[Digikam-users] How to remove "left behind" tag tree

[Elle Stone]

Hi Marie-Noëlle,

Here's one possible approach. To be on the safe side, first create
backup copies of all the images and put them somewhere digiKam isn't
looking. Also make a backup copy of the digiKam database.

Then use exiftool to locate and delete all the tagging metadata from
the images themselves (from the images digiKam is managing, not from
the backup copies). Also delete any digiKam XMP sidecar files.

Temporarily set digiKam up to not write any metadata to images or to
digiKam xmp sidecar files (just write to the database) and clean up
the tag tree in the digiKam database. It goes a lot faster if digiKam
is writing only to the database, and you can delete and rearrange tags
without fear of creating a new set of unwanted tags.

When you are finished deleting and rearranging all the tags in the
database, there won't be any remnant unwanted tags in the image
metadata (having removed them with exiftool) or in any existing XMP
sidecars (because they were already deleted). So when everything is
exactly like you want, you can write out the desired tag trees to XMP
sidecars or back to the image files, whichever you want. And this time
digiKam won't get confused when it "synchronizes" while writing out
the tags.

Send me a private email and I can help with the exiftool commands.
digiKam writes tags, captions, rating, and etc to a number of
different locations (eg digiKam xmp tags, lightroom xmp tags,
microsoft xmp tags), and exiftool can remove whatever needs to be
removed.

I just went through this procedure with all of my own images and I
took notes along the way. I ended up finding and removing a ton of
old, unwanted metadata left behind by various DAM softwares that I've
used at one time or another.

Kind regards,
Elle



On 11/7/12, Marie-Noëlle Augendre <mnaugendre at gmail.com> wrote:
> The more I have tried to organize my tags since I began to use Digikam a
> couple of years ago, the more I've added to the mess!
> Most tags seem to appear several times in different places all over the
> arborescence.
>
> I'm willing to reset my whole tagging system and start afresh to tag my
> 25000 and more pictures, but I need to clean up everything beforehand.
> Any idea/recommandation how to do that? it'll have to erase all the tags
> (and only them) from all the metadata wherever they are registered.
>
> Thanks for helping,
> Marie-Noëlle
>
> 2012/10/27 Marcel Wiesweg <marcel.wiesweg at gmx.de>
>
>>
>> >
>> > I've had similiar experiences when trying to use the same tag structure
>> > in different programs. I had thought that if the tags are stored in the
>> > xmp sidecar files it would be easy to have tag trees synchronized over
>> > different porgramms, computers or even OS.  So I intuitively also
>> > believed that data stored in sidecar files are synchronized to data
>> > stored in tha database and vice versa. Be it automatically or on
>> > demand.
>> > However this does not work (for me at least, might be I'm doing
>> > something wrong). Not even with between two installations of digikam.
>> >
>> > DK is one of the mightiest image management tool. And I really like it
>> > a
>> > lot. But this issue is really a blocker for me.
>> >
>> > It would be great to know if this is a problem of philosophy or of
>> > technology. IE is the behaviour intended to be like this (and will not
>> > change) or are there technical limitations, problems, etc keeping DK
>> > from synchronizing metadata between sidecar files and database?
>>
>> In 309058 we are trying to find out if there is a testcase where reading
>> or
>> writing to sidecars behaves differently to reading or writing to the
>> image
>> file's XMP. It should not; the only difference is that in an image file
>> there
>> is additionally IPTC keywords which may somehow interfere.
>>
>> The problem that a reorganization of the tag tree is not transported to
>> the
>> files having assigned these tags is discussed in extenso.
>> _______________________________________________
>> Digikam-users mailing list
>> Digikam-users at kde.org
>> https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/digikam-users
>>
>
>
>
> --
> <http://www.marie-noelle-augendre.com/photos/>
>
> Mes dernières photos sont dans ma
> galerie<http://www.marie-noelle-augendre.com/photos/>
> .
> Retrouvez-moi aussi sur mon blog <http://www.mnaugendre.com/>.
> Et parcourez les Cévennes à ma façon avec Cévennes
> Plurielles<http://www.cevennes-plurielles.com/>,
>


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