[Digikam-users] Storing comments and tags outside the image?

[Dennis Meulensteen]

On Wednesday 22 November 2006 17:36, Paul Waldo wrote:
> > > I consider my images as digital
> > > negatives and don't want them touched once uploaded to the computer.

> - The metadata software has a bug that causes it to write the metadata in
> some strange way.  You now have weird stuff in the file, which may
> overwrite the image data.

> - There is a disk IO problem.  Lets say that I am very low on disk space
> and the number of characters in my brand new comment pushes the file size
> over the limit, causing a disk-full error.  The image may be in a strange
> state.

Why don't you use proxy images? 
Keep your digital originals separate, back them up (to a normally unmounted or 
read-only drive), and run a script to convert them to smaller Jpeg 'proxies'. 
Then you can use those proxy images for cataloging and browsing. It's a lot 
faster than cataloging or browsing RAW files on any system. Also 100% safe, 
unless you botch the backup step.

I also use small 'scriptlets' which I associate with my .JPG files. These 
scripts can pick up a copy of the original to work on, should I so desire. My 
right-click menu in Digikam contains descriptive entries like; "Copy Jpeg to 
PDA", "NEF 2 UFRAW", "NEF 2 GIMP", "TRASH Jpeg AND NEF", "10x15","Copy 2 
Output". These are all links to small scripts that perform their respective 
tasks very conveniently. 

This means I can have 100% secure originals if I want (by not letting DigiKam 
index the directory where they are stored), and the speed, indexing and 
off-line access that relatively small .JPEGs give me. 

I'd love it if all this was incorporated in DigiKam, but for now I'm quite 
happy with my setup the way it is. Perhaps this approach could be the 
solution you are looking for.

Dennis