DigiKam

DigiKam is the best image editor outside of ACDSee, is free, is open source, and works on all the major operating systems, although not designed for the major operating systems.

Ubuntu 10.10 installs DigiKam 1.4. DigiKam is built to work under KDE on Linux. When you install DigiKam 1.4 on any other version of Linux or any other operating system, you have to copy over masses of KDE junk. DigiKam 1.4 is a bad choice for people who do not use KDE and do not have access to cheap broadband downloads.

There is a note on the DigiKam Web site about how to tell Ubuntu to download an updated version. Visit www.digikam.org/drupal/download?q=download/binary/ and look for Under Ubuntu 10.10 you can use some PPA, look here..

I started testing with 1.4 then followed the update instructions to install 1.6. After the 1.6 installation, I found I had 1.7 instead of 1.6. 1.7 started instantly instead of the 3 minutes required by 1.4. I had to rerun a few tests to find out how 1.7 compares to 1.4.

DigiKam does two things, manage images and edit images. The image management competes against ACDSee, F-spot, Gthumbs, and Shotwell. The image editing component, available separately as showFoto, completes against the image editing in ACDSee and Gimp.

The comments and test results on this page are based on DigiKam 1.4 and 1.7 running under Ubuntu 10.10. See the installation section for more details.

I will also install DigiKam on Windows XP. I had a Windows 7 machine for this test and, out of sheer frustration, replaced Windows 7 with Ubuntu. I am not saying all versions of Windows 7 deserve replacement, just the one I had, Windows 7 Home edition. In the context of Windows 7, Home is a Microsoft term for so brain dead that every customer will rush to upgrade. Yes Microsoft, I did upgrade Microsoft Windows 7 home edition, I upgraded it to Ubuntu 10.10.

Image management

What do you want in image management? Here are some suggestions and I will add the results of my testing of DigiKam.

Large numbers of files

You want to handle large numbers of files efficiently because it is so easy to take hundreds of photos per day using modern digital cameras and large memory cards. I am testing with a small to medium size collection, 25500 image files including some videos and some old TIFF files. The whole collection is only 230 gigabytes.

The import used 50% of one CPU in a medium speed dual core processor. I suspect the limitation is disk read and write speed. The disk array averages 100 MB per second for reads and writes. DigiKam uses a database and databases take time to update data. DigiKam uses SQLite version 3. The speed of SQLite depends on the configuration settings and the way DigiKam handles transactions.

The memory usage started at 560 megabytes and gradually crept up to 960 MB during the processing. The total load for 1.4 required only 18 minutes, far less than the 2 hours required to drag the files off a USB disk. the load for 1.7 required far more time because it crashed several times and had to be restarted. One restart went back to the beginning and reloaded all the previously loaded files.

After the initial load, the startup should be almost instant but it is not. DigiKam reads through every directory looking for changed files. On my small test the subsequent 1.4 startups take three minutes. The 1.7 startups are faster when they work.

RAW files

Your image manager should read RAW files because a good digital camera produces RAW files undamaged by JPEG. DigiKam has good RAW file processing, perhaps better than Gimp because the processing is integrated instead of an external program added on.

Video

Modern cameras take video. You have video files among your image files. You want a manager that manages both together.

Original dates

You want the original image files with their original date and time of creation as recorded by the camera so you can find original files based on date and time. DigiKam lists a date of creation and a date last updated.

Assign events

You want the option to add dates and times based on the subject and add the information without destroying the original date and time of creation. Why? Think of your photographs from New Years Eve. Some were created at the end of the last day of last year. Others were created at the start of the first day of this year. You want to keep the exact date and times of creation and you want to assign the images to the same event, the same New Years Eve.

The ideal is to create an event with a nominal date and time, often the start time, then add the event to each image for the event. You should then be able to automatically find images based on components of the event. New Years Eve 2010 should be listed under the year 2010, the month December, the time evening or night time, and an event category new year.

Keyword classification

You should be able to add any keywords to a keyword list and select the keywords when viewing an image. You should be able to add new keywords when there is no suitable keyword in the keyword list.

Keyword families

Keywords should be grouped by families. A family might be animal with each animal listed under the animal family. A hierarchical structure of keywords can accomplish this provided there is the option to have several structures and have an image classified by all the parent keywords in a structure. As an example, you might select animal then cow then brown. Applying the keyword brown should also make the image available under cow and animal. If you move cow from animal to livestock then the image should be listed under livestock instead of animal. Cow could be listed under livestock plus animal plus farm, making the image available under all those headings.

Size

You should be able to select the largest or smallest files in any selection process.

Format

You should be able to select files of a specific format in every selection process.

EXIF

Some files store information known as EXIF data. You should be able to extract and view all the EXIF data. You should be able to record EXIF data for files that cannot store EXIF data so the EXIF data can be used if the file is converted to a format that stores EXIF data.

All EXIF items should be available as separate data for search and selection. EXIF can store copyright information, GPS readings, camera settings, and comments from the photographer. All of those types of data should be available for viewing, searching classification, and all should be replaceable. The ideal is to keep the original untouched then store changes for the creation of new derived images.

As an example, you might have images from several photographers who assign the ownership to their employer. Their original image contains their copyright information to make sure they are credited for their work within their organisation. The version sold to the public directs people to the selling Web site, not the individual photographer.

16 bit

RAW images contain 8 bits, 10 bits, 12 bits, or 14 bits of data per colour per pixel and should be able to be converted to 8 or 16 bit images as appropriate. The image manager should work with 8 bit images for speed and allow 16 bit editing for the final product where the original is more than 8 bit.

External editors

An image manager should always let you use your choice of editor. When you right click an image in DigiKam, you can select to open the image in something called Document Viewer, Firefox (or your Web browser), or Gimp.

Selecting a thumbnail image opens the image in a preview mode and you can change the default to open the image in an editor, although there does not appear to be a choice of editor.

Each image has rotate buttons on the image border and the rotate is performed by magic I have not yet decoded. There is no option to automatically open the image in your choice of editor, rotate the image, and save the result. Hopefully the rotate applies only to the displayed image.

Image editing

You install an image manager to manage images, not edit them. Most image managers add some simple editing features. As an example, you often want to rotate an image. A good image manager will leave the original image untouched, record the rotation request, then apply the rotation each time the original image is read. Your original image remains in pristine condition.

Some crude image managers actually change the original image file, leaving you with no untouched original. You then have to backup all files from the camera before adding them to the image management system. The painful double handling kills the whole point of good image management.

ShowFoto

ShowFoto is the image editor in DigiKam. You can download ShowFoto as a separtae item and it takes up as much space because most of the download is the KDE dragged along with both ShowFoto and DigiKam.

Download

The default DigiKam 1.4 download is 115 MB because of all the KDE stuff. The 115 MB expands to 379 MB on disk. The optional DigiKam 1.7 download is only 36.5 MB and expands to only 189 MB.

Installation

Ubuntu 10.10 installs DigiKam 1.4. I followed the default installation for everything except a preview option where I told it to use the original image instead of a cut down image.

After installation, you end up with a few extra menu entries. Dolphin is a KDE file browser application duplicating the Nautilus application in Ubuntu. DNGConverter is a file converter from KDE. There is a lot of unneeded junk and wasted space.

There is a note on the DigiKam Web site about how to tell Ubuntu to download an updated version. Visit www.digikam.org/drupal/download?q=download/binary/ and look for Under Ubuntu 10.10 you can use some PPA, look here.. I followed the update instructions to install the later version. 1.7 started in instantly instead of the 3 minutes required by 1.4 but 1.7 crashed repeatedly.

Conclusion

I like DigiKam for image management and look forward to a stable version. I have not used it enough to decide on the image editing part and will use Gimp for anything complex.