DigiKam

Last updated
digiKam
Developer(s) KDE
Stable release
8.3.0 [1] [2]   OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg / 14 March 2024
Repository https://invent.kde.org/graphics/digikam.git
Written in C++ (Qt)
Operating system Linux, Windows, macOS [3]
Type
License GPL-2.0-or-later
Website www.digikam.org

digiKam is a free and open-source image organizer and tag editor written in C++ using the KDE Frameworks.

Contents

Features

digiKam runs on most known desktop environments and window managers, as long as the required libraries are installed. It supports all major image file formats, such as JPEG and PNG as well as over 200 raw image formats [4] and can organize collections of photographs in directory-based albums, or dynamic albums by date, timeline, or by tags. Users can also add captions and ratings to their images, search through them and save searches for later use. Using plug-ins, users can export albums to various online services including (among others) 23hq, Facebook, Flickr, Gallery2, Google Earth's KML files, Yandex.Fotki, MediaWiki, Rajce, SmugMug, Piwigo, Simpleviewer, Picasa Web Albums. Plug-ins are also available to enable burning photos to a CD and the creation of web galleries.

digiKam provides functions for organizing, previewing, downloading and/or deleting images from digital cameras. Basic auto-transformations can also be deployed on the fly during picture downloading. In addition, 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. digiKam was the only free photo management application on Linux that could handle 16 bit/channel images, until RawTherapee version 4.0 was released in 2011, using a new 32 bits/channel engine for all internal image processing. [5] Digital Asset Management is the mainstay of digiKam.

digiKam relies on libraries such as exiv2, allowing it to edit XMP metadata embedded in images or separately as sidecar files. [6] It also supports DNG format reading and writing. Marble is also integrated for editing and viewing of geolocations in images.

digiKam also efficiently caches image thumbnails and paths in a database, [7] in the PGF format, [8] allowing for quick overviews. There are various database backends to choose from, with scalability and portability considerations taken into account. [9] This database file is independent of photo libraries, enabling remote paths, multiple roots and offline backups.

As a non-modal image editor; digiKam's UI also supports live search boxes in both sidebars and the main window.

History

digiKam has been in development since before 2006.

As of version 0.9 features include a GPS locator [10] and synchronization, [11] iPod Photo upload support, [12] an advanced metadata editor, [13] better support for raw image formats (using dcraw included in digiKam), full color management, a light-table, [14] pan-tool in Image Editor and Preview mode, improvements in usability, and many new plugins.

digiKam 2.0 was released in July 2011, sporting a number of new features, including:

In August 2018 a beta version of DigiKam 6.0 was published. Improvements comprise support for video files used as photos, as well as new RAW and export options. [15]

Face detection and recognition

Starting with version 2.0, digiKam has introduced face recognition allowing you to automatically identify photos of certain people and tag them. DigiKam's photo manager was the first free project to feature similar functionality, with face recognition previously implemented only in proprietary products such as Google Picasa, Apple's Photos, and Windows Live Photo Gallery.

Face recognition was implemented in version 2.0 through the libface library, and from version 3.3 it is based on OpenTLD project work. Version 7.0.0-beta1 uses the Deep Neural Network module from the OpenCV library.

Other OS

Awards received

digiKam has been awarded the TUX 2005, 2008, and 2010 Readers' Choice Award in the category Favorite Digital Photo Management Tool. [17] [18] [19]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Exif</span> Metadata standard in digital images

Exchangeable image file format is a standard that specifies formats for images, sound, and ancillary tags used by digital cameras, scanners and other systems handling image and sound files recorded by digital cameras. The specification uses the following existing encoding formats with the addition of specific metadata tags: JPEG lossy coding for compressed image files, TIFF Rev. 6.0 for uncompressed image files, and RIFF WAV for audio files. It does not support JPEG 2000 or GIF encoded images.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Picasa</span> Image organizer and image viewer (2002–2016)

Picasa was a cross-platform image organizer and image viewer for organizing and editing digital photos, integrated with a now defunct photo-sharing website, originally created by a company named Lifescape in 2002. "Picasa" is a blend of the name of Spanish painter Pablo Picasso, the word casa and "pic" for pictures.

Digital Negative (DNG) is an open, lossless raw image format developed by Adobe and used for digital photography. It was launched on September 27, 2004. The launch was accompanied by the first version of the DNG specification, plus various products, including a free-of-charge DNG converter utility. All Adobe photo manipulation software released since the launch supports DNG.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">F-Spot</span> Free and open source image manager

F-Spot is a discontinued image organizer, that was designed to provide personal photo management for the GNOME desktop environment. The name is a play on the word F-Stop. F-Spot can be used for basic photo editing and management.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gwenview</span> Image viewer software for KDE

Gwenview is an image viewer for Unix-like systems and is released as part of the KDE Applications bundle. The current maintainer is Aurélien Gâteau. The word "Gwen" means "white" in the Breton language and is commonly used as a first name.

Raster graphics editors can be compared by many variables, including availability.

The Extensible Metadata Platform (XMP) is an ISO standard, originally created by Adobe Systems Inc., for the creation, processing and interchange of standardized and custom metadata for digital documents and data sets.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">XnView</span> Software for reading, viewing, and processing images

XnView is an image organizer and general-purpose file manager used for viewing, converting, organizing and editing raster images, as well as general purpose file management. It comes with built-in hex inspection, batch renaming, image scanning and screen capture tools. It is licensed as freeware for private, educational and non-profit uses. For other uses, it is licensed as commercial software.

A camera raw image file contains unprocessed or minimally processed data from the image sensor of either a digital camera, a motion picture film scanner, or other image scanner. Raw files are so named because they are not yet processed, and contain large amounts of potentially redundant data. Normally, the image is processed by a raw converter, in a wide-gamut internal color space where precise adjustments can be made before conversion to a viewable file format such as JPEG or PNG for storage, printing, or further manipulation. There are dozens of raw formats in use by different manufacturers of digital image capture equipment.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Windows Photo Gallery</span> Discontinued image organizer, photo editor and photo sharing program

Windows Photo Gallery is a discontinued image organizer, photo editor and photo sharing program. It is a part of Microsoft's Windows Essentials software suite. The product has been unavailable for download since January 10, 2017, as the Windows Essentials line of products have been discontinued.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Image organizer</span> Software for organising digital images

An image organizer or image management application is application software for organising digital images. It is a kind of desktop organizer software application.

KPhotoAlbum is an image viewer and organizer for Unix-like systems created and maintained by Jesper K. Pedersen. The core philosophy behind its creation was that it should be easy for users to annotate images and videos taken with a digital camera. Users can search for images based on those annotations and use the results in a variety of ways. Features include slideshows, annotation, KIPI plugin support for manipulating images, and Boolean searches.

Windows Imaging Component (WIC) is a COM-based imaging codec framework introduced in Windows Vista (and later available in Windows XP Service Pack 3) for working with and processing digital images and image metadata.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">FastPictureViewer</span> Freemium image viewer for Windows

FastPictureViewer is a freemium image viewer for Windows XP and later. Its aim is to facilitate quick review, rating and annotation of large quantities of digital images in the early steps of the digital workflow, with an emphasis on simplicity and speed. As an app with a freemium license, a basic version is available cost-free for personal, non-profit or educational uses, while a commercial license is required for the professional version with additional features. The basic version starts as a full version trial.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">ExifTool</span> Software

ExifTool is a free and open-source software program for reading, writing, and manipulating image, audio, video, and PDF metadata. It is platform independent, available as both a Perl library (Image::ExifTool) and command-line application. ExifTool is commonly incorporated into different types of digital workflows and supports many types of metadata including Exif, IPTC, XMP, JFIF, GeoTIFF, ICC Profile, Photoshop IRB, FlashPix, AFCP and ID3, as well as the manufacturer-specific metadata formats of many digital cameras.

In digital photography, the Camera Image File Format (CIFF) file format is a raw image format designed by Canon, and also used as a container format to store metadata in APP0 of JPEG images. Its specification was released on February 12, 1997.

KDE Image Plugin Interface is an API that allows creation of application-independent image processing plugins in the KDE project.

OpenRaster is a file format proposed for the common exchange of layered images between raster graphics editors. It is meant as a replacement for later versions of the Adobe PSD format. OpenRaster is still in development and so far is supported by a few programs. The default file extension for OpenRaster files is ".ora".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Darktable</span> Photography software

Darktable is a free and open-source photography application and raw developer. Rather than being a raster graphics editor like Adobe Photoshop or GIMP, it comprises a subset of image editing operations specifically aimed at non-destructive raw image post-production. It is primarily focused on improving a photographer's workflow by facilitating the handling of large numbers of images. It is freely available in versions tailored for most major Linux distributions, macOS, Solaris and Windows and is released under the GPL-3.0-or-later.

AV1 Image File Format (AVIF) is an open, royalty-free image file format specification for storing images or image sequences compressed with AV1 in the HEIF container format. It competes with HEIC, which uses the same container format built upon ISOBMFF, but HEVC for compression. Version 1.0.0 of the AVIF specification was finalized in February 2019.

References

  1. . 17 March 2024 https://www.digikam.org/news/2024-03-17-8.3.0_release_announcement/.{{cite web}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)
  2. . 14 March 2024 https://invent.kde.org/graphics/digikam/-/tags/v8.3.0.{{cite web}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)
  3. "Downloads; digiKam - Photo Management Program". digiKam. Retrieved 2017-08-07.
  4. "Supported File Formats". KDE. Archived from the original on 2016-03-04. Retrieved 2016-01-07.
  5. "digikam is a open-source Photo Management Software". digikam. 22 May 2021. Retrieved 2022-02-12.
  6. "digiKam: digiKam API reference page". www.digikam.org. Retrieved 2023-02-10.
  7. "Scan for New Items — Digikam Manual 8.0.0 documentation". docs.digikam.org. Retrieved 2023-02-10.
  8. "digiKam: digiKam API reference page". www.digikam.org. Retrieved 2023-02-10.
  9. "Database Settings — Digikam Manual 8.0.0 documentation". docs.digikam.org. Retrieved 2023-02-10.
  10. "GPS locator in action | digiKam - Photo Management Program". digiKam. Retrieved 2013-10-06.
  11. "has a new Kipi Plugin to synchronize pictures with a GPS device | digiKam - Photo Management Program". digiKam. Retrieved 2013-10-06.
  12. "has a new Kipi Plugin to export pictures to an IPod device | digiKam - Photo Management Program". digiKam. 2006-09-22. Retrieved 2013-10-06.
  13. "Full screenshots review of new Metadata Editor kipi-plugin | digiKam - Photo Management Program". digiKam. 2006-10-28. Retrieved 2013-10-06.
  14. "video of new digiKam Light Table in action | digiKam - Photo Management Program". digiKam. Retrieved 2013-10-06.
  15. "DigiKam 6.0.0 beta 1 is released". 19 August 2018.
  16. "Installing a package | digiKam - Photo Management Program". 2014-03-25. Archived from the original on 2014-03-25. Retrieved 2019-11-08.
  17. "wins TUX 2005 Readers Choice Award | digiKam - Photo Management Program". digiKam. 2005-09-01. Retrieved 2013-10-06.
  18. "wins TUX 2008 Readers Choice Award | digiKam - Photo Management Program". digiKam. 2008-05-02. Retrieved 2013-10-06.
  19. "Readers' Choice Awards 2010". Linux Journal. Retrieved 2013-10-06.