[digiKam-users] New to digiKam, could use some help

[Remco Viëtor]

On dimanche 3 avril 2022 03:28:54 CEST Katie Delia wrote:
> Hi, I'm new, and haven't been able to find the information I'm looking for. 
> There is a lot of documentation,so I apologize if I'm missing it somewhere.
> 
> I keep my pictures in files on my computer.  It looks like digiKam copies
> the images to the program as opposed to loading them from my files, meaning
> if I move the files on my hard drive they don't move in digiKam.  Is that
> correct?  For instance, I dump all new pictures into file called "New
> Folder," then move them to folders based on the year, event, etc.  So "New
> Folder" and "2022" would be under the file "Pictures."  I'd like it so
> digiKam just sees everything in "Pictures" without having to load the
> pictures.  Is that possible?

Digikam uses the concepts of "Collections" and "Albums". A "collection" 
basically a directory on a hard disk, it and any subdirectories under is are 
"albums" (which can thus be nested). In your case, you'll want a collection 
pointing to your "Pictures" directory.

For normal use, digikam uses a database with thumbnails, metadata and location 
of the image file. Unless you tell it to, digikam will not follow changes on 
the disk it didn't make itself. 
So if you move files around outside digikam, you'll have to tell digikam you 
did:
go to the menu "Tools" -> "Maintenance", and check the items "Whole albums 
collection", "Scan for new items", and to get rid of stale thumbnails, use 
"Perform database cleaning" with perhaps "Also clean up the thumbnail 
database" and "Extended clean up and shrink all databases". 

To have digikam detect new and moved images on startup, tick the appropriate 
boxes in the "Settings" dialog, "Miscellaneous" section, "Behaviour" tab.
 
> Secondly, I can't seem to get the face tags to be written in the metadata. 
> I fixed the settings under metadata, but it still doesn't seem to be
> working.  Any suggestions on what I'm doing wrong?

Sorry, no idea on this one, I don't use face tags. It may help if you tell us 
what digikam version you use (visible on splash, or in "Help" -> "About 
Digikam") and which operating system/version

Remco