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

[Gilles Caulier]

Le dim. 3 avr. 2022 à 07:53, Remco Viëtor <remco.vietor at wanadoo.fr> a écrit :
>
> 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?

This is wrong. digiKam is not Apple Photo like which duplicates your
file in an hidden place of your computer. I always found this Apple
concept  as a big mess.

Your photo is YOUR files, and digiKam uses a database to scan your
place in your computer. Nothing is duplicated at all. Read well the
Remco response here...

 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?

Which file format exactly ? Do you turn-on the right options in
digiKam/Setup/Metadata dialog page ?

And the most important : which operating system did you use and which
digiKam version exactly ?

Best

Gilles Caulier