[digiKam-users] Moving photos and database files

[Remco Viëtor]

On mercredi 13 mai 2020 19:04:34 CEST Chris Green wrote:
> On Wed, May 13, 2020 at 05:34:34PM +0200, jdd at dodin.org wrote:
> > Le 13/05/2020 à 17:22, Chris Green a écrit :
> > > On Wed, May 13, 2020 at 04:10:36PM +0200, jdd at dodin.org wrote:
> > > > anyway if you copy the metadata to images, no loss risk
> > > 
> > > How can one guarantee that happens all the time?  It's *far* from
> > > obvious how to configure Digikam to do it.
> > 
> > ?
> > 
> > only an option to tick, always done for me
> 
> Which option?
> 
> In the Metadata section of Settings there's:-
>    Use Lazy Synchronization
>    If possible write metadata to RAW files
>    Update file modification timestamp when files are modified
>    Rescan when files are modified
>    Clean up the Metadata from database when rescan files
Nothing to do with what you write, except for the raw files...

> ...and then in the Album menu we have:-
>     Write metadata to files
>     Reread metadata from files
Writes just when you tell it to, like most meny commands

> ...and in the Item menu:-
>     Write metadata to files
>     Reread metadata from files
Writes just when you tell it to, like most menu commands

> So which option do I tick to ensure that metadata is *always* written
> to the image files?  I don't want to have to remember to click the
> "Write metadata to files" menu option every time I change something
> (or at least every time I exit Digikam), I just want it to happen all
> the time, *every* time I change something.

You managed to miss everything in the settings that had to do with actually 
writing metadata:

In the metadata section of settings, there the first tab (which you noticed) 
which starts with a section "Write This Information to the Metadata". That 
tells you what to write to the image files (but raw files will not be written 
to unless specified in the second section)

In the same section of the settings (metadata), there is a second tab, called 
"sidecars". There, you can specify how to use sidecars.
And in the "advanced" section you can detail which namespaces/tags should be 
used in the sidecars.


> It's also not clear what is meant by 'files' in the above options and
> settings, are they image files, sidecar files, or both, or what?
That depends on what you have specified in the settings dialog.