Importing photo details from Excel or csv files
Daniel Bauer
linux at daniel-bauer.com
Sat Aug 8 16:09:47 BST 2026
Am 07.08.26 um 23:05 schrieb Alan & Carol Morris:
> Hi,
>
> I am a new user of Digikam and have imported some of my digital photos -
> but no database information.
>
> When I bought my first digital camera in April 2000 (Kodak DC210), I
> used 'Photo Collectorz' to organise my digital photos. After many
> years, it was discontinued by clz.com <http://clz.com>. and I stopped
> adding to it in 2013. I was able to export its database to .csv files -
> a total of 17,575 photos. Since then, I've used Excel to manually enter
> my photographic details of many more thousands.
>
> I would now like to convert this data for use in Digikam.
>
> Any suggestions would be most welcome. I use Windows Pro 11. In the
> days of DOS, I programmed many databases, but the present day programs
> used by Digikam are all new to me.
>
> Alan.
>
>
I guess probably the easiest way is to convert your csv-data into .xmp
sidecar files. You only need those fields (columns) that are not in the
metadata of the images anyway (metadata is read by digikam, so things
like location etc. usually are not necessary to save separately - check,
what's in your image files metadata and decide if you need it in the
.xmp or not).
You need to make a *copy* of your CSV (keep the orihginal untouched!)
then adjust the column headers to standard metadata tags (like title,
description etc.) in your working copy. You need a column with the
unique "SourceFile" - the exact image file name. Remove unneeded columns.
If you have same image file names in different folders, make separate
csv's for each folder.
Also backup your image files, in case you make an error with the
exiftool command! (exiftool can alter your image/metadata)
then run exiftool:
exiftool -csv=your.csv -o %d%f.xmp -r /directory/of/according/images
this will create an .xmp sidecar file for each image entry in the csv.
digikam will read this .xmp file.
For correct column names ask your preferred AI telling it what you have
in your csv.
--
Daniel Bauer photographer Basel Málaga
Twitter: @Marsfotografo (often explicit nudes)
https://www.patreon.com/danielbauer
https://www.daniel-bauer.com (nudes)
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