First of all hello to everyone! This is my first post here.
I started to look at darktable after I discovered that Photo Mechanic Plus doesn’t allow me to tag/rating the photos I’ve in the catalog when they’re offline.
Is it possible to do with darktable?
Yes, DT will allow you to do so but if rating and tagging is your only goal you have other more exclusively D.A.M oriented options that allow like :
Shotwell
Digikam
Photos (shtowell twin up to date)
many more
And some more basic image viewer like gthumb will support tagging as well.
Thank you very much for the advices!
How can I do it with darktable?
I’d suggest you read the manual and/or search on YouTube or on this forum. Please do not expect answers to questions that are already answered.
https://darktable-org.github.io/dtdocs/en/lighttable/digital-asset-management/
https://darktable-org.github.io/dtdocs/en/module-reference/utility-modules/shared/tagging/
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=darktable+tag
If you have questions after trying the functionality, the community will be there to support you; but please understand that we have finite time.
Thank you kofa. Everyone has a finite time, indeed I’m not pretending to receive fast answers.
Anyway, I’m asking on this forum because I searched a lot on the web, also reading the manual but I could find the solution.
Just to be clear, I’m asking if I can import my archive into darkroom, not copy but just import without copy the files from the hard drives, and I can tag/rating the photos when the hard drives with the original raws are not connected to the computer.
Thank you again for your time.
Best,
Eliano
you can tag them, rate them, but if you don’t have access to the storage of the files you just save these info to the darktable database but won’t get updates xmps, as these are saved aside of the image files.
you might write the xmps after reconnecting the storage of the files …
Import without a copy is possible. Just use add to library, not copy & import.
Normally, darktable writes all modifications (whether it’s tagging or image development) to two places:
- its database
- XMP sidecar files which are placed next images.
Since in your case the images won’t be there, you may have to set your darktable not to write XMPs, while the hard disk is disconnected: darktable user manual - storage
You may see ‘skull’ images on the lighttable, though. I’m not sure, I’ve never worked this way.
Once the hard disk is connected, you can write the XMP files manually. It’s good to have them, just in case the darktable database gets corrupted (it has never occurred to me, even though I use the development version, but who knows). See the bottom of this page: darktable user manual - history stack
One more thing that might interest you is local copies: keeping a subset of images on the main hard disk (of e.g. a laptop), syncing changes with the ‘main’ / ‘home’ storage.
These 2 pages may be relevent to your workflow …
https://docs.darktable.org/usermanual/4.0/en/lighttable/digital-asset-management/thumbnails/
From the informations on these pages it looks like it may be possible. I’m regenerating thumbnails cache right now and try changing my image path to see if offline lighttable browsing is OK or just skulls
Ok no skulls when browsing lighttable on an “offline” collection if thumbnail previously generated
You can also use the Copy Locally feature… Copy a chunk of images, rate them, sync them back, copy the next chunk…