I’d like digikam to not automatically add keywords from new pictures, but I’d like to add them manually (to the database as well as to the picture files).
I’m confused with all those settings and would appreciate to get some advice on this.
Thank you.
PS: Digikam 7.5 Appimage
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Perhaps under digiKam Options => meta-data => advanced, you may handle this. You can manage read- and write-settings separately there. So I think, if you deactivate the items for reading, that should meet your needs…
Afaik, digikam doesn’t add tags automatically. There are quite a few settings dealing with metadata, and sidecar (xmp) files, so it would help if you could tell us which settings are confusing.
What I want to achieve is this:
I have a bunch of keywords for my selfmade scrapbooking supplies.
I’ve created the keywords myself, they are only in the database at the moment. Some time I want to write them into the metadata as well.
On the other hand I sometimes download pictures from websites.
They carry metatags in them, but I don’t want those in my database.
What happens is: when I update the thumbnails - tags populate my database.
What I’ld like to have: being able to update thumbnails without having foreign stuff in the database. Also I still want digikam to show my tags in the overview.
I think I had it working until I upgraded to 7.5. Must have srewed things up somehow. I’ll keep on trying to find the proper settings.
I think you’d want to look at the “Advanced” tab of the Metadata page on the Settings config. I believe you should be able to uncheck the “Unify Read and Write” option so that you write to all the Tags fields but don’t read them.
Unchecking “unify read and write” would be the first step. I think you’d also have to clear all the checkboxes before the different namspaces (except the “Xmp.digikam.*” ones perhaps) in the read section for “Tags”. (and perhaps the same for the other items: description, title, rating, … , if you don’t want to import those).
This is easy enough to test as well, if you have e.g. a firefox plugin to check metadata before importing into digikam.
Thanks for correcting my partial answer. 
You’ve added what I meant to say but didn’t make clear in my response.
Thanks for all that input, guys. I’ll check that out and report back when done.
I think I understand your question and what you are wanting to avoid.
When you “expose” digiKam to image files that are carrying keyword tags that you do not want in your digiKam tag tree, digiKam is seeing those tags and writing them into the tag tree, right ?
If you turn OFF digiKam recognizing outside changes, you turn them all off and that is not usually desirable.
The way I would handle this would be before digiKam ever sees the image files that may contain unwanted tags, use another tool to strip away those tags.
The best tool for this is ExifToolGUI, as it will let you pick and choose which metadata to strip away without removing things you want.
Use ExifToolGUI to strip away the tags and then check the files in XnViewMP to make sure they are gone.
I hope I understood your question properly and I hope this helps.
Thank you @ BuckSkin,
yes that’s probably the best way to handle unwanted tags.
Thanks for your input.
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