Hi,

I have a problem with updated images. I installed a software update to day, but it was a problem before too.

Following steps I did:

• I have an image at the album with data which I need to update
• I copied the update to the jAlbum source folder and the old image is replaced
• at jAlbum anything looks fine, the data are still complete (at an older version I lost data some times)
• make album and upload
• online not all data are shown

I down know how to get the data online now.

Best-
Micha

I don't know why it is enabled. I disabled it now, started "make album" ... but it seems to have nothing to do with the problem, it still exist. Thanks for the quick reply, though.

Every now and then I had the effect that after an image update there was data in jAlbum, but not in the output. After restarting jAlbum, the data was also gone in jAlbum. This is still the case now.

The updating of images does not seem to work properly, sometimes the data disappears immediately and other times they are still displayed, but are no longer available internally, which only becomes apparent after a restart.

It would be nice if the process of image exchange and data retention could be checked. I have a lot of pictures to update and it is a lot of work to collect and enter the data again. Keyword and title get lost some times and seldom all.

Unfortunately the error only occurs irregularly, maybe one in ten loses data. The bug will be hard to find.

This is just a hunch, but....

Do you rely solely on titles and comments that you enter within jAlbum, or are you trying to extract titles and comments from metadata (like IPTC or EXIF) that are embedded in the original photos? If you're using just jAlbum-entered titles and comments, try the settings in the attached screenshot.

(David - what I think might be happening is that there might be, for example, a blank or non-printing character in something like an IPTC field. So, he enters a title, but then jAlbum retrieves that "garbage" IPTC entry, and overwrites it. Just a guess.)

David, this is one of those things I've been pissing and moaning about for years. The attached screenshot is from over three years ago, and represents what the metadata panel should look like.

In short, it should use jAlbum-entered titles, comments, and keywords, no matter what. It shouldn't be possible to turn them off, ever, under any circumstances. Why would someone ever enter a comment, but then want to have it ignored?

If the user wants to pick up other metadata, he certainly knows what fields they're in, and he can tell jAlbum to use them if there are no jAlbum entries.

For title and comment, it should be "first found." For keywords, maybe it should pick up all of them - keywords entered in jAlbum, plus whatever it finds in any other fields the user has specified.

ETA: To be clear, I wouldn't want any of the fields to be prefilled, except for the mandatory "jAlbum" fields. It might be OK to prefill the second choice for title with xmp.dc:title[1] and for comment with xmp.dc:description[1]. But when it comes to EXIF and IPTC fields, your chances of guessing correctly are probably less than 50/50.

Jeff, I probably don't object to making those changes to the settings UI, but it takes time and effort.

I need the data from jAlbum with first priority and if a file arrives without data, then the existing data in jAlbum should not be replaced by nothing. However, I would like to write the data from jAlbum to XMP.

At the moment a lot of data has disappeared because XMP is disabled. If I now switch on XMP, what happens? I have looked, in my image folder there are PNG with XMP and without. I'm afraid that the images without XMP will again destroy the data already added to jAlbum.

At the moment I plan to omit XMP and re-enter all data in jAlbum manually. There are none on my website because I haven't uploaded a new album today.

I generally recommend both reading and writing xmp as the primary setting. xmp has the advantage that your metadata is stored in an open format and that it's carried along with your images. However, if you replace an image with another one with the same name, then the xmp data is naturally lost.

When you write titles to images using jAlbum, its written both to xmp and to jAlbum proprietary .info files that are stored within the ".jalbum" folder next to the images. If "xmp" is activated as a comment source, it has precedence over jAlbum's proprietary .info files, that's why the metadata seems lost after you've replaced and image, but shows up if you deselect "xmp".

Can't you write the xmp data to the source images using whatever software you use for them? That way you don't need to fiddle with jAlbum's metadata settings at all?

For users like me, jAlbum is the only tool to assign data to photos. jAlbum data should have priority over XMP, especially if it is empty.

If "xmp" is activated as a comment source, it has precedence over jAlbum's proprietary .info files, that's why the metadata seems lost after you've replaced and image, but shows up if you deselect "xmp".

For me, this is totally the wrong approach. Data created in jAlbum should have priority. jAlbum is my tool, nothing other.

I will deactivate XMP, fix the data to the hundred or so images and hope that they are preserved.

My wish would be:

• write the data to XMP at the push of a button as a kind of data backup
• read XMP data at the push of a button, with the option to skip empty XMP

Edited by: M-i-c-h-a on 20 Jan 2024, 15:14