[Digikam-users] How to "integrate" digikam and gimp?

[gerlos]

Thank you for your answer,

Arnd Baecker wrote:
> On Fri, 17 Oct 2008, Gerlando wrote:
>
>   
>> The problem is when I open a photo with Gimp, I edit it, and save a
>> copy: my copy is without any metadata, and I have to search it, and add
>> manually comments, tags and stars.
>> I'd like to find an easy way to copy metadata from the old version to
>> the new one.
>>     
>
> There are a couple of issues here
> - only recent versions of gimp load/save the exif info of images,
>   as far as I know.
>   (this can be easily tested outside of digikam by running
>      exiv2 pt original.jpg
>      gimp original.jpg
>      # save as mod.jpg
>      exiv2 pt mod.jpg
>   For me exif info is kept with gimp 2.4.5
>   

Ok, also for me exif info are kept, and I'm using Gimp 2.4.7 (with 
Mandriva 2008.1). But other metadata (IPTC?) is missing. But I can't see 
them using exiv2 0.16, even in the original image. I can only see exif 
info (maybe I misunderstand something?).
But using exiftool 7.15 I see my tags inside the "Keyword" IPTC tag and 
my ratings ("stars") as "Urgency" tag associated to the original image, 
and I can see that these tags are missing in the version modified with Gimp.

So, if Gimp could keep these IPTC tags in the new image, this problem 
should be solved!

> - If comments, tags, rating have been made within digikam
>   and not written to the image itself, these will not be
>   transferred to the modified image,
>   as they are just kept in digikam's database

Mmm... I did some experiments and my experience it's different, or I 
don't understand something in what you say.

I configured Digikam so that it save image tags inside the IPTC 
"Keywords" tag, and so that it save also comments inside the images (I'm 
sorry I can't be more precise, since my Digikam is localized in Italian 
and I'm not sure about the correspondence between option names...).
When I look at the metadata using exiftool, I see that my comments, tags 
and ratings are saved inside the exif comment tag, the iptc keywords tag 
and in the iptc urgency tag. If I set these tags manually using exiftool 
on an new image, and I put it in a directory used by digikam, I find 
that these metadata are correctly interpreted and displayed by Digikam, 
so my new image can merge instantly to my collection, as I wanted when I 
started this thread.

So I've seen that this way I can move my images anywhere, even not using 
digikam, without loosing informations. Really good: I've learned 
something useful...
But why isn't Digikam behave this way as default? I think it would be 
really convenient.

>> Yes, it would be fantastic if it would be automatic, just like when I
>> edit and save a copy using Digikam editor, but I understand that maybe
>> it isn't easy to do! (it depends on digikam and gimp...)
>>     
>
> Well, I think the main problem is that a priori there is no
> way for digikam to know under which name you will store an
> edited file.
> So for digikam, the file saved via gimp will appear
> as a new file.
> One could try to do some guessing, based on the metadata
> (i.e. date/time of the image and some other infos).
> This might even work fine in 99% of the cases, but
> somehow I have the feeling that there can be situations
> where things can get screwed up.
>   

It wouldn't be too difficult this way? It wouldn't be sufficient if gimp 
preserved also IPTC metadata, so Digikam will look at keywords an 
urgency tags, and add the image to the database as said before?

I think I'll ask to someone at Gimp if they're planning to add a feature 
to preserve also IPTC metadata after processing...
 From this point of view it doesn't seem any more something to change in 
digikam, it seems something to change in gimp.

>  > Installing kipi-plugins I've found a submenu with some commands to
>   
>> import metadata, but I couldn't find nothing to export it!
>> It would be nice to have a couple of buttons, or something in the
>> right-click menu to copy and paste metadata!
>>     

Actually, I found that I was wrong: in the metadata tab on the right (in 
my italian version is called "Dati Aggiuntivi", hope that is the right 
translation...) there is a IPTC tab, showing these data, and clicking on 
the save button on the top of the tab is saves a binary file that seem 
to contain the right metadata (I inspected it piping the output of cat 
to strings).

But when I go to the import iptc metadata menu provided by kipi-plugins, 
and I choose the file saved before, it gives me an error message, saying 
that it can't load data from the file I provided. so I suppose that the 
plugin is expecting a differently formatted file. Maybe I'm wrong, but 
it seem really strange to me.

> You could simulate something like this by
> adding a script to the "Open with" right-click menu,
> which uses the current file, extracts the metadata
> using exif and puts the output into the X11 buffer using
> wxcopy/wxpaste. (Note that this is untried ...;-).
> For a more integrated variant, using something like
> https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=88932
> would be helpful, even though that would also not allow
> you to get tags/comments/ratings if they are only
> stored inside of digikams database.
>   

Thanks, I think that I will try this solution.

> I would suggest to file a new wish in the bug-tracker.
>   
Done. :-)

Regards
gerlos

-- 
"Non puoi aspettarti di vedere al primo sguardo [...] Osservare
 è per certi aspetti un'arte che bisogna apprendere."
   _                                          Wilhelm Herschel
  (y)        < http://gerlos.altervista.org >
   =    gerlos  -->  gnu/linux registred user #311588