[Digikam-users] Question about EXIF/IPTC, tags, comments, etc.

[Arnd Baecker]

On Mon, 14 Jan 2008, Chris G wrote:

> On Mon, Jan 14, 2008 at 09:11:16PM +0100, Arnd Baecker wrote:
> > On Mon, 14 Jan 2008, Chris G wrote:
> >
> > > I'm currently scanning a lot of old B&W negatives from the 1960s,
> > > initially I have just scanned them into albums by (approximate) date
> > > as that is how they are stored.  E.g. number 64_04_11 is the eleventh
> > > negative of the fourth film I shot in 1964.
> > >
> > > So far so good!  :-)
> > >
> > > As I'm scanning the negatives I'm putting descriptions (as far as I am
> > > able) of the subject etc. in the comments field.  Am I right in
> > > thinking these comments are stored in the image file as well as in the
> > > Digikam database?
> >
> > If you have configured digikam accordingly: yes.
> > Check the configuration, I think writing that information
> > into the files is not active by default.
> >
> Ah, thank you.  Is that the settings under "Metadata" in "Configure
> Digikam"?

Yes. "Save image captions as embedded text"
You could use exiv2 or exiftool on one
of the images afterwards to check if the comments got written.

> > > Now I would like to add some technical information to the images, what
> > > is the best way of doing this?  I want to add such things as camera,
> > > and possibly the film type where I know it.  It seems a bit clumsy to
> > > add these as further comments and anyway it would be rather difficult
> > > to add the same comment to a batch of images,
> >
> > I would use tags for this purpose
> > (actually also even for the description you might
> > be better of with using tags ....)
> >
> Does the tag information get stored into the image file too?  It
> doesn't appear to be if I understand what all the "Configure Digikam"
> / "Metadata" settings mean.

"""Save image tags as "Keywords" tag""" should do
what you want.
And maybe in addition: Save image rating as tags.

(Using SHIFT + F1 gives a short explanation about the meaning
of these fields; see also http://www.digikam.org/?q=docs,
which seems to be down at the moment)

HTH, Arnd