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--- digikam [2016/05/02 23:18]
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+++ digikam [2021/06/03 19:48] (current)
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 ====== Digikam ======
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 ===== Strengths [Weaknesses] =====
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-Digikam is a capable digital darkroom application as well as to photo managers. It has a rich plugin structure which enables the addition of even more features as the need
+Digikam is a capable digital darkroom application as well as to photo managers. It has a rich plugin structure which enables the addition of even more features as the need arises (such as quick uploaders to popular online photo shares, new filters, and so on). Even if a graphic artist or photographer is happy using GIMP, Digikam is a useful tool for its photo management features and darkroom effects.
-arises (such as quick uploaders to popular online photo shares, new filters, and so on). Even if a graphic artist or photographer is happy using GIMP, Digikam is a useful tool for its photo management features and darkroom effects.
 [{{ digikam.jpg?700 |Photograph by Jess Weichler }}]
-An ebook with Digikam "recipes" is available from one of the developers: [[http://scribblesandsnaps.com/2015/05/11/buy-digikam-recipes-get-practical-exiftool]]
+While GIMP concentrates on enabling an artist to open an image for re-touching, compositing, and general manipulation, Digikam is first a photo management and proofing tool. It has fine-grain settings tuned to let you see your work in a variety of ways. whether you prefer to see them as life events, photo sessions, collections, or just as files and directories. It features a "light table" so that you can compare different takes of the same shot, and once you choose the best of multiple images, it has a built in image editor with image versioning.
-While GIMP concentrates on enabling an artist to open an image for re-touching,
+Digikam's image editor features the basics, such as colour correction and exposure adjustment, but it also has effects and plugins. image correction and even has a robust set of plugins and filters, including facial recognition, uploaders for over a dozen popular image sharing websites, importers, exporters, film emulation for popular manufacturers and stocks, paint effects, text rendering, panorama combining, and much much more.
-compositing, and general manipulation, Digikam is first a photo management and proofing tool. It has fine-grain settings tuned to let you see your work in a variety of ways. whether you prefer to see them as life events, photo sessions, collections, or just as files and directories. It features a "light table" so that you can compare different takes of the same shot, and once you choose the best of multiple images, it has a built in image editor.
-Digikam's image editor features the basics, such as colour correction and exposure adjustment, but it also has effects and plugins. image correction and even has a robust set of plugins and filters, including uploaders, importers, exporters, paint effects, text rendering, panorama combining, and much much more.
+====Install====
-Digikam is installable from [[http://slackbuilds.org]].
+Digikam is installable from [[http://slackbuilds.org]]. The features that you want in Digikam governs the dependencies required to build it. This can become complex, especially if you are attempting to install very new versions of Digikam on older editions of Slackware. Unless there's some exciting new feature that's only available in the latest version of Digikam, it's usually easiest to take the most recently approved version that [[http://slackbuilds.org]] has on offer. Digikam is mostly in the enviable position of being basically stable, with new releases being primarily minor fixes and upgrades.
+====First Launch====
+Upon first launch, there's a brief setup wizard to step through. Some
+choices affect performance and file size, so read the screen carefully
+to decide what you really want, but all of the decisions can be
+changed later, so accepting the defaults is safe if you're not sure.
+[{{ digikam_preview.jpg |The setup wizard. }}]
+The initial launch will be slower than usual, since Digikam must
+analyse the photographs in your collection and record information
+about each one. Depending on how many photos you have and how large
+they are, you might want to let it run over night.
+====Interface====
+The layout of Digikam is fairly intuitive, especially if you're a regular KDE (the default desktop of Slackware) user. The basics are pretty simple: on the left are panels that control how you view photos, in the middle are the photos themselves, and on the left are effects and filters.
+The initial default view is a file system view, starting from whatever
+directory you defined as your **image folder** during setup. Digikam refers to whatever directories it finds within your
+image directory as an **Album**, and it parses each image file, along
+with its native metadata plus metadata Digikam allows you to add, into a thumbnail view.
+When you select a directory (an "album"), the photos
+within are displayed as an array in the right panel. There are plenty of other ways to view your photos, though, and they're all accessible as vertical tabs (a time-honoured tradition of the KDE interface) along the left
+edge of the main window. In addition to the **Album** view, there are:
+**Tags** to filter the photos in your collection by arbitrary metadata
+  tags. There probably won't be tags at first (unless you've created
+  or imported some), but you can create tags in the Tag Manager
+  interface and assign them to pictures. Clicking on any tag (or
+  control-clicking on several tags) in the Tag panel filters the
+  thumbnail view to show photos with that tag assigned.
+[{{ digikam_tag.jpg |The tag manager. }}]
+**Labels** to filter your photos according to how many stars you've
+  assigned to a photograph. There are other forms of labels, such as
+  colour labels and flags, all user-assignable from the thumbnail
+  view.
+**Dates**, **Timeline**, and **Map** views let you see photos by relevant
+  data contained in the photo's EXIF information.
+**People** to scan your photo collection for faces. Digikam recognises faces as faces, and can even take guesses as to their identities (an "experimental" feature). Scanning your entire collection from the very start can take a while, but once the initial scan is done, Digikam only scans photos upon import, so be patient on the first use and you won't even notice it happening from then on.
+There are more filtration options, including fuzzy searches to find images similar to one another, a sketch search to try to match a photo with a rough drawing of what you're looking for, and more.
+====Thumbnail View====
+The thumbnail view is the central panel of Digikam, but its
+right-click menu provides a host of important features, like switching
+to fullscreen mode, assigning tags, and assigning labels. It also performs file
+management functions and provides access to Digikam's digital darkroom interface.
+Aside from organising your photos, the first thing you're likely to do
+once you have imported an SD card full of pictures is to figure out
+which of the group are the really good ones, and especially choose
+between several very similar shots of the same subject. The method
+Digikam provides for this is its light table view: a separate window
+that helps you focus on just two or three photographs at a larger size
+than a little thumbnail.
+[{{ digikam_lighttable.jpg |Digikam's light table. }}]
+To add a photo to your light table, either right-click on it and
+select **Add to Light Table** or select a photo and press
+**Ctrl-L**. Since it's often used for comparing photos, you can add
+several photos to the light table at once; to add more photos, either
+right-click and select **Add to Light Table** again or press
+**Ctrl-Shift-L**.
+The light table interface also has facial recognition overrides. If
+you've got a photo that Digikam hasn't identified faces in, or has
+mis-identified faces, then load it into the light table and
+right-click on the image. Select **Add a Face Tag** for the face tag
+editor. Draw a box around the face that you want to identify, and type
+the person's name into the text field.
+The thumbnail view also can help manage your photos. Right-clicking
+enables common file management tasks, like renaming photos, adding
+a photo to a specific album, or moving irreparable ones to the trash,
+and so on.
+To see information about a photo, use the vertical tabs on the right
+edge of the Digikam window. These show metadata, colour data,
+versioning data, and more.
+Also from the thumbnail view, you can edit photos using Digikam's
+robust effect plugins.
+====Editing and Effects====
+Digikam has an inbuilt editor for most common photo effects and
+touch-ups. To get there, select a photo and click the **Image Editor**
+button along the top toolbar. This opens a new window for dedicated
+editing.
+The image editor interface has two entry points for nearly every
+function: you can select effects from the window menu or from the
+**Select Tool** button in the top toolbar.
+All the usual effects are present; colour balance, saturation, levels,
+red-eye removal, and so on. Special effects are included too;
+textures, oil paint filters, borders, film grains, film emulation
+(profiled by popular film stocks), and much much more. It's safe to try them *all*, because none of them alter your original photo until
+you save the changes.
+Filters and effects can be un-done, too, from the Edit menu, but only
+in the order they were applied. The filters *are* linear (unlike in
+[[darktable|Darktable]], where filters are truly *filters* that can be slotted in at
+different points in the filter stack), so if you apply a **Colour Balance** filter and then a **Vivid effect**, if you undo the **Colour Balance** then you also implicitly undo the **Vivid effect** that followed it.
+[{{ digikam_edit.jpg |Digikam's photo editor makes work feel suspiciously fun. }}]
+To see the effects applied to a photograph, click the **Versioning** tab
+along the right side of the Image Editor window and select the **Used Filters** tab.
+When you're finished, save your changes directly to your original
+photo, or save the changes as a new version. If you save a photo as a
+new version, then you'll see your new version in your thumbnail view,
+but you'll always have the option to view previous versions.
+====Exporting====
+Getting images out of Digikam, strictly speaking, is automatic,
+because photos are never "in" Digikam. Digikam reads images straight
+from your file system, so to get an image from Digikam, all you have
+to do is look in the place you last left it. It'll still be there.
+In fact, not just the photo will be there; saved versions of the photo
+will also be there, named as you'd expect (the first new version of IMG0033.jpg becomes IMG0033.v1.jpg, and so on).
+Digikam does have some convenient export options, though, depending on
+how you installed it (certain export options require additional
+libraries that you may or may not ever need). Export targets include
+Piwigo, email, Flickr, Google Photos, Google Drive, Facebook, Debian
+Screenshots, MediaWiki, SmugMug, raw HTML, any remote computer you
+have an account on, and, believe it or not, many many more.
+====Documentation====
+Digikam is an easy but powerful photo management and re-touching
+application. It's got lots of great features, and this article has
+only touched on the basics. An ebook with Digikam "recipes" is available from one of the developers: [[http://scribblesandsnaps.com/2015/05/11/buy-digikam-recipes-get-practical-exiftool]], with proceeds benefitting further Digikam development.
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