digiKam

digiKam is a popular digital photo management application for the K Desktop Environment (KDE). This software makes importing and organizing digital photos seamless. Photos can be organized in albums chronologically, by directory layout or by custom collections.

An easy to use interface is provided to connect to your digital camera, preview the images and download and/or delete them.

digiKam offers image enhancement tools through its KIPI (KDE Image Plugins Interface) framework and its own plugins, like red-eye removal, color management, image filters, or special effects.

The digiKam Image Editor has its own plugin subsystem with some common tools e.g. red eye correction or Gamma correction.

It has many provides professional level features, as highlighted in the feature list below.

digiKam 0.10.0-beta 8

Price Free to download Size 10.5MB License GNU GPL Developer Gilles Caulier, Marcel Wiesweg, and 8 other contributors Website www.digikam.org System Requirements AutoConf >= 2.5.x AutoMake >= 1.7.x libqt >= 3.3.x libkde >= 3.4.x (>=3.5.x recommended) libsqlite >= 3.x libgphoto2 >= 2.x   (>=2.2.x recommended) libkipi  >= 0.1 libkexiv2 >= 0.1.5 libkdcraw >= 0.1.1 liblcms >= 1.14.x libtiff >= 3.6.x (>=3.8.2 recommended) libpng >= 1.2.x libjasper >= 1.7.x Support Sites: digiKam Handbook, Kipi Project Selected Reviews: Softpedia, Free Software Magazine, Associated Content, debian.net, Tux Magazine

Features include:

• Organization of photos in albums and sub-albums
• Automatic sorting of Photo Albums in chronological order: By folder, collection name, and creation date
• Automatic sorting of album items in chronological order: By name, path, date and file size
• Albums can be organized into Collections
• Tags, Rating, Date and Time, Comments, Photographers ID, and Copyrights are stored in EXIF and/or IPTC metadata tags embedded in pictures. Comments are also stored in JPEG files to JFIF section. digiKam tags are stored in IPTC Keywords tags and digiKam rating in IPTC Urgency tag. That is, image files include your comments and all others information you set to it!
• DateTime/PhotographerId/Copyright EXIF metadata and/or IPTC tags can be set on the fly
• Metadata from new images imported to digiKam album collection are scanned automatically
• A SQLite database is used to store all albums and items meta-information for quick access and filtering
• Drag & drop support between digiKam and other KDE applications
• Support for RAW pictures, TIFF, PNG, JPEG, JPEG2000, PSD and many other popular file formats
• digiKam core, Image Editor and image filters support 16 bits color depth pictures (RAW, TIFF, PNG, JPEG2000)
• Support of more than 240 proprietary RAW camera file formats
• Using Kipi plugin architecture so that new plugins can be written for added functions
• GPS Editor
• Raw Converter
• IPTC Editor
• Image Editor has a full Color Management support using ICC color profiles.
• Setup Color Management
• Thumbnail sizes can be adapted to you screen size on the fly
• Sidebar used everywhere to display
  • metadata
    • EXIF information
    • Makernote information
    • IPTC information
    • GPS coordinates with worldmap viewer
  • image properties
    • comments/tags/rating/date
    • tag filter information
    • colors information: histogram and ICC profile
  • file properties
    • size
    • location
    • owner
• Fast preview pictures mode embedded into albums interface with zoom and panning features
• IPTC Metadata Viewer
• ICC Profile Viewer
• Fast Image Editor with keyboard shortcuts and basic photo editing/management features (all without losing EXIF/IPTC information). The Image Editor core options available are:
  • 16 bits image color depth support.
  • RAW camera image support.
  • Color Management support.
  • Red eyes correction
  • Brightness / Contrast / Gamma correction
  • Hue / Saturation / Luminosity correction
  • Color balance
  • Invert colors
  • Color auto-correction tools: Auto-levels / Normalize / Equalize / Stretch Contrast
  • Blur / Sharpen
  • EXIF/MakerNote/IPTC/GPS viewer
  • Histogram viewer
  • ICC profile viewer
  • Ratio-cropping with proportion aids and composing tools based on Fibonacci rules
  • Free cropping
  • Exporting to another image format
  • Printing images
  • Removing images from current Album
  • Image comments editing
  • Image file properties
  • Black and White and tonality converter using curves adjustments
  • Rotation
  • Flipping
  • Zooming
  • ICC profiles tool to perform advanced color corrections into images
• The digiKam image editor provides a plugins architecture to add new options
• Driving all digital camera types supported by Gphoto2 project:
  • Over 800 digital camera devices supported
  • Serial connection
  • USB connection
  • USB/IEEE Mass storage connection
  • Connecting autodetection of camera using HAL/KDE service
• Importing pictures from digital still cameras. Operations currently supported are:
  • Deleting images
  • Uploading images
  • Lock images
  • Auto-rename pictures during import
  • Auto-rotate pictures during import
  • Auto-creation of albums during import
  • LossLess conversion during import
  • Advanced camera information
• Setup Camera
• Camera Interface
• Easy comparing similar pictures using Light Table:
  • Raw files support
  • Advanced panning and zooming
  • Navigation by pair

digiKam also features in our 'Linux Equivalents to Windows Software' section. The category selector below allows you to filter the different types of software included in that separate article.

Last Updated Wednesday, August 12 2009 @ 02:10 PM EDT