[digiKam-users] Photo editor and handling of original images

[Remco Viëtor]

On dimanche 20 novembre 2022 11:10:59 CET Nikolaus Rath wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> I am confused about the behaviour of the photo editor.
> 
> According to
> https://docs.kde.org/trunk5/en/digikam-doc/digikam/image-editor.html, "*The
> editing functions of the Image Editor will make changes to your photograph.
> None of the editing functions will change the original photograph unless
> you select File → Save or click the Save button in the tool bar. Note that
> once you have saved the changed version you will not be able to recover the
> original photograph".*
> 
> However, I am observing the following (with Digikam 7.2.0):
>  1. Select a picture, click on "Image editor"
>  2. Select the crop tool, crop the image
>  3. Click "Save Changes", then "Close Editor"
>  4. Now the modified image is shown in the main window, and the original one
> is no longer visible 5. Press "Del"
>  6. Now the modified image is gone, and the original one is back
> This is surprising but easy enough to deal with (just delete the image
> twice).
> 
> However, if after step (4) I move the image to a different album, and then
> later delete it from that album, then the original pops up again in the old
> album. In other words, if I delete photos then this may result in old
> photos re-appearing in other albums.
> 
> This seems very annoying to me. Am I mis-using or misunderstanding this
> feature? Or is this a bug?
> 

It's been a long time since I used Digikam's editor, but iirc, there's an 
option to use versioning, which instead of overwriting the original file, 
creates a new version (note that raw files should never be overwritten!).

You can disable that behaviour under "Settings"->"Image Editor"->"Versioning"
there's a checkbox "Enable Non-Destructive Editing and Versioning". There you 
can also select the file format to use for saved files, and some more options 
related to which versions are saved and shown.

Remco