Migrating from iPhoto to digikam
This is a longish story about how I migrated my photo library from Apple's discontinued iPhoto application to the open source program digikam (version 5.9.0 beta from March 2018). If you follow a similar migration path and make the same decisions as I did on what data to keep and what data to discard, then I hope you will find a reusable solution in this story. These are the pieces:
- An AppleScript for the initial iPhoto export
- A shell script for post-processing and preparing the exported data for the digikam import
- The instructions how to configure digikam to make the import work
- Optional cleanup work and sync'ing back of metadata to image files
A warning before you dig in: Although I have tried to explain everything in as much detail as I could, you should be prepared for surprises and an arduous migration - it certainly was for me.