[Digikam-users] Re: Moving an album

[gerlos]

Il giorno 19/feb/2011, alle ore 23.35, John B. Egger ha scritto:
>> I'd setup Digikam to save metadata to pictures, sync metadata in the database with metadata in the pictures, and just copy/move pictures I need to /media/disk/Photographs, and sync the database again.
>> 
>> This should work. Try with a test image to become confident yourself with the process.
> Thanks! Yes, that worked with a test image from another album.

Good. I'm happy I helped you.

> What are the disadvantages of writing the metadata to the images? I'm
> just a family snapshot guy (that's probably obvious from my questions),
> not a pro like so many in this group, but there must be some advantages
> to having the metadata in a separate .db file.


Mostly, writing metedata to images is slower, and since needs to modify your saved files (but not RAW ones), if something goes wrong you could lose, it can break your images. 
If you work locally (no network collections), don't worry, it won't break anything (and anyway, you do periodic backups, don't you? ;-). In several years, I never experienced problems with metadata saved in files.

On the other side, saving metadata to files is more reliable (you always have 2 copies of metadata: in the file and in the database, and can while it can happen that the database is broken, it difficult to break hundreds on images), and when you copy or move your images metadata will be still with them. 
For example, with embedded metadata, when you copy a set of shots from your desktop pc to your laptop, and open them on the laptop, you'll still be able to see any tag and description you saved before when working on your desktop. 
It is nice that when you upload to Flickr your shot, they read your embedded metadata and don't need to enter your tags again! :-)

regards
gerlos


--
"Life is pretty simple: You do some stuff. Most fails. Some works. You do more
of what works. If it works big, others quickly copy it. Then you do something
else. The trick is the doing something else."
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