I completely uninstalled and reinstalled Darktable, now version 4.4.2
When I import the raws I have previously worked on, DT doesn’t detect the accompanying .xmp files, but rather overwrites them. The raws and their .xmp files are still exactly as they were, when I worked on them on the previous DT installation (filenames match etc.). «Add to library» and «Copy & import» both don’t detect the xmp files.
Why doesn’t DT detect the .xmp files? Can I manually import them?
By “«Add to library» and «Copy & import» both don’t work” do you mean you cannot import both the raw and .xmp files or is it only the .xmp files you cannot import?
Which operating system are you using? Which GPU?
Import > Add to library and Import > Copy & Import don’t work, on my machine, using Arch Linux. A file system of sorts comes up but it only worked intermittently, now it doesn’t respond at all.
I have previously laid the blame at the door of OpenCL and had thought I had fixed the problem on more than one occasion. But it kept recurring and I kept trying different drivers for OpenCL.
The import function is now deceased. I can no longer import any image or .xmp files to DT.
Try running DT from the CL with darktable -d opencl then keep the output, I suggest in a plain text file. Run it again with darktable --disable-opencl. Compare the two outputs. There may be some hints in there.
I’ll be posting a new thread here on pixls.us regarding this issue and also raising the question on github. Feel free to follow it to see if the responses help with your problem.
I managed to get DT to detect the new .xmp file by manually copying the <darktable:history> section from the old one to the newly generated one. If I copy the whole file it simply overrides it again.
It must be something about the “header” of the .xmp file, they are slightly different:
From old installation (I don’t remeber the exact version, if I had to guess I’d say <=3.3.8):
By “«Add to library» and «Copy & import» both don’t work” I simply meant that with both methods DT doesn’t detect the existing .xmp files. Importing new images works just fine.
Sorry for the confusion, I I’ll rephrase the post quickliy…
Hi @Manant02, welcome to the forum. I am unsure of a solution to your problem, but recently I uninstalled all traces of DT and reinstalled. I was taking a sledgehammer approach to try a solve a minor problem. To my pleasant surprise when I reinstalled DT and reimported the images into DT the xmp files that were saved with the images were applied. So I had not lost any of my editing even though I had deleted the DT database. For what it is worth here are my preferences for sidecar files. I only write sidecar files after edit as I don’t see any value in writing a sidecar file for an image that has not been edited.
Is that “.xps” extension correct? Afaik, darktable only uses (and only ever has used) “.xmp” as extension for sidecar files, any other is ignored. So a sidecar with an “.xps” extension will be and should be ignored.
For me, importing .xmp files with raw files works (those xmp’s are generated by digikam, and I do have the check on startup enabled in dt).
Is there any solution to this? It happens to me too on a new install (ubuntu mate 24.04). Already lost a lot of history, it seems crazy that darktable would simply overwrite it instead of prompting somehow. Enabling the “detect updated xmp” toggle and then manually restoring the xmp file also doesn’t help.
sometimes this seems to be caused by not ticking “keep original filename” during copy&import, so darktable will generate a new name and the xmp path won’t match.
Interestingly, XMP files are simply not copied over during “copy&import”. I set the xmp creation setting to “on edit”, so I have no xmps at all after import.
I’m a bit late to the party, but hopefully this helps: Ran into a similar problem with Darktable after removing a couple film rolls from my collection and later wanting to come back to some edits that were part of a deleted film roll. “Import/copy & import” did not work, the thumbnails were “fresh” and did not reflect the history in the (already existing) .xmp files.
However “lighttable/Import/add to library” worked like a charm: I specified the folder (containing Nikon .nef and associated .xmp files) and got a new collection with thumbnails matching edits in the .xmp.
There’s a shortcoming though: This imported all .nef images, even those that I had not worked on yet (hence no .xmp sidecar). To fix this, I narrowed down the search rule of this film roll (click the arrow-down-button to the right of the edit box showing the directory that was just imported, then select “narrow down search”). Change the type from “film roll” to “Darktable/history”, leave the wildcard field empty.
Then two new filters will appear below, “altered” and “basic”. “altered” is what you want, double-click it. The collection browser will now show only those images with existing .xmp sidecar. i. e. those with editing history.
I’m sure, you can somehow create a preset from this, but I didn’t try so far. Also don’t know if this trick survives Darktable version updates. I have the “preferences/storage/ look for update xmp files on startup” option activated and selected to “write sidecar file for each image/after edit”.
Using Darktable 3.8.1 on Linux Mint Mate 21.2 with Kernel 6.8.0-51-generic if that matters.