At present to do what I want I would need to ... I don't do this.

For any software to work, it has to be used as intended. Many of the tasks you note are handled by some programs, when they are used the way they were designed to be used. However, there is no software I know of that will reliably locate arbitrarily named and located files; identify the original; and propagate metadata across duplicates.

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Cataloging Software

After you start using a program that catalogs files and changes, it may help you to manage files and track changes as long as you use it the way it was intended.

Different programs use different schemes or databases to track changes and duplicates. For instance, in addition to maintaining a database, DigiKam marks and recognizes duplicates with _v# appended to the filename. Tracking is likely to fail when files are arbitrarily manipulated by external tools.

Useful Utilities

There is software that can assist you with some of the tasks you describe. If desired, you can tie them together by writing scripts.

• findimagedupes to locate images that are visually similar and likely to be associated with each other.

• exiftool to extract and compare EXIF data (date, time, various camera settings, etc) to increase confidence that certain files are really associated with each other.

• jpegjudge to compare the "quality" of JPEG images to determine which is more likely to be the original, when a clear original, such as a raw file, does not exist.

• exiftool to copy metadata.

  for i in *_v[0-9].* ; do
     exiftool -TagsFromFile "${i%_v[0-9].*}".{raf,cr2} "$i" \
        || exiftool -TagsFromFile "${i%_v[0-9].*}".jpg "$i"
  done
  

Additionally, scripts are useful to automate tasks such as rotating images or stitching 360 panoramas.

Keep files organized

To avoid worsening the problem, follow a consistent naming scheme in which associated files are kept together. The exact scheme does not matter as long as it allows you to differentiate originals and locate desired images.

Dump your old files into a centralized location and re-organize them under the new scheme as-needed. Images you do not revisit have demonstrated themselves to be unimportant.

Some recommendations:

• Keep associated images together (in the same folder).
• Keep track of the date (and time with subseconds/index).
• Keep track of the location.
• Keep track of the subject.
• Keep track of originals and derivatives.
• Keep track of photographers and cameras.
• Automate (some) tasks with scripts.

20180704 (Chicago, IL) Lincoln Park Zoo/FujiFilm X-E2/20180704-122532.000 Great Apes_v0.raf

Although tools, such as exiftool, can be used to create the basic folder structure and rename files when they are copied from the memory card, there is no way around manually typing some of the information because computers currently lack the ability to read your mind.

EXTL_RENAME_STR='-FileName\<\${DateTimeOriginal}%-c.%le \
   -FileName\<\${DateTimeOriginal}.\${SubSecTimeOriginal}%-c.%le'
EXTL_FLAGS_STD="-v -P -q -fast2 -fileOrder FileName"
EXTL_DATE_FMT="-d %Y%m%d/%Y%m%d-%H%M%S"
EXTS="jpg mov mpo cr2 raf dng jps mp4"

EXTL_EXTS=''
for ext in ${EXTS} ; do
   EXTL_EXTS="${EXTL_EXTS} -ext ${ext}"
done

exiftool $EXTL_FLAGS_STD $EXTL_RENAME_STR $EXTL_DATE_FMT $EXTL_EXTS .