Tags and labels are not synchronised between photo versions

[Remco Viëtor]

On mardi 6 juin 2017 00:40:06 CEST Simon Metcalfe wrote:
> Hi All,
> 
> In Digikam I use tags to create 'Albums' of related photos from a number
> of folders, much like how Albums used to work in Picasa.
> 
> It's normal that I might go back and re edit an image slightly, and in
> the case of Digikam this usually means deleting the '_v1' file and
> editing again.  I've realised however that tags and labels are not
> synchronised between each version of an image, which causes some problems.
> 
> E.g. if you tag or star an image then create a version of it, the
> tag/star will carry over to the new version.  But if you remove the star
> or add another tag after an edit is made, only the latest version will
> be updated with the these changes.
> 
> Therefore if you delete a version (e.g. because you want to make it
> better) this reverts your tags and labels to how they were in the
> previous version, and thus the image tags, star rating etc. may change
> without you knowing.
Does that mean that you change tags/ratings only for the latest edit? Perhaps 
because you have configured digikam to only show the latest version?

In digikam, originals and edits aren't considered one unit, but separate 
images. So, normally any change gets applied only to those files which are 
selected when you make the change. And that implies that changes are not 
automatically synchronised between versions. That's a design decision, which 
works for me in that I can tag the edited versions separately e.g. for export, 
where I most certainly don't want the originals to go with the edits.
(OK, in certain ways originals and edits are considered together, e.g. for 
versioning, and for deciding which image to show. But for tagging etc, 
originals and edits are independent).

There is an option to group files, and have metadata changes applied to all 
members of the group. I don't know if originals and edits are or can be 
grouped automatically though (I don't use the digikam editor).

But, if you want your (tag-based) virtual albums to contain only the edited 
versions, you have a challenge ahead of you: 
you need to have a tag on your edit that is not present on your original 
image, but you want all tags to stay synchronised between all versions.
I don't quite see how you can have both at the same time.