When the user tries do drag and drop a tag into a hierarchy level where a tag with the same name already exists, he will get an error message. Combining them would be more useful. Or in other words: Adding the existing tag to all images that had the dragged tag and delete the dragged tag. Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. User wants to combine two tags with the same name from different hierarchy places. 2. Drag and drop one onto the hierarchy parent of the other. Actual Results: Error message "Tag with name already exists. Please rename". Expected Results: Message "Tag with same name already exists. Merge them? OK | Cancel" Windows Photo Gallery does it like this, for example. And it's a fine and fast way to sort a tag library when the imported images have tags from other users all over the place. Or to simply clean and condense a tag hierarchy that has grown a bit too specific (with renaming tags to the SAME name and then dropping them under the same parent). Steps to merge tags right now: Show all images with the tag that you want to delete. Select all and assign the other tag that is in the correct place. Delete the obsolete tag. And this is a lot of clicks to do.
While assigning the duplicate tag to all images currently tagged with a duplicate tag and then deleting the duplicate is a viable solution for regular tags, it is not an effective work-around for face tags. If you assign all the images with a face tag of an individual to another, it simply adds a standard tag, it does not alter the face tag as each face tag is only given one name. Having duplicate face tags effectively means you must remove one entire selection of face tags, and re-run the face tagging operation, effectively repeating all of the work involved in face tagging. While I can change an individual face tag, I cannot do so for an entire selection. Changing 100+ face tags individually isn't a practical solution.
I'm in agreement with Dan O. A method of combining facial tags is needed, because the alternative is many hours of manual work (in many cases). Playing around with the digikam database, it appears this could be done by replacing matching the tagid for the tags that are to be merged, and dropping the old tag information. I haven't tried it, but I think this could be done by externally modifying the database, but a means to do it in the software would be much easier.
*** This bug has been confirmed by popular vote. ***
Git commit 7c7d9c8d6aafb2cb6fa65f9015c1f2cf03426e5c by Maik Qualmann. Committed on 21/03/2018 at 20:41. Pushed by mqualmann into branch 'master'. implement merge tags function by drag and drop Related: bug 347302 FIXED-IN: 6.0.0 M +3 -3 NEWS M +60 -3 core/libs/album/albummanager.cpp https://commits.kde.org/digikam/7c7d9c8d6aafb2cb6fa65f9015c1f2cf03426e5c
Note: Like renaming or moving tags, this is a pure database operation. The merging the tags also updates the face regions. The metadata must still be e.g. with the maintenance tool into the images are written. For the automatic update we have another bug report. Maik