DigiKam 8.8.0 and PDF files

[Gilles Caulier]

Hi Carol,

The drag and drop behavior is normal, and files do not disappear from
the file system. Nothing is lost.

The Q is : why the PDF does not appear on the album as a simple image.
Because the PDF mime type is not registered by default in the digiKam
settings :

https://docs.digikam.org/en/setup_application/views_settings.html#mime-types-settings

You can add PDF in the supported mime type, but you need to know the following :

- digiKam is not the best application dedicated to managing PDF as
image (this topic has been already reported in bugzilla in the past).
For example, the PDF metadata as special, editing PDF requires a
dedicated editor, PDF can be locked with passwords, etc. digiKam does
not support these features. A specific application such as Okular or
Calibre is more suitable.
- If you add PDF in type mime, it can work, typically the thumbnails
view, but performances to render thumbs can be degraded. The PDF
thumbnailer from KDE (the most adapted) is not included in digiKam
bundle (you can add it in the native linux installation anyway).
ImageMagick will be used by default to render thumb, and this codec
takes ages.
- We don't test digiKam with PDF in the photograph workflow, so
side-effects can be discovered with this usage.

My best

Gilles Caulier

Le sam. 20 déc. 2025 à 06:37, Carol C. Kankelborg
<cckborg2 at kankelborg.net> a écrit :
>
> Hi,
>    I tried to import 2 PDF files into DigiKam 8.8.0 (I started with an interim version from about 7/25/25 and also tried this with the current release version of 8.8.0). I am using MacOS 14.7.8.
>
> When I dragged the PDF file onto a DigiKam album, It politely asks me whether I want to move or copy it. I select “Move” so the file disappears from the Finder window and is placed in the correct folder for the Album I selected. (I verified it was in my DigiKam collection album folder.) However, it does not show up in the Album view and if I try to import it again, DigiKam complains that it already exists in the Album folder. I tried importing from the Import menubar tab, selecting the folder that contained some PDFs (and only those files), and it did not show me any files I could import.
>
> Is DigiKam supposed to allow import of PDF files? If so, then the Import menu seems to be broken. If not, the user should not be able to drag a file onto an Album, tell DigiKam to Move the file into the Album, and have DigiKam obey, disappearing the file from the user’s file system but not making it discoverable in DigiKam.
>
> I didn’t see a bug that looked like what I was experiencing. Is this a bug and should I report it?
>
> Is there any harm in simply removing the Moved PDFs back to where they had been? Will that mess up the Collection dB?
>
>
> Thanks,
> Carol