Bug 144858

Same for me, that would be a great improvement !

I tested digiKam today the first time and this was the second test after the start of digiKam. I think this is a basic feature of a meta data editor.

*** This bug has been confirmed by popular vote. ***

Hi all,

If you want to batch edit Exif, just follow this way :

1/ Edit metadata like you want from the first picture of the list to batch.
2/ Select all pictures to batch on album, excepted the first one.
2/ Start Image/Metadata/Import Exif menu option from digiKam.
3/ Select the picture than you have just edited metadata (the first one)
4/ plugin said if you want to continue. Said yes of course...

And now all selected pictures have the same Exif metadata... The same way can be used with Iptc.

Gilles Caulier

*** Bug 144859 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

(In reply to comment #4)

Would this overwrite all of the EXIF data including creation time, exposure information, etc. or would it only import information that isn't already set?

all metadata are overwrited.

Gilles Caulier

(In reply to comment #7)
> all metadata are overwrited.

OK so this would work well for copying metadata to files produced from the original that you do want all the tags to match but isn't something anyone should do if they only want to change a few tags.  Say artist or copyright for example.

Would certainly appreciate batch metadata editing in Gwenview 4

I am using digiKam for quite some time now and this is one of the most missing features. I have a current, concrete use case to add:

I have scanned my complete set of negative images via a scanning service. For the "date created" EXIF metadatum, they set the scanning date. They left blank the "date digitized" EXIF metadatum.

So what I like to do:
(a) set the "date digitized" metadatum of 6000 images to, say, 2008-12-20.
(b) since I sorted the images into (dated) albums, for each album (say the 1977-01-12 album has 100 images in it), set the "date created" of these 100 images to, say, 1977-01-12.

User interface would be dead simple: just add an "apply to all selected" button to the EXIF (and others) metadatum dialog. Only the fields modified by the user (this should in many cases be only one) should be modified for all selected images, leaving all other metadatum as they were before.

A "safety" dialog like this would be ideal after clicking the "apply to all selected" button:

  "
  Are you sure you want to change the following for *100* images?
   * date created = 1977-01-12
   * date digitized = 2008-12-20
  "

Thanks very much,
Kay

I agree, this is the most needed digiKam's function for me. Setting manually "non-standard" IPTC and XMP metadata in big sets of photographs is very time consuming. Batch mode will be GREAT.

I agree with Kay (comment #10).  This would be very useful.  I seem to remember photools on windows having similar functionality to this.  Digital photos generally don't need this type of treatment, but scans always do.

I plan to do it with digiKam Batch Queue Manager, when time permit...

Gilles Caulier

Gilles, once you get to batch queue manager & iptc, please consider the various "write" modes: 

(i)   add - if the iptc tag allows repetition (e.g. keywords), add always a new tag and do not touch the existing ones. Otherwise behave as "update".

(ii)  update - if the iptc tag already exists, replace its value with the new one. Do not touch other tags, for which the user has not supplied any value.

(iii) replace/set - delete all iptc data before inserting the new values.

The most useful is probably "add" mode.

*** Bug 220434 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

(In reply to comment #15)
> *** Bug 220434 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

220434 is very similar, batch copy meta-data from a set of images to another. I did mark as duplicate to concentrate efforts

Later
Manuel

As another use case for this, I have a digital SLR camera which records exposure/camera information into the exif tags. However, I have several manual lenses which the camera (Nikon d5000) cannot distinguish between, I would like to be able to batch enter the lens I used to for a group of photos without overwriting the other exposure data that the camera provides.

What about using an EasyTag-like editing way? They got a little push button for every input field. If the button is pushed, the change is performed on all selected files. Otherwise it's only performed on the last selected entry only. This could be a bit more logical without the "do things only sometimes" magic proposed in #10.

This would be extremely useful for the project I am involved with, which includes modifying the XMP metadata of > 50K camera trap photos. Some of the metadata is common to all the photos, other to various subsections.

Something along the lines of how Adobe Bridge manages this would be cool. Found a screenshot showing the Append Metadata menu: http://dpbestflow.org/sites/default/files//uploaded_images/metadata/MetadataTemplate.jpg

*** Bug 190055 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

For an example of how the current code fails.

I have 2180 lines in tags for different geo locations.  about half of these would be distinct sublocations.  Only about half because of the hierarchical structure of the tags.  

I am about to have to move.  If I had used templates (which I didn't as they don't work in a useful way), I would have to modify about 1000 different templates to update my contact information.

What I would like to do is to have a single template that I can set up that is only the contact information and apply that to every single photo in my collection (barring a few that were taken by someone else where I have a partial copyright).

Part of the confusion is, I believe that the original developer was thing of templates as an end point rather than a step on the journey.  The template that was applied looks like it is stored in the database somewhere associated with the image as switching images that have had different templates applied selects the template that was last applied to the image.