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

[Marie-Noëlle Augendre]

Thanks for your answer, and sorry to have been a bit long to answer ...
days seem to be way too short at the moment!

2012/11/8 Elle Stone <l.elle.stone at gmail.com>

> 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.
>

That's the easy and quick thing to be done.


>
> 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.
>
>
Thing is the whole procedure will take quite some time, and I don't know
when I'll be able to do that as I need my Digikam to add new pictures
several times a week.
I can keep separated picture files on different removable hard disc; but I
understand Digikam can handle only one DB per installation ... unless I
create a special user (having his own Digikam DB in his /home) for doing
the job on the old pictures, while I use a new DK installation in my own
/home to handle the pictures that keep coming week after week.

Once the job is done, I could reimport the "old" pictures in the new
installation.
Would it be feasible like that?


> 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.
>

Couldn't you send them to the mailing-list? I guess I'm not the only one to
have mess to clean up ....


>
> 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
>
> Thanks a lot,
Marie-Noëlle



>
>
> 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
> >
>

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.
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