DIGIKAM 1.4.0
The current live version of Digikam is already quite powerful, undoubtedly my favorite photograph manager under KDE, and arguably in Linux. In fact, now that big distros like Ubuntu and Fedora (GNOME) have decided to drop F-Spot in favor of Shotwell (still not as mature and feature rich), Digikam may become more popular.
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The screenshots published along with this article come from my PCLinuxOS 2010 machine, which includes Digikam as the default photograph manager and Gwenview, another fabulous application as the default picture viewer. As I have already discussed on some past PCLinuxOS reviews, the project developers made a strong effort to tightly integrate all applications. One of the elements that is most evident in that integration is the splash screens that appear when applications start up. As we can see from the screenshot above, Digikam is no exception.
DOWNLOADING PICTURES FROM A NIKON S210
As soon as I plug my Nikon S210 in, PCLinuxOS recognizes the device as a photograph source and offers Digikam as the default manager to start the download. Once the application loads, it reads the picture collection available on the camera and provides a nice interface to select which images to download.
Click on image to enlarge.
With the picture selection taken care of, Digikam asks for a location to download those pictures to. We can choose the default that was created the first time the application ran or create a new one.
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The pictures are downloaded into the desired location successfully and then presented on screen. The user may then decide to view them separately, as a slideshow, etc.
Click on image to enlarge.
DIGIKAM 2.0
As I am sure you can tell, this is simply a very high level introduction to Digikam. I consider it an impressive application with loads of features and very much encourage that you give it a try. Having said so, there is already news about the soon to come Digikam 2.0, the next production version of this high quality photograph manager.
At the moment, I don't have lots of information about exactly which features will make it into version 2.0, but some very interesting hints appear in this KDE blog ENTRY. The highlights include face detection and recognition by Aditya Bhatt, geotagging features by Gabriel Voicu and non-destructive image editing and versioning by Martin Klapetek.
I don't know about you, but I consider those very interesting and exciting additions which I am eager to try as soon as a fresh Digikam 2.0 release goes public. In the meantime, once again make sure you give Digikam 1.4.0 a go.
Thanks for reading!
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