[digiKam-users] DK inquiry

[woenx]

By "the stuff" I guess you mean the metadata. And by the "XMPs" I guess you
mean sidecar files.

If you don't use XMP sidecars, the metadata will either be saved within each
picture file, or not saved at all (depending on your digikam settings).

Saving metadata to the image is slower, since the whole file has to be read
and written, and each write operation entails a risk of corrupting the
picture file (although that has never happened to me). Also, there's the
risk of overwritting existing metadata if you are not careful. Using XMP
sidecars leaves the image intact, and it is much faster since it's only a
few Kilobytes that have to be read/written for each picture.

The dowside of using XMP sidecars is that picture folders get crowded with
these small files, and some people can find that annoying. Some picture
software might not be compatible with sidecars, so they will read the
metadata from the picture only, which might contain conflicting information.
Also, if you share these picture files without the sidecars, the other
person won't have all the metadata.

And if you use neither... well, the day you want to use any software other
than digikam, all changes would be lost and you would need to tag everything
again.



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