Hi all.
Sorry if I come back again on this issue. Hope not to be bothering.
I am still struggling to set-up a consistent long-term workflow.
I am struggling to understand the library mechanisms. I have a library on my Mac, and I do a manual back-up of it, by sync, on an external hard drive. But let’s assume that I change computer, I buy a new one. Then I download darktable, fresh new. How can I tell darktable to launch that specific library that I backed-up on the external drive? Otherwise I assume darktable will create by itself a new library. I guess.
If I need to know coding or anything similar… I am dead lost!!
So, once launched the catalogue, I’ll have to tell again darktable where are the images, right? Not through importing, but through what?
I think a workaround could be to create a new library by launching the program at first, so it creates it by default, and then import again all files, with the relative .xmp sidecars.
Resuming, my questions are two:
- How can I launch an old catalogue in case my Mac crashes, or I change it or whatever… ?
- Once the library has been launched, how to tell darktable where are you libraries’ images-archive? Do I have to import again?
Many thanks.
ciao
m
Darktable has two databases, library.db, which holds picture location, ratings, and other metadata, and data.db which holds presets and the like. Both are sqlite databases, so they’re file based and you can easily copy them around.
If you get a new computer, just put all the files back in the same location, and it’ll be like nothing has changed.
You can also have multiple library files, and via the command line you can tell darktable which database to load.
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Cristal clear.
My problems begin when you mention “via the command line”…me no idea, unfortunately, I would not know how to load a catalogue or anything else, for that matter. My shortcomings, I know. That’s what makes me shake when I imagine the long-term life management of this program, that at some point I’ll get stuck in a limbo where I need a programmer or something.
(And then limited-color management options of the program, but that’s another issue.)
Many thanks for your patience and help.
Well you’ll have to learn and try new things 
On Mac, you open the Terminal.app, that is the command line.
Where is your darktable.app installed?
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Indeed. Would be nice!
The app is installed in the generic application folder, as straightforward technique on Mac to install any app, drag and drop to application folder.
Terminal is not my friend, yet, but I believe is very powerful. More than I can probably imagine.