Preserve descriptions of duplicates

[emjaymeow]

When running de-duplication, would it be possible to preserve the description of the deleted duplicates by also adding the description to the preserved image?

Example:

Lower quality(LQ) google photos image in album "Dog" with description: "This is a cute dog"
Higher quality(HQ) original of the same image not in any album with no description.

Current de-duplication behaviour:

• De-duplication runs
• removes the LQ image
• ascociates the HQ image with the album "Dog"
• the description of the LQ image is lost. The HQ image has no description.

Desired de-duplication behaviour:

• De-duplication runs
• removes the LQ image
• ascociates the HQ image with the album "Dog"
• the description of the LQ image gets applied to the HQ image. The HQ image now has the description "This is a cute dog".

[emjaymeow]

I also just noticed the same happens on upload, when adding a google takeout zip with descriptions on the images. The descriptions get lost when my immich library already has the same images in higher quality.

It would be nice if the decription would be added to the higher quality version if it has none.

[simulot]

That makes sense.
On the other hand, if you run the import several times, the description will accumulate descriptions.

I should add a parameter to control how takeout comments are handled:

• remplace
• added to existing comment
• ignore

[emjaymeow]

True, that would be nice.
And if "add to existing description" is chosen, maybe compare the strings and if they are exactly the same then leave them be.
And if they are different then merge/add them. Or make that another option?

Btw, thank you for this great tool and your efforts!

[simulot]

The parameter list becomes a mess. I work on restructuring the command line argument parsing before.
Stay tuned.