digikam
It provides a simple interface which makes importing and organizing digital photographs a "snap". digiKam enables you to manage large numbers of digital photographs in albums and to organize these photographs for easy retrieval using tags (keywords), captions, collections, dates, geolocation and searches. It has many features for viewing, organizing, processing and sharing your images. Thus, digiKam is a formidable digital asset management (DAM) software including powerful image editing functions.
An easy-to-use camera interface is provided, that will connect to your digital camera and download photographs directly into digiKam albums. More than 1000 digital cameras are supported by the gphoto2 library. Of course, any media or card reader supported by your operating system will interface with digiKam.
digiKam incorporates a fast Image Editor with many image editing tools. You can use the Image Editor to view your photographs, comment and rate them, correct, enhance and alter them. The editing power can be easily extended by a set of plugins, the KDE Image Plugins Interface (manual)
While digiKam remains easy to use, it provides professional level features by the dozens. It is fully 16 bit enabled including all available plugins, supports RAW format conversion through libraw, DNG export and ICC color management work flow.
Latest reviews
The main reason for a 3 here is that the version is older. This is normal for deb packaged apps in a carefully curated distribution like Mint. If you want the newer version (like I do), I recommend you install either the Flatpak (also available in the Software Manager in Mint) or go to the DigiKam website and get the appimage. I will have a more complete review under the Flatpak, since that is the most recent version.
Outdated Version. Better to install it via the terminal with: sudo apt-get install digikam. (Digikam 7.5.0)
I've used Digikam for many years and it just keeps growing with new features and major improvements. I'm currently using beta 7.0 looking for bugs. (I haven't found any yet...), This latest version comes with several neat new features. It now supports videos without crashing. The ability to view thumbnails in large format actually allows me to delete crud without needing to go to slide show format. Weeding through all of the duplicates that come with using continues shooting is really easy. I set up a keystroke combination that I use to mark photos for deletion and can go through hundreds of photos in a few minutes. Creating finger prints for finding duplicates does take time and resources but then duplicate finding works well since I can set the degree of similarity I want. I'm still not proficient with face recognition. I suspect I need to start with portrait quality images of each person and expect to match them within a limited age range. Overall I love Digikam. I recommend getting the latest stable release 6.4 in appimage format directly from Digikam and wait until 7.0 is official then upgrade.
I tried it and it was so SLOW ! and blunt
it was scanning through a 1.5T hard disk, cause I marked it as "where keep my images" -- a mistake.
What I'd want is open an image and browse the directory. But this is impossible. Whatever you want to see, you'll first have to add to its library.
Nonsense.
I like Canon's DPP. And Darktable (although it is slow for browsing, very slow). I hoped that Digikam would be a cool and fast thing. I simply cannot use it... sorry...
my workflow:
- open a directory of pix,
- go over them, watch each of them at a relatively large size,
- mark them if you like them (stars) or select them (numbers),
- and do image editing, brightness, contrast, gamma, hue -- all in a nondestructive manner...
this is what I'd like to do... but it is not possible.
today I revisited it, a year later, only to find that nothing's changed
Me encantaba, pero que lástima que las últimas versiones me han dado muchos problemas. No me funciona en Mint 18.
As some users said, if you want Digikam to work you must also install this packages: apt install kdelibs-bin kdelibs5-data kdelibs5-plugins If you want to see icons and some missing buttons: apt install kdeartwork And to have readable tooltips (cause foreground and background colors can make them unreadable): apt install systemsettings kdebase-runtime Then start systemsettings and change tooltip text color in "Application Appearance > Colors (in left list) > Colors (the tab) > Tooltip text".
not a fan of the odd user interface, which compels the user to create and configure "libraries," or whatever. Where is the app that will simply navigate to a directory, display the images, and allow basic edits?
This simply does not work. Hangs immediately when trying to add a collection. Photo software that does not support photos? Funny.
Very little is anything has change since the last try 8 months ago. Still deadly slow on moderately high end machine. But most won't have 1.5tb of stock to catalog.
On Mint17 Cinnamon you must install these as well: sudo apt-get install kdelibs-bin kdelibs5-data kdelibs5-plugins (as the other user said below), missing dependency... :(
runs also on Cinnamon, btw , best ever. But for people with less knowledge/interest in photography, it might be too much
This is the best asset management app for linux, from keywording to resizing and watermarking, this app does an excellent job. It's editing functions are so so at best though.
See comment below regarding Mint 17.1 and the programme crashing. Great programme but not all Export Plugins work. Facebook will not be found although shown as installed. are sho
For those having an issue on mint 17.1 with the app crashing after scanning the library: sudo apt-get install kdelibs-bin kdelibs5-data kdelibs5-plugins. Install the oxygen theme for icons too.
Seems great at first use. However, steep learning curve, just for the program, not to mention features.