrari wrote:

> The new album option is disabled unless I'm within an already existing
> album. What I would like to do is to make a set of sub-albums root
> albums, so that from:
>
> - photo
>    - 2015
>    - 2014
>
> I will have:
> - 2014
> - 2015
>
> The point is that on-disk I'd like to still have the photo grouped
> within the "photo" tree, but not having the "photo" dir included as a
> whole album, rather each content of the dir as several albums. The
> reason for this is that I'd like to split photo in smaller albums, so
> that I can archive them easily.
> Is that possible or am I misunderstanding the album concept?

If you currently already have the folder "photo" specified as
"collection" then you won't be able to add other collections with the
paths "photo/2015" and "photo/2014" since the "2014" and "2015"
subdirectories are below "photo" and thus are already included.

However, if you remove the "photo" collection first then you can
configure 2 collections with the individual paths "photo/2015",
"photo/2014", etc. which will be shown as separate albums in the album
view, e.g.

Albums
   2015
   2014

If you have tagged your images, and the tags have been also been written
to the image files then this should be no problem, since the "new"
collections are scanned and the Metatags are read from the files.

However, if your tags have *not* been written to the image files then
Metatags might eventually get lost if you remove the original collection
and add new ones.

So in this case IMO a safe way would be to
- rename the existing Album "photos" to  "photos.org" or something in DK

- create new directories "photos/2014", "photos/2015" using a file manager

- add the new, empty directories as additional collections in DK

so in DK you should have following albums:

Albums
   photo.org
     2014  (old, with images)
     2015  (old, with images)
   2014    (new, empty)
   2015    (new, empty)

and you can drag and drop the image files from the old to the new albums.

Finally you should close digikam and use a file manager to move other
photos which you might not want to see in DK into the new "photo"
folder, e.g.

mv photo.org/2013 photo/

etc.


In *any* case you should make a backup copy of the DK databases
digikam4.db  and thumbnails-digikam.db, before you start, so you can
easily go back to the current state if the results are not what you
expected.

Martin

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[Martin Burnicki-2]

Luca Ferrari wrote:

> The new album option is disabled unless I'm within an already existing
> album. What I would like to do is to make a set of sub-albums root
> albums, so that from:
>
> - photo
>    - 2015
>    - 2014
>
> I will have:
> - 2014
> - 2015
>
> The point is that on-disk I'd like to still have the photo grouped
> within the "photo" tree, but not having the "photo" dir included as a
> whole album, rather each content of the dir as several albums. The
> reason for this is that I'd like to split photo in smaller albums, so
> that I can archive them easily.
> Is that possible or am I misunderstanding the album concept?

If you currently already have the folder "photo" specified as
"collection" then you won't be able to add other collections with the
paths "photo/2015" and "photo/2014" since the "2014" and "2015"
subdirectories are below "photo" and thus are already included.

However, if you remove the "photo" collection first then you can
configure 2 collections with the individual paths "photo/2015",
"photo/2014", etc. which will be shown as separate albums in the album
view, e.g.

Albums
  2015
  2014

If you have tagged your images, and the tags have been also been written
to the image files then this should be no problem, since the "new"
collections are scanned and the Metatags are read from the files.

However, if your tags have *not* been written to the image files then
Metatags might eventually get lost if you remove the original collection
and add new ones.

So in this case IMO a safe way would be to
- rename the existing Album "photos" to  "photos.org" or something in DK

- create new directories "photos/2014", "photos/2015" using a file manager

- add the new, empty directories as additional collections in DK

so in DK you should have following albums:

Albums
  photo.org
    2014  (old, with images)
    2015  (old, with images)
  2014    (new, empty)
  2015    (new, empty)

and you can drag and drop the image files from the old to the new albums.

Finally you should close digikam and use a file manager to move other
photos which you might not want to see in DK into the new "photo"
folder, e.g.

mv photo.org/2013 photo/

etc.


In *any* case you should make a backup copy of the DK databases
digikam4.db  and thumbnails-digikam.db, before you start, so you can
easily go back to the current state if the results are not what you
expected.

Martin

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[Luca Ferrari]

On Tue, Sep 15, 2015 at 11:04 PM, Martin Burnicki
<[hidden email]> wrote:
> If you have tagged your images, and the tags have been also been written
> to the image files then this should be no problem, since the "new"
> collections are scanned and the Metatags are read from the files.
>
> However, if your tags have *not* been written to the image files then
> Metatags might eventually get lost if you remove the original collection
> and add new ones.
>

How can I know if tags have been written to the images? I have always
assumed that the tags are stored only in the digikam database, and
then accessible via digikam only. Is it correct that if tags have been
written to images I should be view them on file manager too?

> So in this case IMO a safe way would be to
> - rename the existing Album "photos" to  "photos.org" or something in DK
>
> - create new directories "photos/2014", "photos/2015" using a file manager
>
> - add the new, empty directories as additional collections in DK
>
> so in DK you should have following albums:
>
> Albums
>   photo.org
>     2014  (old, with images)
>     2015  (old, with images)
>   2014    (new, empty)
>   2015    (new, empty)
>
> and you can drag and drop the image files from the old to the new albums.
>

Good startegy, I will work on this and let you know if I encounter any problem.
Thanks for the idea.

Luca
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[tosca]

2015-09-17 9:47 GMT+02:00 Luca Ferrari <[hidden email]>:

On Tue, Sep 15, 2015 at 11:04 PM, Martin Burnicki
<[hidden email]> wrote:
> If you have tagged your images, and the tags have been also been written
> to the image files then this should be no problem, since the "new"
> collections are scanned and the Metatags are read from the files.
>
> However, if your tags have *not* been written to the image files then
> Metatags might eventually get lost if you remove the original collection
> and add new ones.
>

How can I know if tags have been written to the images?

There are several options in the configuration menu. You can write them in the database and/or the file and/or a sidecar file.

 

I have always
assumed that the tags are stored only in the digikam database, and
then accessible via digikam only. Is it correct that if tags have been
written to images I should be view them on file manager too?

Yes, provided the external program you use is able to read the metadata and display them.

Marie-Noëlle

 

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[Peter Albrecht]

On 17.09.2015 10:00, Marie-Noëlle Augendre wrote:
> 2015-09-17 9:47 GMT+02:00 Luca Ferrari <[hidden email]>:
>
>> How can I know if tags have been written to the images?
>
> There are several options in the configuration menu. You can write them in
> the database and/or the file and/or a sidecar file.

If you want to verify whether tags are written to images or not you could try
other software reading those images:

1) If you have "exiv2" installed (on linux) type on command line:

      exiv2 -p x MyNicePicture.jpg

This should list lots of data, include a line like:

      Xmp.digiKam.TagsList     XmpSeq  3   People/Jon,Place/Home,Other/Flower

This tells you that digiKam wrote these three tags into the JPG-File.


2) You could also open the JPG-File with a hex editor (e.g. "Okteta" on Linux
KDE) and look for data bytes reading like:

     <digiKam:TagsList> <rdf:Seq> <rdf:li>People/Jon</rdf:li> <rdf:li>...

This is a bit more technical, but you can see, whether you tag info is written
to the image or not.


3) If you have another computer with digiKam installed, copy the image to this
computer and look if the tags show up in this digiKam installation.


Regards,
        Peter
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