Debian Multimedia :: Copy Set Of Photos Out Of Digikam (on Mate)

This is probably a bit of an unusual combination, but I'm using Digikam on Maté. Maybe the problem I'm about to describe just isn't an issue on KDE.

I have my photos in digikam, separated out into various folders. I use the timeline view or the tag view to show just a subset of photos, where the photos are scattered across different folders. Then I want to take those photos and make copies of them onto somewhere else outside of digikam's control, like a USB stick or an external drive or even just another folder. I do not want to change the photos which are in digikam, and I don't want to lose the folder information, tags etc.

I select the photos I want, and choose "Edit"->"Copy". But in my file manager Caja there is no "Paste" command available. I guess that Digikam has copied them into a KDE clipboard and Caja can't find them.

I can drag them into another folder of digikam, and that offers me a pop menu - do I want to move or copy? I can also cancel this if I realise it's not what I want to do.

I can also drag them to Caja, but then I have to be really careful. If I just let go (expecting the move/copy prompt), then it just goes right ahead and moves the pictures out of digikam, which is absolutely awful. The photos are gone from digikam, I lose what folders they were in, I lose what tags they had, and there's no confirmation. I have to spend ages moving the photos back where they came from, trying really hard not to lose any, and even then the tags are gone. I guess the file timestamps are destroyed too but I guess that's not so important. It's just a difficult task depending on how many photos there were and how many different folders, and how jumbled the filenames were.

Ok, so now I know that I have to hold the Ctrl key down when I drag, but still the mouse can accidentally let go before I press the key (I can only press the Ctrl after I start dragging, otherwise it deselects the photo I drag with).

The whole thing just seems fragile and error-prone, and there must be a way to make this less painful.

Maybe I can use something other than caja which handles the drop bit of the drag-and-drop better?

Maybe I can configure digikam to temporarily "lock" the photo database to prevent any accidental changes to the files?

Maybe I can configure digikam to confirm before moving files like this, so I can say "cancel"? (I already have "confirm when moving to wastebin" and "confirm when permanently deleting")

Maybe there's another mechanism for copy/paste from digikam to the file system which is more reliable? Some kind of export with a plain copy?

I'm guessing one popular response might be "don't use digikam with Maté", but I like both so that's tricky to resolve.

Failing any of those, is there any separate tool to search through a tree of photos, select those from a given timerange, and copy them to somewhere else? Either keeping the original folder structure or flattening it?