[digiKam-users] Import of face tags of Adobe Photoshop Elements Organizer into Digikam

[Henrik Hemrin]

Hi again Andreas, 

Addition to my response earlier today. I summarized my notes quickly. It is messy and not final conclusions. I hope I one day can compete the exercise with accurate details. With that said, I hope this addition can help you. 

--
This is about an exercise to figure out, in all directions, how face tags (both the name tags and the connection to a face) works between Photoshop Elements, Lightroom and digiKam. 

Preliminary conclusions based on trials in November 2021 together with a photographer using Lightroom. Other tasks stopped us from finishing this exercise. I hope I will learn more when I have Lightroom myself, at the time I will execute my migration to digiKam from Photoshop Elements. 

- DigiKam has face tags. This information can be exported (read by other sw) from digiKam. 
- Lightroom has face tags. This information can be exported (read by other sw) from Lightroom. 
- Photoshop Elements has face tags. This information cannot be exported from Photoshop Elements. 
- Photoshop Elements cannot import face tags from digiKam. For jpg, names will be imported as tags w/o face connection. For NEF (raw), seems as tags are not imported at all.
- Photoshop Elements cannot import face tags from Lightroom. The names will be imported as tags, but tags appears to be flat; hierachy lost. 
- Migration from Photoshop Elements to Lightroom: If Lightroom has access to the PSE data base, will all data incl face tags be imported to Lightroom.
- Face tags photos in digiKam will not connect faces in Lightroom, only the tags. This is still under investigation, it may be because of settings or handling in LR; maybe caused by sidecar was not imported. 
- More is needed to investigate exact settings for writing and reading xml, sidecars etc in each of the softwares. 


- Based on those preliminary test results, although not confirmed, I am relatively sure that:
	- Face tags (and other meta data) can be migrated from Photoshop Elements to digiKam via Lightroom, thanks to that Lightroom can import the catalog (data base) itself from Photoshop Elements
	- Face tags (and other meta data) kan be read by Lightroom from photos handled in digiKam and vice versa
	- Photoshop Elements only can only handle face tags within itself, no read or write to other software

Regarding the migration from LR to digiKam, the article Migrating from Lightroom 6 to Digikam 7 (https://ocroquette.wordpress.com/migrating-from-lightroom-6-to-digikam-7/) which he Olivier Croquette shared in the digiKam users mailing list 30 March 2022, under subject "wpg2dk - Migrate from Windows Photo Gallery to digiKam” looks very interesting. I will for sure study it myself before I migrate.

Best regards
Henrik Hemrin

> 30 mars 2022 kl. 14:18 skrev Henrik Hemrin <hehemrin at hemrin.com>:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> I am preparing myself for same activity. I use Photoshop Elements (PSE) 14 on macOS as catalog, and plan to move catalog to digiKam; either first within macOS or to Linux Mint. 
> 
> My reading as well as trials so far: PSE do not export, nor read, face tags. Ie PSE only handle face tags within its own database. However Adobe Lightroom can read the PSE data base. And Adobe Lightroom can export phase tags. I did those trials half a year ago with a friend who use Lightroom daily. I have forgotten all details in our trials, I will write down my knowledge later, the trials and migration came to a pause. I plan to do some cleanup of my PSE catalog before I migrate. Anyway, I plan to do as follows, which I am quite confident based on trials will work: 
> 
> 1. Make the PSE catalog ready
> 2. Install Adobe Lightroom (classic) on same machine. During installation (I think LR will find the PSE catalog automatically during installation, else do it after installation) say yes to import the PSE catalog to LR catalog. 
> 3. Export LR meta data to file/sidecar (details not clear from top of my mind)
> 4. Now should digiKam be able to read your face tags originally coming from PSE! 
> 
> Lightroom classic has a free trial of a week or two, so if you are quick, it will not cost anything. Else, you can pay for a month or so. From top of my mind, I’m doubtful if you can write face tags to raw files, but to sidecars. Maybe I can find it in my notes from our trials. We did multiple trials with import, export between all three so my memory is lost now if I do not dig into my notes, I can try to write done a preliminar summary later next few days. As I haven’t LR myself yet, I cannot be more precise of the actions in LR. But I am very positive that if you go via LR, you will manage. Sorry I’ve not done my migration yet…
> 
> Best regards
> Henrik Hemrin
> 
>> 30 mars 2022 kl. 10:16 skrev Gilles Caulier <caulier.gilles at gmail.com>:
>> 
>> Hi,
>> 
>> If you have a few samples of images tagged with Adobe tools, we can
>> check the metadata from files to see if interoperability information
>> are present.
>> 
>> Please use Internet cloud share service.
>> 
>> Thanks in advance
>> 
>> Best
>> 
>> Gilles Caulier
>> 
>> Le mer. 30 mars 2022 à 04:31, Andreas A <and.alef at gmail.com> a écrit :
>>> 
>>> Hi all,
>>> 
>>> I think over changing from Windows to Linux. The only application that seems to have no linux-alternative seems to be Adobe Photoshop Elements Organizer, especially face recognition, because I tagged about 300 faces. I wrote all the Metadata within Adobe Photoshop Elements Organizer into the files (this is an option).
>>> 
>>> Is there a possibility to import all the facetags into Digikam?
>>> 
>>> Regards,
>>> 
>>> Andreas A
>