Hello,
Can any of you manage to write the keywords into the Panasonic rw2 raw files? Digikam can do this, but the annotations are not displayed. When I convert the files to dng, all annotations and keywords are written in and are visible to any software. Sony arp also works.
Writing data into raw files is a bad idea. You should write additional metadata to the sidecar file.
Is it a bad idea because it could damage the raw file?
And how do you do that with the sidecar files in digiKam?
Yes.
There are preferences in digiKam to write sidecar file.
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Ok, I have found the setting.
I’m not entirely enthusiastic about these sidecars - they make handling a bit confusing.
If I only write to the digiKam database, then of course they are only readable for digiKam and I am totally dependent on this software. Let’s see how I do it in the future.
How do you handle it?
Do you know if it is also problematic to write in dng - this has worked perfectly so far.
How is it confusing?
I handle it by using only darktable.
Hello @paperdigits
By unwieldy, I mean that when I move images to other folders, they don’t automatically take the sidecars with them.
It’s already quite complicated for me now when I have edited my images and move them from the editing folder to the finished ones: First the raw file (.rw2), then the .arp from ART and then the .xcf from Gimp - then there would also be this .xmp sidecar.
But I’ll think about it, especially as it’s very easy to have digiKam create this .xmp.
But it works: When digiKam writes these sidecars, it recognizes ART perfectly.
Thank you in any case for your advice.
I’d handle this by not moving files to new folders, but instead leveraging digiKam to add workflow tagging states like edited gimp, edited art, done editing, etc etc etc.
I can’t completely avoid moving them. When I have new photos, they are first moved to the hard disk with digiKam. Then, unless I have a better idea, they are sorted by year, month and day. That’s where just about everything is.
But if they are portraits, they end up in the Portrait - Work folder for editing. When they’re finished, they go into the Portrait 2024 folder.
I’m sure there are other methods, but at the moment it’s mine and I get on very well with it.
But the problem is that these sidecars always have to be taken along, and that probably doesn’t work automatically yet.
If you move files between albums within digikam, sidecars are moved as well. Also, renaming within digikam renames the sidecars as well.
Of course, when you start moving files around, programs (other than the one used to do the moving) will lose track of those moved files: e.g. darktable will not automatically follow a file you moved from within digikam.
How do you do that? In my case, the sidecars are not moved or copied.
Hello Micha, just a suggestion. Instead of moving your photos around – why not tag and label them in Digikam?
Select your new portraits and add the caption “Portrait” to them. Add a label “Pending” to your portraits that need editing (don’t forget to click Apply). In the vertical bar on the left click “Labels”, then Pending and you’ll see all the pending portraits.
When editing is done, remove the Pending label or change it to “Accepted”.
There are more ways to do this: color labels and/or star ratings.
Hello Paul,
Hello Paul,
I have been looking for an ideal organizing system for a long time.
I have decided to organize everything by date: Year - Month - Day.
And because digiKam is so great, it’s also easy to find the pictures I’m looking for when I’ve diligently assigned keywords.
However, as I have been working more and more with certain projects again for some time now: portrait, still life, landscape, I would also like to keep the pictures together. Especially because I can’t process the results immediately. Sometimes it takes weeks! Something often has to mature, mentally or emotionally.
Editing means: selecting, raw development, finishing the image with Gimp (rarely retouching, sometimes cropping and always adding a white border and exporting as a Jpeg).
Then I will have the finished images in the folder: Projects: Portrait, Landscape etc.
Your very precise description makes me think about it again.
I also like it when all my shots are organized by date. That makes it easy to see what I did when.
The Timeline is made for that (button top-right). It starts for some unknown reason at the year 1900, scroll to the right, eg. 2024, then say Show per month, week or day. Practical!
Paul, I’ve often reorganized my entire stock, it’s quite an effort.
I’ll give it some thought.
But tell me, how do you organize your photos? Where on the computer do they go from the memory card? And do they always stay there?
I just select files I want to move and drag them to where I want them. But, that only works for files digikam recognises as sidecars for the particular images that are moved. By default, such files use as naming scheme
“<basename>.<ext>.xmp”. One thing that might cause issues: in the screenshot you showed, neither “read from sidecar files” not “write to sidecar files” is ticked. Perhaps that means digikam assumes there are no relevant sidecars to be kept…
That means sidecars for e.g. different edit versions from darktable may not be recognised and kept (as those add a number to the <basename>, if you dont create extra versions, it works fine). I’m also not sure what happens with sidecars created by e.g. lightroom, with the “<basename>.xmp” naming scheme. For sidecars from rawtherapee (pp3 extension), and such, you can specify the extensions to be kept with an image in the metadata settings (but such files will not be read from or written to).
Since November 2000 I do that as follows.
I made a photo folder called fotoos, it resides on a 2 TB hdd (so no ssd). Every new photo series goes here.
In that I made a sub folder 2000, then again sub folders nov00, dec00. That for every year, until this month, 2024/feb24. So I store them by year, by month.
I used to make sub folders, like jul22/holidays. Since 6 months or so I decided to use Digikam as tagging machine. No longer needed to make sub folders, just tag that series of photos with “holidays”. By using the Caption tab you can quickly find all your holidays, including those from other years.
And yes, the photos I upload to the folder fotoos, always stay there.
Two times a day an automatic backup of my photo directory is made to a second hard disk, also on this pc. Once a month I make a second backup to an external ssd.
Can’t remember I ever lost a photo.
Hello rveitor,
the problem was that I was too impatient: You have to press F5 in digiKam to update - the sidecars are all taken along.
Hello Paul,
I do it in a very similar way: 
The only difference is that I also select folders for the days.
automatic backup of my photo directory
Only my data backup is a little more complex.
I don’t make any real backups but synchronize my data, otherwise everything would burst at the seams.
Everything is on external HDDs. If I accidentally delete something (permanently), it is also deleted during the next backup or synchronization. That’s why an external disk is not enough for me. I use several in turn. And if I suddenly realize that something is missing, then I look and hope that the lost files are still there on an older backup.
I work with Linux. My tool is called FreeFileSync and I am extremely satisfied. What do you use?
Not here. I use rsync with the option to not delete files in “destination” when files in “source” have been deleted. That “pollutes” the folder in “destination” a bit, but I consider that as an extra security layer.
And now: on-topic again! 
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