Do you have the same versions of darktable in both systems? The xmp are darktable xmp in the Mac (not lightroom)?
Yes, both are darktable 4.0.1.
What about the second part of the question? Can you attach an xmp from the Mac machine(no picture needed)?
I think I know what is happening: when I import a folder w/ existing sidecar files dt is overwriting them with new “blank” files. If I set storage > write sidecar file for each image to “never” it seems to work. I guess what I need to do is figure out why the “search filmroll” method is not working, that should preserve the existing sidecar file.
What’s the error message or what happens?
You need to set the preference to look for updated sidecar files.
I was able to get this to work, sort of. I’m still losing my edits and getting white balance & color calibration errors. Honestly, I’m so confused at this point that I’m not sure where to go. Clearly this is not a smooth process, probably something to do with the Mac side of things. Wonder if I can still cancel my computer order? Thanks for your help.
Can you step us through what you did and the results?
I wish I could, LOL. I need to take a break then clear everything back to baseline and start again. I will start with a fresh copy of a folder with photos & sidecar files and copy the data.db & library.db files over from the Mac. I will then try to go through the process of trying to select the new folder location and report back exactly what happens.
Starting fresh, new copy of photos, sidecars, data.db and library.db.
- Launch dt and see folder structure from Mac with film rolls crossed out.
- Right click on one film roll and navigate to new location on Linux computer, select open and get a screen of skulls in lighttable
- Double click one of the skulls to open darktable and images appear but with no edits and errors shown in the Color Calibration & White Balance modules
- If I set storage > write sidecar file for each image to “never” and go thru sequence with another film roll I do get my edits back but the two errors are also present
If you enable the option to check for updated xmp files, do you still get the sidecar overwritten?
That was already done per your suggestion earlier.
I would suggest not copying the library.db. Just import the tree with recursive.
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Thank you for the suggestion but I don’t understand exactly what you mean by “tree with recursive.” Do you mean import into library fresh rather than use the relocate feature?
OK, I’ve been messing around with this for a while and I believe I have found the best method but I still have some baffling issues. First thing is to delete darktable from my Linux Mint computer including the darktable .config folder. Copy over a clean set of photos with sidecar files from my iMac. Install darktable and launch, in preferences set storage > write sidecar file for each image to “never” to prevent the .xmp files from being overwritten, then quit application. I then add my data.db file to the .config folder but not my library.db. Launch darktable and import each film roll which seems to retain my edits from the .xmp files. The problem that I still have is that on most, but not all, of the film rolls I have a White Balance error (“white balance applied twice”) where the setting has been changed to “user modified.” Changing this back to “camera reference point” fixes the issue. The problem is that I have to fix this on every photo in the film roll. I have no idea why this setting is being changed, it is fine in my iMac.
When all film rolls have been imported, change set storage > write sidecar file for each image to “on import” again.
Does anyone have any ideas why the white balance error is happening?
Yeah, its a misread of the sidecar file, since wb wants the d65 reference setting but the side car seems to store the value. You can just reset the wb module, assuming you use the d65 setting, and both errors disappear.
Ive seen this white balance “issue” when I work on windows/fedora. I think (never actually checked), that it might be a rounding error between the two. After import, you can fix one image (click reference), then go to lightable, selective copy just the white balance module, and paste to all images.
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I did the opposite direction some time ago and it is possible to manipulate the library.db file using sqlite. The following command should work:
sqlite3 “library.db UPDATE film_rolls SET folder = replace( folder, ‘/home/old_username/Pictures’,’/Users/new_username/Pictures’ ) WHERE folder LIKE ‘/home/username/Pictures/%’;”
I always start DT with a custom --configdir, so it was easy to copy the db folder to the linux installation. However, at the end I decided to start over with a clean config anyway, because Lua was not working, and thumbnails needed to be recreated anyway. So going with a clean config was just faster, when all files have a recent xmp sidecar. But maybe it works for you.
It might be, that I found the sqlite command somewhere in this forum, but I cannot remember …
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Thanks for this suggestion, it worked a treat. I never used this feature before and it is exactly what I need.
This is the only method I could get to work when transferring dt from iMac to Debian Bookworm. Thanks, @g-man !