Typing in metadata in Darktable is challenging - so I don't

Software darktable
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For several months I typed metadata directly into the fields in the right panel of Lighttable - until I went strange…! and decided that it would be healthier to make everything ready in Notepad first and then copy and paste. Even secured that way - one has to be aware of committing every field separately.

The problem is that unless each addition to the text is followed by a click on the ‘apply’ line and the cursor is moved outside the right panel - then all text entered after last commit is gone. If fx I want to visit Wiki to obtain information for my metadata and the cursor leaves the right column in Lighttable - the not committed text is GONE.

This is not particularly user friendly for an otherwise very useful software.

Strangely this problem doesn’t exist with the tagging - all entered key-words sticks.

Would it be possible to make the metadata stick too along with the writing?

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There’s already an issue covering most of what you describe here: Avoid unintentional loss of data in metadata editor · Issue #13829 · darktable-org/darktable · GitHub. Please consider adding your experiences there.

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I see, I have continued the thread in Github.

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There is now a PR to address this.

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No reason to go nuts about the meta data. For manual lenses I use a shell script to add/change the meta data of all raw files in a directory.

LModel_New="Minolta MC W Rokkor 28mm f/2.0"
LMake_New="Minolta Rokkor"
LInfo_New="28mm f/2.0"
LFocal_New="28mm"
MaxAp_New="2.0"

for thefile in *RW2; do
    exiftool -q -q -m -LensModel="$LModel_New" $myfile \
    -LensMake="$LMake_New" $thefile \
    -LensInfo="$LInfo_New" $thefile -MaxApertureValue="$MaxAp_New" $thefile  "-FileModifyDate<DateTimeOriginal" "-FileModifyDate<CreateDate" $thefile \
    -FLength="LFocal_New" \
    -FocalLength="LFocal_New" -Lens="LFocal_New" -minFocalLength="LFocal_New" -maxFocalLength="LFocal_New"
done

This is a Linux bash script based on exiftool. If you would change the date/time the scripts need to be amended.

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I happen to like Darktable and would like it to be user friendly in all aspects in order to attract as many new users as possible.

Anybody is free to create his own workflow, but a part of us are not technically or IT minded and have to use the tools at hand.

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But you ask darktable to do two different tasks:

  • photo editing, and
  • asset management.

While it is nice to be able to do both in one program, they are different tasks. So having to use two different programs wouldn’t be a bad thing. It’s the reason why I use digikam for metadata entering.
Not ideal either, as I can’t see the darktable edits in digikam (which is understandable!), but as most of the metadata handling occurs just after downloading the images and before editing, that’s not a big issue.

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My script is only a suggestion or another option. Apologies if this bothers you. A wider knowledge of the subject you are dealing with has never hurt anyone yet.
The whole procedure how to edit meta data depends on how many files you want to edit. If there are only a few, you can take the trouble and enter the metadata one by one. If there are many files, entering them is not part of the workflow, but is manual work.

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Very good. I am not bothered. My general view was partly meant as a compliment to your suggestion.

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Just to get us all on the same page, I think you are talking about different kinds of metadata anyway.

The type @01McAc mentions, the lens and similar stuff, cannot be changed (easily) in darktable anyway.

The metadata editor @KIRSJ mentions is for entering information that is often entered at time of editing and per picture, such as the image title.

Darktables metadata editor can also work on several images at once, e.g. to change the author for those images your son grabbed your camera (only an example from my own experience).

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Would be really cool if dt could edit the EXIF directly. Have two issues where this would be useful:

1.) Manual lenses
2.) A trip out of time zone where I didn’t adjust the camera time

Last time I checked EXIF tools 1+ years ago they all sucked. Is there any change?

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What do you mean with directly? If database and sidecar are enough, at least for

there is a lua plugin to do these adjustments. At least for me this is direct enough, I would never edit the raw files directly as (1) this is risky and (2) it would double my backup size as I would want to mitigate 1.

The lens (camera, ISO, …) issue I have myself as well for my analog photography. Currently I am using tags to keep this information, but it feels a bit odd.