![]() The programmers have put some considerable thought into making importing simple. Here you will find thumbnails of all the image files on the camera or media you’ve selected. Either this, or using the Camera menu within digiKam, will bring you to the Import images wizard (figure 1). This means that right clicking on a camera or removable media desktop icon will give you an option to “Download images with digiKam”. The import images wizardĭigiKam integrates excellently into the KDE desktop. Another benefit of this approach is that it won’t run the batteries down on your camera. Media connected via one of these USB devices invariably appear as a removable media icon on your KDE desktop. If your camera has removable media, such as Compact Flash, Smart Media or XD cards, you may find it more convenient to use a card reader. Many low- to mid-range digital cameras connect as a USB mass storage device in much the same way as USB flash keys. Even if yours is not directly listed you may well find it will work. If you have never connected your camera to your desktop then give it a tryĭigiKam will import images directly from a wide range of digital cameras, scanners and removable media. Many recent versions of GNU/Linux distributions have excellent support for USB devices and often just plugging in a device will result in that device appearing on your desktop. If you have never connected your digital camera to your desktop then I suggest you give it try. Whilst I won’t go into the details of connecting specific devices to your desktop, I will give an overview. This philosophy extends throughout digiKam and the result is a seamless set of very powerful but easy to use features. A nice touch is that digiKam does this within its own interface meaning you are not forced to run one application then another just to manage your photos. Using the tried and tested free software principle of not reinventing the wheel, digiKam employs gphoto2 to handle the image capture side of things. Of course, before you do anything else you need to download your photos from your camera into digiKam. This article is based on v0.92, which at the time of this writing is the latest version. Naturally, KDE is the preferred desktop for running digiKam, the capital K in the name being a clue, and it is under that desktop that I use it. Of course, you may have to install some KDE libraries with it, but any package manager worthy of the name should take care of that. While digiKam is an official part of KDE, it can be run under other free desktops such as XFCE and GNOME (although for a GTK interface you might like to consider F-Spot). Finally, for those who like to get their hands a little dirtier, source tar balls can be downloaded from the digiKam site. Also, if it is available, I would recommend installing the Kipi plugins package for extra functionality (more on that later). If your package manager doesn’t install gphoto2 automatically, then you’ll need this package as well. Both of these have documentation packages that are very good, so I recommend them. On my Debian system, I also installed the “digikamimageplugins” package which provides many of the editing tools discussed later. In most of the cases I have found, the package is simply called “digikam”. ![]() BSD users should also have a package available. Pretty much any GNU/Linux distribution which has packages for KDE available will include a digiKam package. ![]() Installing digiKam is easily done through package managers, such as Synaptic, Yum, etc. It is written with photographers in mind and not just the professional.ĭigiKam “photo management for the masses”-that says a lot about its aims Installation ![]() That statement should tell you a lot about the aims of this accomplished application. The title on the digiKam website declares that it is “photo management for the masses”. While professionals are more at home using packages like the GIMP (okay, it’s more likely Photoshop, but we can dream), the home user generally wants something half as complex to use but with two-thirds the capabilities. Everyone is a photographerĭigital photography is now part and parcel of many home computer users’ lives and they are demanding more from their software. Let’s see how one of the more popular free software photo management applications, digiKam, measures up. Managing digital photographs is just one of those needs. It’s been said that for a free software desktop to succeed it needs to address the needs of the average home user. ![]()
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