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0001 .. meta:: 0002 :description: digiKam Main Window Tags View 0003 :keywords: digiKam, documentation, user manual, photo management, open source, free, learn, easy, tags, manager 0004 0005 .. metadata-placeholder 0006 0007 :authors: - digiKam Team 0008 0009 :license: see Credits and License page for details (https://docs.digikam.org/en/credits_license.html) 0010 0011 .. _tags_view: 0012 0013 Tags View 0014 --------- 0015 0016 Hierarchical tagging provides a flexible and powerful way to organize and catalog your images. Tags (also called *keywords* in other applications) are labels that can be applied to individual images or whole groups. Once a tag has been set to an image the image can be found again by selecting the tag or doing a search. 0017 0018 Tags can be arranged in a hierarchical tree. This allows you to organize your tags in a logical manner. You can collapse parts of the tree in the **Tags** list so that you can easily find the tags that you are looking for. 0019 0020 .. figure:: images/mainwindow_tags_view.webp 0021 :alt: 0022 :align: center 0023 0024 The digiKam Nested Tags Tree-View 0025 0026 When a tag is selected in the Left Sidebar, all of the images that are marked with that tag are displayed in the View Area. 0027 0028 But before assigning and using tags you first have to define them. If you import photographs with tags assigned digiKam will build an appropriate tag tree during import. Other than that you have to define tags by yourself. An easy access to that is the context menu shown in the screenshot above. 0029 0030 .. _managing_tags: 0031 0032 Managing Tags 0033 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 0034 0035 You can add new tags by clicking with the right mouse button on either the Tags label or an existing tag and selecting **New Tag...**. A dialog will open where you can type in the tag name (or even a whole hierarchy branch), assign an icon and/or a shortcut to the tag. If you add a new tag by clicking with the right mouse button on an existing tag, your new tag will be created as a sub-tag. 0036 0037 You can delete a tag by clicking with the right mouse button on the tag you want to delete and selecting **Delete Tag**. When you delete a tag, the photographs themselves are not deleted. Simply the tag is removed from those photographs. 0038 0039 You can move the position of a tag within the tree by dragging it to the position that you want and dropping it there. A menu will appear that gives you the option to **Move** the tag. This works from the left and right sidebar. A tag can only be in one place in the tree at a time. 0040 0041 You can set the Tag Properties by clicking with the right mouse button on a tag and selecting **Properties...**. The Tag Properties allow you to change the name of the tag, the icon used in the Tags tree and the shortcut. 0042 0043 .. figure:: images/mainwindow_tag_properties.webp 0044 :alt: 0045 :align: center 0046 0047 The digiKam Tags Properties Dialog 0048 0049 To select a photograph as the tag icon, click with the right mouse button on the photograph that you want to use as the tag icon and select **Set as Tag Thumbnail** from the context menu. Additionally you can use drag and drop to set the tag icon. Drag the images icon and drop it on the currently selected tag in the tag list. 0050 0051 A tool for more elaborate work on big tag trees is the :ref:`Tag Manager <tag_manager>` which you can access by clicking the **Open Tag Manager** button at the top of the Tags tree. 0052 0053 In the :ref:`Digital Asset Management (DAM) <asset_tags>` chapter of this handbook you can find some useful considerations about how to build your Tags tree. 0054 0055 It is not always easy to build a logical hierarchy from general and generic categories. You might run into a problem like this: 0056 0057 - Animal 0058 - Domestic Animal 0059 - Cat 0060 - Cattle 0061 - Dog 0062 0063 - Wild Animal 0064 - Bird 0065 - Cat 0066 - Cheetah 0067 - Lion 0068 - Tiger 0069 0070 - Zoo Animal 0071 - Bird 0072 - Cat 0073 - Cheetah 0074 - Leopard 0075 0076 In this tag tree the keyword *Cat* appears three times. This will not cause a problem within digiKam but there are quite a few views where the user cannot know which of the three is applied to an image because they might not be able to see the whole hierarchy of the tag. A help could be to tag the image in a case like this also with the parent tag or even the whole hierarchy but it becomes quite unwieldy, e.g. in the image icon if you have the tags displayed there. The second *Cat* can be avoided by calling it *Wild Cat* but calling the third one *Zoo Cat* is a bit out of the roof, I think. And still: there are also two *Cheetah*! 0077 0078 Solution: You replace the *Zoo Animal* branch by a single tag *Zoo* which you use in addition to the tag you choose from the two remaining branches. You could even put it on the top level of your hierarchy if you have photographs taken in a zoo but not showing animals. 0079 0080 .. _tag_manager: 0081 0082 Tag Manager 0083 ~~~~~~~~~~~~ 0084 0085 There are certain possibilities to manage tags from the context menu on tags in the digiKam sidebars like **New Tag...** or **Delete Tag**. The Tag Manager offers a more comfortable and comprehensive way to organize your tags. For general information about tags, why and how to use them see :ref:`this page <tags_view>` from the beginning. 0086 0087 .. figure:: images/mainwindow_tag_manager.webp 0088 :alt: 0089 :align: center 0090 0091 The digiKam Tag Manager Window 0092 0093 The toolbar at the top offers: 0094 0095 - An adaptive search field to find certain tags in a big tree. 0096 0097 - A button to add a tag as a sub-tag to the current (last clicked) tag. 0098 0099 - A button to delete a tag or a selection of tags. 0100 0101 - The drop down menu **Organize** which contains: 0102 0103 - **Edit Tag Title** :kbd:`F2` to modify tag name. 0104 0105 - **Reset Tag Icon** to the standard tag icon. 0106 0107 - **Create Tag from Address Book** to import address book items as new tags. 0108 0109 - **Mark Unassigned Tags** marks all tags that are unassigned. 0110 0111 - **Invert Selection**, useful if you want to select most but not all of your tags. 0112 0113 - **Expand Selected Nodes** expands only the selected nodes from the tag tree. 0114 0115 - **Expand Tag Tree** expands all of the nodes of the tag tree. 0116 0117 - **Collapse Tag Tree** collapses all of the nodes of the tag tree. 0118 0119 - **Remove Tag from Images** removes selected tag(s) from all images. 0120 0121 - And the drop down menu **Sync Export** which contains: 0122 0123 - **Write Tags from Database to Image** to sync image metadata with tags from database. 0124 0125 - **Read Tags from Image** to write tags in database using image metadata. 0126 0127 - **Wipe all Tags from Database only**. 0128 0129 The **Tag Manager** window consists of three parts, the **Quick Access List** to the left, the **Tags** tree (or parts of it) in the middle and the **Tag Properties** to the right for the selected tag. 0130 0131 The Quick Access List allows you to display only a certain node (and its sub-nodes) in the tag tree window. Select a tag in the tag tree and clic on **Add to List** button. The tag will appear in the Quick Access List. If you select it there the tag tree will show only that node which you can still expand to see the sub-nodes. Note that the tag tree will also show only a limited number of tags while using the search field. It will show only those tags that contain the string in the search field. 0132 0133 The Tag Properties dialog allows you to change the name of the tag, the icon used in the Tag tree and the shortcut. 0134 0135 Tagging Photographs 0136 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 0137 0138 Before you can get the most out of digiKam's tagging capabilities, you must first tag your photographs. There are a few methods for that task. Once you have identified the photographs that you want to tag you can either drag and drop them onto the tag in the Tags tree or, by clicking with the right mouse button on the selected photographs in the Image Window, you can use the **Assign Tag** menu to select the tags you wish to set. 0139 0140 Drag and Drop: works with both sidebars provided they are showing tags of course. With the Right Sidebar it works the obvious way: you drag the tag and drop it onto the photograph or selection of photographs you want to tag. With the Left Sidebar you have to drag the photographs to the tags. You want to know why? Just try it the other way and you will see. 0141 0142 .. tip:: 0143 0144 You can also use drag and drop between tabs from same sidebar, for example dragging a icon-view item from **Albums** to the **Tags** view. To switch from one tab to another one, just move the mouse over the tab title for a few seconds while dragging, the new view will be enabled and dragging operation can continue. 0145 0146 Shortcuts: as mentioned earlier in this chapter you can assign keyboard shortcuts in the Tag Properties. With these you can assign or un-assign a tag to the selected photograph(s). 0147 0148 Context menu: by clicking with the right mouse button on the selected photographs and choosing **Assign Tag** you will see the next menu step offering the ten most recently used tags, **Add New Tag...**, described at the beginning of the :ref:`previous section <managing_tags>`, and **More Tags...** which leads to what is described in the next paragraph. The context menu method is obviously very useful if you use only a limited number of tags out of your whole tree for a while. 0149 0150 .. figure:: images/mainwindow_assigntags.webp 0151 :alt: 0152 :align: center 0153 0154 Tagging Image With Context Menu From Icon-View 0155 0156 You can remove a tag from a photograph by clicking with the right mouse button on the photograph and select **Remove Tag** submenu from the context menu. This submenu will only show those tags that have been set on this photograph. 0157 0158 The Right Sidebar: this is what I would call my standard method for assigning tags. Click **Captions** tab from the Right Sidebar and then the **Tags** tab and you will see the whole tags tree. Simply check/un-check the boxes of the tags you want to assign/un-assign and then click **Apply**. If you change focus without that you will be asked whether you want to apply the changes unless you disabled that confirmation either by checking **Always apply changes without confirmation** or by checking **Do not confirm when applying changes in the right sidebar** in the Miscellaneous section of :menuselection:`Settings --> Configure digiKam...`. More details about the other buttons and fields in the **Tags** tab see in :ref:`digiKam sidebar <tags_tree>`. 0159 0160 You can label a photograph with as many tags as you like. The photograph will appear when you select any of the tags that are set against it. This way you can set a tag for each person in a photograph, as well as the place the photograph was taken, the event it was taken at, etc. 0161 0162 Once you have tagged a photograph, the tag name will appear under the thumbnail in the Image Area. 0163 0164 .. tip:: 0165 0166 Tags are stored in a database for fast access, and, the applied tags are written into IPTC data fields of the image (at least for JPEG). So you can use your tags with other programs or, in case of loss of that data in the database, the tags will be re-imported when the image is noticed by digiKam.