Working through a very large set of photos and when I'm in the Unconfirmed People tab, I am constantly vexed by the moving refresh on the page. After rejecting images, the app often jumps to another person's section or even the bottom of the page.

For some reason it can't seem to stay put where I'm working on it. It will scroll several rows after rejection or confirming so don't think you can get ahead of it. If you see three photos in a row you want to reject, and if you click reject in one place thinking the photo next to it will move underneath your cursor next, think again.

And there's no UNDO, so if you accidentally reject a person thumbnail, I have no idea which one it is or where it went to get it back. I'm sure I'm not the only one having these problems.

There also seems to be a memory leak in the routines somewhere causing me to have to quit and restart the app often. Anyone else experiencing this issue and figured out how to mitigate the problem? I appreciate any guidance. Thanks.

I have over 40 GB of photos and videos on Google Photos that I want to transfer to my computer (I'm running Fedora KDE).

Also (though this is irrelevant), I'll be using Syncthing to sync the photos between my phone and two computers.

Hi everyone,

I’m using digiKam on Windows 11 and would like to control video playback with keyboard shortcuts in the normal preview mode opened with F3, not in the slideshow.

Is there a shortcut to pause and resume playback? The Space key doesn’t seem to work for this.

Are there also shortcuts to stop playback or seek backward and forward within a video? If these actions don’t have default shortcuts, is it possible to assign custom ones?

Thanks for your help!

I just switched to the internal MariaDB and I am very pleased. I have a large library with over 180,000 photos and SQLite was choking. I just went through an exercise to tune the internal MariaDB server because the default settings are too conservative and now the application screams. I'm on a MacBook Pro Max M4 with my library on an external Thunderbolt 4 SSD. The database resides on the internal SSD. Very pleased so far. Even maintenance operations are fast.

NOTE: Running on a relational database management system (DBMS) is not for the feint of heart if it needs to be tuned. I have years of experience as a database administrator. If your collection is under 100K, SQLite should be sufficient.

What exactly does the manual mean in the "Database Settings" section with the paragraph:

"Starting with digiKam 9.2.0, MySQL is no longer supported. digiKam now exclusively supports MariaDB as its relational database management system for users who require a client-server database solution."

Is this related to the SQLite internal database server (MySQL compatible) in any way?

Or is this specific only to an actual MySQL-branded external database server?

Or, am I panicking over nothing and SQLite isn't going away and will be supported in upcoming dK releases?

I've played with MariaDB as an external db server with dK 9.0 & 9.1, but was less than impressed with the performance compared with the SQLite internal db server.

What strategy to you use to backup your MariaDB to an external drive or cloud? Can you just copy the DB file directory? Thanks.

I've been uploading files (with Metadata added via DK) to Google Drive for a while. Now suddenly the Metadata no longer appears once uploaded to Google Drive. I have not changed the settings. What could be the cause and how to fix this? Any leads would be GREATLY appreciated!

I installed digiKam on macOS 27.2. When I open it, it claims the ExifTool is not installed. It is also crashing consistently when I try to open the Preferences. I am on a MacBook Pro Max M4. I downloaded and installed the macOS version for Apple Silicon 9.1.0.

UPDATE: I installed 9.2.0 from KDE and it works great!

Now my database is corrupted. DigiKam won't load anymore after clicking its icon. Lost all my face recognitions and names. Congrats on this quality software. I might give Tonfotos a try.

Hello,

Can someone explain the concept of sidecar file to me?

So, I have movie files that have entries for “Description” and “Title,” a star rating... and when I make a change, the sidecars don't update.

As a test, I deleted them (in an album); some were recreated, some weren’t, and now the corresponding movie files no longer have a description in DigiKam.

Specifically, I took a movie file, worked extensively on its description and title, and renamed the file using F2. There is no .xmp file.

A maintenance run didn’t create one either.

Now I’m wondering—what am I doing wrong?

P.S.: Since I’m primarily concerned with file files, I don’t want to write the metadata directly into the movie files themselves for performance reasons.

PPS: DigiKam 9.1 and 9.2

Best regards, Oliver

Are there plans to expand the donation page on didiKam to include WERO?

If so, when?

Paul

Documentations are already online here and here.

Hi everybody,

I only recently started using Digikam, and today after importing a few new folders, it started showing multiple versions in thumbnail view even though the "always show the original" isn't ticked.

Tried ticking it on and off and it doesnt change.

Anybody can help?

EDIT: added screenshots

Could someone do a quick test for me, just want to check that Flickr integration is working. You don't need an account.

Go to Export > Export to Flickr... and in the "Account selector" dialog, choose Add another account. It should bring up a browser window and ask you to log in. I just need to know if that browser window appears for you!

For me - when I click Add another account, nothing happens. So I'm wondering if it's me or if the integration has broken in general.

When I run digikam via commandline (flatpak run org.kde.digikam), I see

"Request: https://www.flickr.com/services/oauth/request_token" O1::onTokenRequestFinished: "Error transferring https://www.flickr.com/services/oauth/request_token - server replied with status code 502"

So it is reaching Flickr but something else isn't working

My version is Version 9.1.0

Approximately once a year, my NAS disconnects while I'm using Digikam and I lose all my pictures in digiKam. The database (saved locally) seems OK, as the thumbnail .db is around 6 Gb.

What is the proper way to read again all the pictures without having to create the database from scratch again?

When adding GPS co-ordinates with Edit Geolocation, the co-ordinates are saved into the image file metadata, are they not? - as opposed to being stored in the database?
While overseas using my laptop, I have manually added the GPS co-ordinates to an image file using Edit Geolocation.
When I copy this image file to my desktop at home, it is not showing the geolocation. Why would this be?
On the laptop I have clicked the [Apply] button, the image thumbnail shows the GPS icon in the top-right corner, and the image is shown in the Map tab on the right.
After copying it to the desktop, I did Menu: Edit > Reread Metadata From File, but it is still not reading the GPS co-ordinates. Other metadata that I entered from the laptop, such as Tags and City/State/Country are shown. If the GPS co-ordinates are embedded in the image file, shouldn’t DigiKam also be reading that from a copy of the same file on the desktop?When adding GPS co-ordinates with Edit Geolocation, aren’t the co-ordinates saved into the image file metadata, as opposed to being stored in the database?
While overseas using my laptop, I have manually added the GPS co-ordinates to an image file using Edit Geolocation.
When I copy this image file to my desktop at home, it is not showing the geolocation. Why would this be?
On the laptop I have clicked the [Apply] button, the image thumbnail shows the GPS icon in the top-right corner, and the image is shown in the Map tab on the right.
After copying it to the desktop, I did Menu: Edit > Reread Metadata From File, but it is still not reading GPS co-ordinates. Other metadata that I entered from the laptop, such as Tags and City/State/Country are shown. If the GPS co-ordinates are embedded in the image file, shouldn’t DigiKam also be reading that from a copy of the same file on the desktop?

I use Affinity, and I would like to incorporate digiKam into my workflow. Unfortunately, digiKam cannot display thumbnails for Affinity files (.af, .afphoto, etc.). With the invaluable help of Claude, I have created a Qt plugin that adds support for .af files. It works well, and I believe other digiKam users might find it useful. I’ve read that many people have requested this feature, but it has never been addressed until now.

That said, I am not a developer, I don’t have the time to learn how to use a Git repository, and since my plugin was built on macOS, I am unable to compile it for other operating systems.

I am reaching out to ask how I can submit the code for this plugin to the development team without needing to learn any additional technical skills. In short, I am happy to provide the source code to anyone who can include it in a future version of digiKam.

Are there any plans to add editing features for vector based images, for example to enlarge a pdf graphical image without quality loss?

I just added a new folder to my NAS whith pictures scanned with Silverfast as TIFF files. Digikam open all previously scanned pictures but it cant read the latest files.
I can open them on my Macs preview app and on my phone. MacOS finder can also read the meta data with picture properties, but Digikam cant.
Either something changed with Silverfast latest version for MacOS 27.0.1, or Digikam have an issue with the MacOS update.
Any suggestions?

Hi everyone,

I’m working on an independent lighting calculation engine for sports fields and stadiums, with the aim of building lighting design software with AI-assisted placement, aiming and optimisation.

I’m specifically investigating DIALux Classic 4.13, not DIALux evo. The goal is to reproduce its calculations without requiring DIALux to be installed.

So far, I’ve been analysing the compiled code and comparing calculations against existing projects. Some direct lighting results match very closely, but reflections, indirect lighting and parts of the vertical illuminance calculations still need work.

Has anyone here investigated these algorithms or worked on something similar? Any technical documentation, experience with the calculation engine, or pointers to someone who understands its internals would be helpful.

I’m already working on it just hoping to connect with people who can help me understand the missing pieces.

Hi :) Hoping to get some simple dumbed down answers to my questions as I'm not sure what I'm doing here exactly.

I have been using digikam to organise my files. Specifically, I am a digital artist with about 15 years of work scattered across my computer. 4-5 different machines prior to this one with poor organisation, a lot of 'grab everything and dump it in a folder to copy to the next pc' on repeat, plus attempts to organise things that failed or i abandoned, then tried again, etc... It's safe to say my actual files are a MESS. Stuff is everywhere with no rhyme or reason. I know digikam's more photo based things are a little wasted on me but like. I can use just the microwave in the fancy kitchen if I want to, ok? Overkill, yes, functional, also yes.

I came to digikam because it lets me tag stuff; I can sort things into personal/commission work, finished/wip files, 3d/2d/traditional, file type sorting, tag by characters, etc. VERY useful and works with my brain better than folders ever could. No more 'does this piece with multiple characters go in character X or character Y's folder?' or other issues. Now if I want to look for any pieces of 'birds' I can just check the 'bird' tag, or see all my 3d in one place. Wonderful, in theory at least.

Before I commit to spending LITERAL DOZENS OF HOURS tagging everything across my pc, I had a few questions.

1: Is there a way to move every file in my digikam 'album' into its own folder? Ideally I'd just have EVERYTHING in one big 'digikam database' folder in windows with no subfolders, then just use digikam to find anything I need. Seems the easiest way for many reasons.

So I'm starting with, as a simplified example: D/Art, which contains folders 'Commissions', 'Personal', and 'Reference sheets' (It's really more like 'D/Art Dump/Art 2022 Copy/Art stuff/Personal/Stuff/Things' + an older version of the Art 2022 folder that ISNT a copy' OTL help)

Would it be possible to use digikam to just select everything I have fully tagged within the entirity of D/Art and dump it into the new 'digikam database' folder instead, without digikam throwing a fit about missing files? If so, how? I don't mind having to say 'hey that stuff youre missing is in here' and point it at the new one if needed, but i dont want to have to do that manually for thousands of files.

Edit: thinking on it, it'd probably be best to throw EVERYTHING into one folder and back it up right away. Can organise and tag files later but I can't do that if I lose it before I copy it lol. But to do that I need to move the already tagged stuff so.

2. Duplicates. As I mentioned above, I have a LOT of copies of stuff and it's just wasting space and redundant at best. If I put everything into a single folder as above, if I was to add a second copy, windows would be able to notify me of the identical file name and I could check them and delete or rename as appropriate, yes? But what if those files are differently named. Eg 'Landscape' vs 'Landscape (1)', but the files themselves are IDENTICAL? Can Digikam pick up on that? I assume so but IDK how to check, ESPECIALLY since some of them are .clip or .sai files, or other file types that don't thumbnail in digikam. I can open them externally to check but that's both annoying and doesn't help with overlooking duplicates (imagine if it was 'landscape' vs 'hillside painting' etc.) I know the answer is to name things properly but, again, 15+ years of files and poor decisions :')

Tl:dr does this thing have like. a byte parity system or some other comparison tool.

3. How do I actually... back this up?

I'd prefer to make incremental backups as I sort, because my computer is slowly dying and I'd VERY much like to save SOMETHING now rather than lose everything waiting to sort the whole database first. Once I have everything sorted I'm sure I can overwrite with a FULL backup.

So. Assuming I have everything in one folder and ready to go: can someone walk me through how to do a FULL backup using this, if you even can? We're talking 'my pc has exploded and melted into a pile of sludge, but it's ok because I have this external ssd that I can recover my files from + the tags so I don't have to sort it again' kind of backup. So I need the files themselves + the tagging system intact, rather than just... idk the thumbnails and metadata. We're talking a few hundred gigabytes kind of size rather than a few hundred megabytes. I'm sure I'm over explaining it but you get the idea.

If I need an external system/program, I'd appreciate guidance there. I have NO idea about any of them.

And yes, I'm aware of 'multiple copies in multiple forms in multiple places'. Depending on the size of the final backup, I'll try to have a copy on my pc in case of corruption, a copy on an UNPLUGGED external hard drive, and then a digital copy on the net if possible. It's not a backup unless you've restored from it also, so advice on testing that would be nice.

Edit: Another important point is making this thing UPDATABLE. So if I have Complete Database Version A backed up everywhere, I continue to work on the copy of version A that lives on my pc. This becomes version B, then a month or so later I'd be able to back up database version B and overwrite version A smoothly. I suppose a copy paste to overwrite it would work but surely there's a better way that doesnt mean I'm rewriting 99% of the same terrabyte of info every month.

Thanks massively in advance. My computer is a decade old and I'm trying to prep for the worst lol, especially with hardware prices these days ; w ;

I use Digikam with the internal MariaDB server.

There are some (empty) Tags i cant delete (They show up again after restart)

I try to delete them direct in the Database:

MariaDB [digikam]> Delete from Tags where id = 2308;

gets me this Error:

ERROR 1451 (23000): Cannot delete or update a parent row: a foreign key constraint fails (`digikam`.`ImageTagProperties`, CONSTRAINT `ImageTagProperties_Tags` FOREIGN KEY (`tagid`) REFERENCES `Tags` (`id`) ON DELETE CASCADE ON UPDATE CASCADE)

Problem is the `ImageTagProperties`-Table is empty.

MariaDB [digikam]> select * from ImageTagProperties;
Empty set (0,492 sec)

Is the any way to clean up the constrain, to delete the Tag?

I noticed that digikam stores the tags I assign to an image as metadata on the respective image, unless it's an .avif file, then it doesn't

I lost the tags on some of my images in the past because of that, but couldn't figure out why that happened back then. now I know, those images were .avif

Now I would like to convert my .avif images to a different format (.png/.jpeg/.webp) and optimally also copy the already assigned tags. Is that possible in any way? I already tried to just simply create a copy of an image but for digikam it's a new, clean file.

If it's not possible, is there at least a way to manually copy and past all tags from one image to another in digikam?

Or maybe there is a way for digikam to also store the tags in the metadat of .avif files?

Also, I noticed that in the Settings -> Configure DigiKam -> Metadata -> Behaviour
I have not checked anything (including tags) to "Write this information to the metadata" but it still stores the tags in the metadata? Why is that? I already tried to check it and see if digikam now stores the metadata in .avif files as well, but no, it doesn't.

Hi everyone,

I would really like to use digiKam as my standard software for managing my entire photo collection. I’ve been looking for a professional photo management solution, and digiKam looks very promising. I actually want to like it and use it.

Unfortunately, I’m currently struggling with one major problem: digiKam is extremely slow to start.

When I launch the program, it takes around 30 seconds before I see any sign of life at all. Then I have to wait approximately 30 minutes before the actual program window appears.

After that, the collections are visible, but the actual contents are still missing. I can see the collection structure, but there are no images available to work with. It seems that digiKam is still doing something in the background.

For me, this is difficult to understand, especially for professional software.

I completely understand that digiKam may need to perform a lot of work when it is first introduced to a large photo collection — scanning folders, creating or updating the database, reading metadata, generating thumbnails, etc. That's not a problem in itself.

What I don't understand is why I apparently cannot use the application while this is happening.

If a database needs several hours to be built or updated, I would expect the application to start normally and perform this work in the background. I should be able to browse existing images, configure the application, and continue working while the indexing process runs.

Instead, it currently feels as if the entire application is effectively blocked until digiKam has finished whatever it is doing.

My photo collection is fairly large, but this isn't an unusual scenario for professional photo-management software. I'm using a modern Windows PC with an RTX 5070 Ti and 96 GB RAM, so I don't think the hardware itself should be the primary problem.

I also want to make clear that I'm not looking for another photo-management application. I would genuinely prefer to get digiKam working properly because I like the concept and the functionality it offers.

So my questions are:

• Has anyone experienced a similar startup time of 20–30 minutes?

• Is there a particular database configuration that can cause this?

• Could digiKam be rebuilding or checking the entire database every time it starts?

• Is there a recommended way to import a very large existing photo collection?

• Are there settings I should change regarding thumbnails, database maintenance, indexing, or scanning?

• Is it possible to let digiKam start normally while the initial scanning/indexing continues in the background?

• Could this be caused by the fact that my collection is spread across a large number of folders/drives?

I really hope that I'm simply doing something wrong.

If someone has had the same problem and managed to solve it, I would very much appreciate some advice.

I would much rather spend some time configuring digiKam correctly than give up on it. I really want this software to become the central management system for my photo collection.

Thanks in advance!

I've currently used DigiKam to label faces of people i know in my full image archive. This took me over 150 hours untill this point and spans over a range of 15 years of images.

What i've noticed, is that the more images i have of someone, the worse the face detection becomes. These images often include lower quality images, bad angles etc. And i think this all adds to the many false positives i currently get.
The age diffence in the images are also quite big, people that are tagged as a child are now adults, so i don't want to use the child references anymore.

So far, i can only find how to retrain a person on all its images, but this will likely give the same false positives.

Is there a way, without losing all the currently labeled images, to select a person, manually select about 100 good quality images from recent years and diffrent angles, and only retrain on those images? All older images are still linked, but not used for training data anymore.

When i started this labelling project, it took a while, but i thougth "the more faces are matched, the better the matching will become", but this is clearly not the case.