Bug 347628

Summary: Can't remove "legend" field when updating metadata
Product: [Applications] digikam Reporter: Nicolas Pomarede <npomarede>
Component: Metadata-EngineAssignee: Digikam Developers <digikam-bugs-null>
Status: RESOLVED FIXED    
Severity: normal CC: caulier.gilles
Priority: NOR    
Version: 4.5.0   
Target Milestone: ---   
Platform: Mageia RPMs   
OS: Linux   
Latest Commit: Version Fixed In: 4.11.0
Sentry Crash Report:

Description Nicolas Pomarede 2015-05-12 18:23:01 UTC
When using my Samsung NX camera, all photos get tagged with the exif tag 
Image Description               : SAMSUNG CSC
(as reported by exiftool)

When such images are added into digikam, digikam will automatically copy this "image description" tag into its database and this can be seen in the right of the screen when clicking on "legends / tags" ("légendes/étiquettes" in french). Then in the "description" tab we see 2 boxes:
 - title
 - legend
In "legend", the "SAMSUNG CSC" text is visible.

Now, I want to remove this info, because it has no value to me and I'd rather have this field empty (plus it's displayed under each photo thumbnail, which is not useful).

Unfortunattely, I can't find how to remove this information for all the photos in this album.
I tried this :
 - exit digikam
 - use exiftool to remove this "image description" field on all images
 - restart digikam
-> "SAMSUNG CSC" is still displayed in the legend window

I tried with one of the image the menu "Image / Read metadata again from the image", as I thought it would update this info ; no luck, it's still there.

Note that if I use "Image / Metadata / modify metadata", I can see that in the exif tab the "description" and "legend" field are empty, so my images were correctly updated by exiftool.

So, I thought I would remove all photos and import them again. I clicked on the album, chose delete from disk. All the files were gone.

Then I exited digikam, copied my album directory (with all "image description" tags removed) into digikam's photo dir, started digikam. It correctly detected the album, imported it, but then the "legend " tag was still there :( It seems it was not deleted from digikam database, although I deleted all the photos ?

Is this a wanted behaviour or is this a bug ? How can I force digikam to forget about those "SAMSUNG CSC" legend text that don't exist anymore in any file of my album ?

Thanks


Reproducible: Always
Comment 1 caulier.gilles 2015-05-12 18:39:24 UTC
1/ Select all relevant images from icon-view
2/ from Captions & Tags sidebar, clear comment string
3/ Press Apply button on the bottom

This will clear comments in DB.

Else after to clear comments with Exiftool, re-synchronize DB with file metadata.

1/ Select all relevant images from icon-view
2/ From Captions & Tags sidebar got to More drop down menu, select Read method and press Apply.

Gilles Caulier

Gilles Caulier
Comment 2 Nicolas Pomarede 2015-05-12 19:14:40 UTC
(In reply to Gilles Caulier from comment #1)
> 1/ Select all relevant images from icon-view
> 2/ from Captions & Tags sidebar, clear comment string
> 3/ Press Apply button on the bottom
> 
> This will clear comments in DB.

Hi

this one worked.


> Else after to clear comments with Exiftool, re-synchronize DB with file
> metadata.
> 
> 1/ Select all relevant images from icon-view
> 2/ From Captions & Tags sidebar got to More drop down menu, select Read
> method and press Apply.

But this one didn't work.
I select the image, click the "more" drop down menu at the bottom, choose "read metadata from the file to the database" (rough translation from french). But then, the "apply" button stays greyed, I can't click on apply, so the comment is not removed.
Comment 3 caulier.gilles 2015-05-12 21:11:49 UTC
>But this one didn't work.
>I select the image, click the "more" drop down menu at the bottom, choose "read metadata >from the file to the database" (rough translation from french). But then, the "apply" button stays >greyed, I can't click on apply, so the comment is not removed.

Correction : you don't need to press Apply button. Selecting option in drop down menu start process automatically.

Note : If you want to drop comment from file metadata with ExifTool, you need to remove tags from Exif, JPEG comments, IPTC, and XMP, else data will be restored. digiKam try all tags one by one until it found something to backport in DB.

So, the first method is the most simple to apply.

Gilles Caulier
Comment 4 Nicolas Pomarede 2015-05-12 21:31:16 UTC
(In reply to Gilles Caulier from comment #3)
> >But this one didn't work.
> >I select the image, click the "more" drop down menu at the bottom, choose "read metadata >from the file to the database" (rough translation from french). But then, the "apply" button stays >greyed, I can't click on apply, so the comment is not removed.
> 
> Correction : you don't need to press Apply button. Selecting option in drop
> down menu start process automatically.
> 
> Note : If you want to drop comment from file metadata with ExifTool, you
> need to remove tags from Exif, JPEG comments, IPTC, and XMP, else data will
> be restored. digiKam try all tags one by one until it found something to
> backport in DB.
> 

I made the test again, and I think this method doesn't work.
- I use a jpg with " Image Description               : SAMSUNG CSC"
- I rename it to test.jpg and add it to a digikam album
- under image/metadata/modify/exif, I see that description and caption were set to "SAMSUNG CSC" as expected when image is imported
- while digikam runs, I removed the tags using exiftool :
exiftool -ImageDescription= -UserComment= -Description=  -Caption-Abstract= -Comment= test.jpg
- the change is detected in digikam, if I use image/metadata/modify, there's no more trace of the "SAMSUNG CSC" text in any field of exif/iptc/xmp, so the change is correct. The tag was correctly removed from all data (doing 'strings test.jpg |grep "SAMSUNG CSC"' finds nothing)
- I click on "more" in the "captions and tags" sidebar window, choose "read metadata from file", but nothing happens, the text is still "SAMSUNG CSC" in the caption window.


> So, the first method is the most simple to apply.
I confirmed this one worked on all my photos.