exporting hierarchical tags broken in Darktable 3.0?

Has anyone else run into this, and is there a solution?

In earlier versions of Darktable, when I exported an image, it would include both the hierarchical and non-hierarchical tags in the metadata information.

For example, here’s a couple of the relevant metadata lines from exitftool for a pre-3.0 exported image:

Subject : Aerial, Image type, Photo specs, Transportation, airplane, public transport

Hierarchical Subject : Photo specs|Image type|Aerial, Transportation|public transport|airplane

Now, with Darktable 3.0, I’m only getting the tags in Subject but the Hierarchical Subject is gone.

That’s put a massive roadblock in my workflow.

That’s because I preface tags with different categories (Species, Person, iNaturalist field, etc.) and use a bash script to strip off or simplify tags before exporting images to the internet. For example, I’d remove “Person|Jane Doe”, and all other people’s names, from images before uploading to Flickr.

This is now impossible(/annoyingly difficult) to automate and I’m scratching my head wondering what to do.

If there’s a workaround or a fix to get the Hierarchical Subject back in my exports, I’d love to hear about it. I’m not seeing anything in the Darktable preferences.

Thanks!

In the export module, you can configure which metadata to export. Perhaps this feature is helpful?

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Bingo!!! Thanks @paperdigits for the quick and useful reply. That’s exactly the prod I needed.

There’s a “hierarchical tags” option in that module and it was turned off on my upgraded Darktable 3.0. I turned it on and I’m good to go again.

Phew!

For completeness, the screenshot shows the “edit metadata exportation” window, accessed from the gear icon by the “export” button, and with the “hierarchical tags” option ticked.

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You can do that from dt now using category and private flags on tags. Tags flagged as category are never exported while you can choose at export time if private ones are exported or not.
Then, if I’ve understood properly what you are doing, you should not need to export the hierarchical tags.

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That’s excellent to know. Thanks @ phweyland. I’ll look into that.

I expect I’ll still need to go outside of darktable and process the hierarchical tags to deal with my taxonomic tags.

For example, Species|taxonomy:kingdom=Animalia|taxonomy:phylum=Arthropoda|taxonomy:class=Insecta|taxonomy:order=Lepidoptera|taxonomy:family=Erebidae|taxonomy:genus=Nyctemera|taxonomy:binomial=Nyctemera annulata

I upload all of those levels to Flickr, but only need the last level for iNaturalist (usually the species name, but not always, as not all photos can be identified all the way to species).

How do you manage the prefixes taxonomy:xxxxx= ?
Do you add them outside dt ? or they are included in the tag (each level of tag is then like taxonomy:kingdom=Animalia) ?

Sorry for the slow reply. I was elsewhere.

I have a taxon database that I maintain in Filemaker Pro that generates all of these taxon tags for me. Once I’ve added one to Darktable, it’s there next time I need it.

The tag structure comes from the Encyclopedia of Life (EOL) format. I first discovered it many years ago when it was recommended for Flickr users so that EOL could machine scrape relevant photos from Flickr.

iNaturalist has a handy Taxonomic Tags tool that generates the complete EOL taxonomic tag for any entered species or higher taxon name. That tool is at Taxonomic Tags for Flickr · iNaturalist Here’s a screenshot of it in action:

Thanks a lot for these interesting information ! :blush: