Sorry for the long delay, but I fiddled around quite a bit to see what I could do. I did use the exact same directory structure as the original machine, but that did not seem to help. Looking at the database, it seems as though Shotwell uses the thumbnails, and their references, to keep track of the actual pictures.
The problem seems to be that the sequence of cataloging pictures is different in the original machine and the new machine. In the original machine, groups of pictures were added at different times, in different amounts, and in the appropriate file directories of the original machine. These were catalogued as they were added. In the new machine, all the files were transferred over, and the cataloging order was very different from the original machine. This results in a different reference number for each thumbnail, and seems to be the reason why using the original database points to all the wrong pictures for the same tags. I'm not positive about this, but that's the way it looks. Fortunately, I had a duplicate copy of most of the pictures on a different machine which was still running okay. I found out that Shotwell will write the tag information if the pictures are exported, and so I exported all the pictures on this different machine. I uninstalled everything on the new machine, reinstalled Shotwell, copied the exported pictures to the new machine, imported them, and the resulting tags are generated at import, and do point to the correct pictures. This leaves quite a few pictures which were not duplicated on the second machine, but I will have to just retag these. Also, by having to use the exported pictures, I lose the really useful directory structures I had on the original machine - all the pictures are now in one directory. So, for now, it looks like the only way to preserve the correct tags is to make sure you have an exported copy of all your pictures, and these would be used instead of the original pictures if you're moving to a new machine. And, I'd like to thank the folks who responded to my original posting. -- rikona _______________________________________________ shotwell-list mailing list [email protected] https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/shotwell-list
