Unable to add target album

[Remco Viëtor]

On mardi 20 juin 2017 09:43:29 CEST Ronald HUGHES wrote:
> Hello, I'm new here ..
> 
> Kubuntu 16.04
> digiKam 5.5.0
> 
(problems with getting albums and collections working, with several uninstall 
and reinstall cycles)
> 
> No default target album have been selected to process download from
> camera device. Please select one.

Quick fix: in Digikam settings, go to "Cameras" -> "Behaviour" and make sure 
that 'Use a default target albu...' is *unchecked*. That might be enough to 
remove the message you keep seeing.

More in depth (long!):

For this kind of problems, uninstalling and reinstalling the program rarely 
helps, it looks like a configuration problem. And uninstalling the program 
often leaves the local configuration files intact, which will then be used by 
the next install... So, first thing I'd suggest is that you start fresh;
backup and then /remove/ the local files created by Digikam. For me those are 
stored in ~/.local/share/digikam.
In addition, (if you haven't spent too much time adding tags and such) backup 
and remove the databases Digikam created (digikam4db.db, recognition.bd and 
thumbnails-digikam.db). 
That should give you a clean slate

OK, now let's take things in order (bear with me if I'm going slower than 
needed).

First, Digikam works with collections of images, stored in one or more 
directory trees. Those contain images already imported, and are never a source 
for imports. 
To configure the base directories for those collections, go to the settings 
menu, and select "Collections" in the left sidebar. Then in the main frame, 
tell Digikam where you store imported images (after import!).
Then, Digikam uses a database to store a lot of information about the images. 
The location for that database is configured in the "Database" tab (left bar, 
just above "Collections"). The best place to store the database depends a bit 
on your setup, but note that it has to be on a local disk (explained in the 
notes within the frame).

Now, to importing photos from /external/ sources (cameras, memory cards, USB 
disks...). That is configured in the "Cameras" frame. That frame has 4 tabs, 
first one "Devices" to select the devices from which you want to import: 
cameras, but also e.g. extrernal USB drives. Use 'add' to add a device... Read 
the notes in the frame to see which camera to select in your case (you didn't 
mention the cameras to add). Personally, I use a card reader, and the only 
"camera" I have configured is 'mounted camera', which is listed just after the 
DigitalDream models, (don't ask me why it's there...).

Then, switch to the second frame ("Behaviour", still in the "Cameras" frame) 
and decide which options you want to use there (I have all three checkboxes at 
the top unchecked, and selected the "Store as a different name"). The other 
tabs should be ok for now.

This should give you a working base, with no errors like you were getting.
Once that is indeed the case, explore the options and the documentation 
(reworked since version 5) and if needed, ask here. (As long as you haven't 
imported and worked with too many images, errors aren't a disaster, starting 
from scratch won't take much time. Starting to look into the different options 
once you have 10 000 images can make errors more costly...)

Good luck,

Remco