[digiKam-users] Keyword (metadata) consistency between programs

[Alan H]

Thanks all for having a look at this. My OP was due to a concern about metadata (focusing on keywords) inconsistency between digikam and ON1. I didn't understand what was happening and was looking for a solution/explanation, thinking that both should be using industry standards for creating sidecars (ON1, as it appears, not). I thought that if in ON1, and while using one their editing tools I also wanted to modify/add/delete a keyword, description, rating, date ,etc, I could do that while in ON1. Likewise for digikam. That wasn't working as I expected, getting a confusing output of incorrect ratings, missing/changed keywords, keywords entered in a raw photo showing up differently/not all in its jpg, keyword hierarchies being parsed into component words, etc. And, in my experience, embedding/updating metadata to/from a jpg only served to transfer this mess from the sidecars to the jpg file.

I now have a much better sense of the situation. Also, this is not just a digikam/ON1 problem. I have found sidecar/metadata management incompatibilities in other popular processing apps - DXO PL, Luminar, Exposure, to name a few. Through all of this though, digikam has performed as the best DAM (speed, stability, interface, GPS/map functions, and yes, standards) for me, and I imagine for many others.

Now that I have a better understanding of what is happening I have changed my workflow to use only digikam for metadata management, including creating only the sidecars filename.jpg.xmp and filename.raw.xmp (filename.rw2.xmp in my case).  I will not being using ON1 any more to update these sidecars nor to create original sidecars, nor use digikam to modify sidecars created by ON1. Not a difficult decision since ON1's DAM capabilities, although greatly advanced over the past few years, are still (IHMO) quite buggy - incorrect search results in keyword list, not finding keywords listed/visible for a photo, keywords deleted from keyword list (and photo, and sidecars) showing up in list again, etc.

Since any photos processed in ON1 were saved as JPGs and/or TIFFs, and I'm not one to ever re-edit them (or would rather start from scratch if I did), I have no problem deleting whatever sidecars ON1 created in the past (using CMD prompt DEL+argument) to keep conflicting .xmp and  .on1 sidecars out of the directories. If I have a particular problem with a jpg photo's metadata being scrambled through previous joint access by digikam and ON1 I'm using exiftool to remove offending/all XMP and IPTC tags. Going forward ON1 will still create its own .on1 and .xmp sidecars for metadata and parametric editing info. I will simply not do anything as a user to modify these files.

Regards,

Alan







________________________________
From: Digikam-users <digikam-users-bounces at kde.org> on behalf of Gilles Caulier <caulier.gilles at gmail.com>
Sent: Wednesday, May 6, 2020 1:06 AM
To: digiKam - Home Manage your photographs as a professional with the power of open source <digikam-users at kde.org>
Subject: Re: [digiKam-users] Keyword (metadata) consistency between programs

Le mer. 6 mai 2020 à 08:49, Remco Viëtor <remco.vietor at wanadoo.fr> a écrit :
>
> OK, so I had a look at those ON1 files.
> First, those are *not* XML files, but look like json files.
>
> Second, while keywords are stored, I'm not sure the hierarchy is preserved
> (hard to see, as there's either no tree, or the tree has only one branch).
>
> So, if I understand correctly what you wrote in the accompanying text, the
> _1030666 sidecars were written by ON1. While the .ON1 file has two sections,
> the .XMP only has one section (no separate "raw" and "jpeg" sections).
>
> So from what you describe, digikam does *not* read the .ON1 files, which is
> understandable, as they are not XML data. I don't think digikam reads json
> format...

Yes, digiKam support standard. XMP sidecar are the standard, defined
by Metadata Working Group (including Adobe). XMP use XML format, not
JSON.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extensible_Metadata_Platform

There is no plan to support exotic sidecar file, as ON1 do.  ON1 must
use standards to improve interoperability, and not to re-invent the
wheel...

Best

Gilles Caulier

>
> It does read the ON1-generated XMP file, but that one is the same for both the
> jpeg and the raw file, so keywords will be the same for both.
>
> Remco
>
>
>
>
>
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