Editing IPTC/XMP metadata

Software digiKam
1

Hi,

5.6.0: the app on Manjaro.

How can I edit/add the IPTC and the XMP medadata?

In the setup, there are the templates but these are templates, I want/need per image.

Thanks

Syv

2

Our own @dmpop has written about metadata on his blog, perhaps itā€™ll help: https://scribblesandsnaps.com/2011/02/22/work-with-photo-metadata-in-digikam/

1 Like
3

Yes, I saw that, but donā€™t think that it can help me. He talks about templates. I want edits/changes.

I photograph in about 10 cities (mostly suburbs of where I live), cats, dogs and some portraits, just that would mean at least 30 templates and a new template for any change?

Am I the only one who wants to edit the IPTC and the XMP data?

Thanks

Syv

4

What do you want to edit exactly?

5


.

  • Iā€™d like to add a fill in these IPTCs and Iā€™d like to add a few more
  • Iā€™d also like to more ā€˜stuffā€™ to the Dublin Core in the XMP

Thanks

Syv

6

You need to do Image Ā» Metadata Ā» Edit EXIF, or explain in more detail what you want to do.

Iā€™d put all necessary terms into tags and assign each tag a hotkey, then you can move through the shots quickly.

7
  1. Thanks, I found the item > edit metadata
  2. The problem is when I select the checkmark (to the left) and enter my data, like cityā€¦, click on OK, the nothing is saved. When I come back to it, my changes are not there.
  3. If I click on Apply, my changes and the check mark are blanked

My .cr2 and xmp files are 664.

5.6.0 app (bundle) with sqlite on Manjaro xfce current.

Thanks

Syv

8

I canā€™t reproduce that problem here, it works as expected. Can you look at the console whether there is anything suspicious?
You should probably open an issue in bugzilla with logs to get devs involved.

9

It doesnā€™t look like a bug but me. I get the following message:

digikam.metaengine: MetaEngine::metadataWritingMode 0
digikam.metaengine: Will write Metadata to file "/home/froggy/darktable/animals/streets/streets-2013/dogs-vancouver-20130912-0887.cr2"
digikam.metaengine: "dogs-vancouver-20130912-0887.cr2" is a TIFF based RAW file,  writing to such a file is disabled by current settings.
digikam.metaengine: Metadata for file "dogs-vancouver-20130912-0887.cr2" written to file.
digikam.metaengine: ""  ==> Read Iptc Keywords:  ("animals")
digikam.metaengine: XMP String Seq ( Xmp.dc.creator ):  ("Syv Ritch")
digikam.metaengine: MetaEngine::metadataWritingMode 0
digikam.metaengine: Will write Metadata to file "/home/froggy/darktable/animals/streets/streets-2013/dogs-vancouver-20130912-0887.cr2"
digikam.metaengine: "dogs-vancouver-20130912-0887.cr2" is a TIFF based RAW file,  writing to such a file is disabled by current settings.
digikam.metaengine: Metadata for file "dogs-vancouver-20130912-0887.cr2" written to file.
digikam.metaengine: ""  ==> Read Iptc Keywords:  ("animals")
digikam.metaengine: XMP String Seq ( Xmp.dc.creator ):  ("Syv Ritch")

writing to such a file is disabled by current settings:

  1. It could be a default
  2. It could be me changing something, but what?

Which setting should I check/change.

Thanks

Syv

10

That option is probably not overly clear in the settings: In the metadata settings, you need to either enable writing to raw files in the behaviour rider (experimental and I wouldnā€™t recommend it anyway) or writing to sidecars for read-only images only (or for everything if you want to, but I assume not).

11

My understanding is that Digikam has been designed with ā€œmetadataā€ = ā€œdata in the filesā€.

I think that metadata are first data associated to an image. Therefore the database is the right place to store them. Then, in a second step, we may want (or not) to push (some) metadata to some files for publishing. For archiving we can archive the database which seems to me better than to rely on xmp files or, worse, than modifying orignal jpg file.

This decoupling is not impossible with Digikam, but today it is limited, first by the settings designed for ā€œfileā€ metadata, then by the need to go through template editing while some metadata are image per image specific, and last by the unclear correspondance between ā€œimageā€ metadata (location for example) and ā€œfileā€ metadata (xmp specific location field for example).
I would add that there is no function in Digikam (as far as I know) to copy ā€œimageā€ metadata to another (grouped) image. The way to do it is through exif tool which works with ā€œfileā€ metadata (back to the first statement).

12

I didnā€™t consider that use case at all, as my philosophy is the opposite: A database is a single point of failure and is solely usable by digiKam, while with tags within the file the risk is distributed and information is universally applicable. If I have metadata that I donā€™t want to be published, I strip them when creating the image for publishing. However I agree, the choice is partially there to keep information in the DB, so it should be possible everywhere. From a quick glance at the code, it seems like the metadata editing tool really only works on file metadata, not the database. This would be a short-coming, so please open a request for this in the bug tracker.

13

I understand this ! :slight_smile:

I like this ! :slight_smile:

Iā€™ll do.

14

In the right panel go to the tab ā€œCaptionsā€. This is the primary tab for quick applying tags, ratings, etc.
There is also Metadata Editor (Ctrl+Shift+M) but that tool is very slow.
For geotagging you can use Geolocation Editor (Ctrl + Shift + G). To get city, street names etc. for GPS coordinates you can use Reverse Geotagging (Geocoding). Just type this phrase in Google and you will find dmpopā€™s article on it.
For face tagging you can draw a face region using the mouse while holding the left button and Ctrl on keyboard.