Bridging the XMP Gap with Digikam, RawTherapee, and Exiv2

Testing using Exiv2 XMP Tag Transfer -Featured Image

I found one way around the situation involving a DNG going to RawTherapee and creating a JPEG image that’s missing the title and tags when read by Digikam’s Exiv2 library. It may not be perfect, or even the best way. But it’s one way around the issue that I was easily able to confirm with about 5 minutes of messing around today. First up you want to tell Digikam to make XMP files to go along with all files:

Testing using Exiv2 XMP Tag Transfer - Digikam Options
Testing using Exiv2 XMP Tag Transfer – Digikam Options

Yeah, it’s messy in that it creates XMPs for JPEGs and everything, but it’s probably got some side benefits like having XMP files that work regardless of TIFF version and so on. Then add your metadata to a file:

Testing using Exiv2 XMP Tag Transfer - 6 - Tilting Dude
Testing using Exiv2 XMP Tag Transfer – 6 – Tilting Dude

you’ll see that it creates an XMP file:

Testing using Exiv2 XMP Tag Transfer - 7 - Tilting Dude Dolphin
Testing using Exiv2 XMP Tag Transfer – 7 – Tilting Dude Dolphin

Then send it to RawTherapee for processing. You’ll get this in the end:

Testing using Exiv2 XMP Tag Transfer - 8 - Tilting Dude Dolphin after post-processing
Testing using Exiv2 XMP Tag Transfer – 8 – Tilting Dude Dolphin after post-processing

So if you look in Digikam, no title or tags.

Testing using Exiv2 XMP Tag Transfer - 9 - Tilting Dude Digikam before running Exiv
Testing using Exiv2 XMP Tag Transfer – 9 – Tilting Dude Digikam before running Exiv

At this point, based only on the examples on Exiv2’s webpage, I need to change the XMP file to have the same name as the JPEG:

Testing using Exiv2 XMP Tag Transfer - 10 - Tilting Dude Dolphin  - changed XMP filename
Testing using Exiv2 XMP Tag Transfer – 10 – Tilting Dude Dolphin – changed XMP filename

Then I run this command:

Testing using Exiv2 XMP Tag Transfer - 11 - Tilting Dude - ran Exiv2
Testing using Exiv2 XMP Tag Transfer – 11 – Tilting Dude – ran Exiv2

And……viola!

Testing using Exiv2 XMP Tag Transfer - 11 - Tilting Dude - now it has a title
Testing using Exiv2 XMP Tag Transfer – 11 – Tilting Dude – now it has a title

Ideally, I’d like to write a script to do this so I don’t have to change the XMP filename – because if I make a few different versions of the file, I don’t want to have to keep changing the XMP. Still, there’s a solution that I know works well enough.