digikam: advanced photo management
February 28th, 2007 edited by lucasEntry submitted by Amanda Angell. We are in a big need for new editors, able to dedicate time on a regular basis to debaday. See the contribute page for details, and contact us !
digiKam’s website states that it is an “advanced digital photo management application for Linux” which understates the programs abilities. It does everything from auto-detecting your camera, importing the photos, sorting your collection in useful ways, and does some basic - or even creative - photo editing. It is only available for KDE, so Gnome users miss out. It is Integrated into KDE applications using KIPI (KDE Image Plugin Interface), and can drag-and-drop into other KDE programs.
DigikamImagePlugins is an add-on that enhances the basic digiKam Image Editor into a much more powerful tool for playing with pictures. My favorites are the distortion effects, oil paint, and the adjust levels plug-ins. There is a Create Calendar section in digiKam’s Tools menu, which is a lot of fun and the end result can be printed or saved as a PDF.
digiKam uses dcraw 8.41 to decode “more than 200 proprietary camera file formats”, and the Gphoto2 project supports “over 700 digital camera devices”. Cameras using USB, serial connection, and USB/IEEE Mass storage connections are supported.
The camera interface is fast and smooth, with thumbnails to preview the pictures before downloading and, at least with Canon cameras, you have the option to only select new pictures for download.
Photos can be organized by albums, date, saved searches, and a completely customizable tagging system. This makes a big difference when trying to find and organise your photos as opposed to the simple date order of some programs.
Once in the main window, a left click opens the photo in the digiKam Image Editor. Right click for more options, including opening the photo in other editing programs (such as the Gimp). Movie files are opened in your favorite multimedia software.
In comparison, I have been using Gnome’s camera import using gthumb image viewer for 6 months and there are noticeably less camera interface options. It feels a little disjointed and doesn’t have the options of sorting your photos into albums, tags or ratings. In-fact, I feel that digiKam handles my camera better than the original Windows XP software.
Version 0.9.0 is available in Debian (experimental) and Ubuntu.
digiKam won the 2005 TUX Readers’ Choice Award for “Favorite Digital Photo Management Tool”, and for good reason. It is powerful, easy to use, and intuitive.
February 28th, 2007 at 5:32 am
digikam will work in gnome just like any other kde application.
February 28th, 2007 at 6:13 am
Thanks for reminding me about digikam! I’d installed picasa for linux, and was kind of luke warm about it: it’s heavy (82MB) for a linux program, and wasn’t organizing photos the way I like them. Digikam’s making me much happier!
February 28th, 2007 at 9:03 am
Yes digikam is a very good program. It rules, like many KDE apps. (amarok, k3b, kopete, …)
February 28th, 2007 at 3:35 pm
Agreed - I use this myself too. I use Gnome too, so when installing you’ll get the KDE libraries to have it work.
BIGGEST feature is the fact that I can import RAW images directly unlike Gnome’s photo import tool (which only does jpg and not RAW’s) from my Canon SLR camera - I previously used the command line to do the same job (gphoto2 -P - this download everything)
January 23rd, 2008 at 7:19 am
It pains me when I have to use KDE app on GNOME desktop. There are no GNOME apps that I have to use on KDE.