[Digikam-users] Digikam IPTC

[Arnd Baecker]

On Mon, 18 Feb 2008, michael hughes wrote:

> Hallo everybody,
>
> I probably won't make myself very popular with this but here goes. I am a
> professional photographer working in Berlin. I previously used macs up to
> system 9 and windows xp. I am a freelancer so I have to look after myself by
> and large when things go wrong. I decided to check out Linux using the CT
> package after I had a head crash on my laptop and needed to install a
> system. Naturally I am interested in finding an alternative to Photoshop and
> Lightroom as highest priority and thought that with Ubuntu Linux had finally
> got near enough to be useful to me. Generally speaking Digikam is very good
> apart from the backwood aesthetics of penguins peering cheerily over
> cameras, which I can frankly live without.

Good contributions for a new logo are welcome.

> My main problem is the IPTC. I still have not found a way to coherently work
> with this despite having spent six weeks on and off with the problem. It
> begins with the preferences; you have to switch IPTC on. This is for me the
> first major "policy statement". As a professional I could just about accept
> that you could switch IPTC off but as a default this is just not serious.

People have different preferences and some don't
want their images to be modified in any way.
Therefore this is the chosen default.
Of course, one might think of running a configuration wizard
on the very first run, in which such things can be configured.
Feel free to file a wish in the bug tracker.

> I
> now find bits of information (the copyright details in prefs) in the IPTC
> but am not quite sure how they got there. Captions have appeared from photos
> which already had captions after being imported into Digikam.

See the documentation, eg
http://docs.kde.org/kde3/en/extragear-graphics/digikam/using-setup.html#setup-embeddedinfo
http://docs.kde.org/kde3/en/extragear-graphics/digikam/using-sidebar.html#using$

> Using Tags I
> have still not found an intuitive way of adding information. Maybe I just
> have a blind spot - if so then tell me what I am doing wrong.

More precise information is needed:
what are you trying to do? And in which way are you
trying to do this with digikam?

> Until then I
> have to reiterate that Lightzone still is the more mature product

Honestly, don't you think that such statements could be seen as
offensive to the hard-working developers of digikam?
**Constructive** criticism is very welcome, but general
statements like this don't lead to anything
(apart from your e-mails being left un-answered in the future...).

Arnd