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digiKam stands alone - for me it's a FOSS game-changer

Posted by Steven_Rosenber on · 8 comments
Click; By Steven Rosenberg
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I've been using digiKam a bit more to edit images for Web publication. I still find it awkward as hell, I haven't yet figured out the "right" way to sharpen a photo, and I'm puzzled as to why you can't edit an image's metadata and the image itself at the same time. But edit the image's metadata — including the all-important IPTC data that each and every photojournalist in the world embeds into JPEGs — you can.

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Comments (8)

I love Digikam, archive management, RAW conversion, and basic editing all in one. One of the shining FOSS stars.
Tc -

I agree. My wife agrees. Our kids agree.

As to being clunky to use...

HUH???????

Have you ever tried to wade through that easy to use stuff that gets packaged with the cameras?

Digikam is lovely.
> Have you ever tried to wade through that easy to use stuff that gets packaged with the cameras?

I just removed Kodak Easyshare from a computer. That piece of software has to be one of the worst written/most intrusive of any ever made.

We got a copy of the equivalent Fuji software with a Fuji camera we got many years ago. When we installed it on our then current Win98 machine, it blue screened it and we had to reinstall Win98 to get rid of it.
Quoting:Have you ever tried to wade through that easy to use stuff that gets packaged with the cameras?


Yes, two weeks ago, from Fuji, and rotating images was easier than with Digikam I have to admit. Changing the dates was also rather easy, but you had to do it day by day (the CLI tool for Windows XP worked for 'one of the two dates' attached to JPEG's?).

Nonetheless, after I found out Gentoo screwed up (I did?) and 'downgraded' to digiKam 0.9, I'm now happy with 0.10 again. I just rotated photos and sent them (coincidentally) two minutes ago!
I make a great deal of use of the geolocation plugins. I'm not rich enough to afford a digital camera with a built-in GPS, so I synchronize the camera's clock with the GPS and record my tracks when I go it. Digikam can take the timestamps on the photos and correlate them to locations along the track, inserting the GPS data. There's a Google Maps based interface for fine-tuning the locations, too.

I still tend to do my photo-editing in GIMP though.
I must be the weird one...my workflow generally consists of: Take pics Download RAWs to appropriately created directories (I use the date and name of the event) Batch convert them to jpg with a script that runs ufraw in batch mode. Do any re-processing in ufraw or gimp

Maybe I'll have to take a look at digikam and see if it would fit my workflow. :P I've just generally found most photo management programs to be more annoying than useful to me.

@techiem2

I do exactly like you with batch-processing and then going back over some shots that need it with UFRaw or RawTherapee. I use digikam primarily for organizing files and for 16-bits operations on UFRaw-generated PNG's

Digikam's photo editing tools are excellent, cataloging is a bit annoying, I agree, but without it I cannot find anything anymore ;-(
I can't seem to get the sharpening right in digiKam. I just need to sharpen and have it look the same way it does in the GIMP. It just doesn't look as good when I do it the various ways in digiKam.

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