This is the holiday season and you expect to take a lot of photographs. If you are not planning on taking a lot of photographs, you are at least planning on taking more photographs than you usually take. Just past the new year you would probably realize that you have a lot of photographs and not so much time to work on them, especially if you are in the “occasional photographer” category. The number of photos that you end up collecting can be huge and working on them can be a very daunting process.
However, you can simplify some of the post photography activities by using digiKam. digiKam is a free photo-management application that is available for Linux, Windows and Mac. While there are other photo-management tools available, both free and commercial (F-Spot, Lightroom, Picasa), I found digiKam to be the one that offers the best features of the lot, especially for a free program.
The digiKam interface is very simple and wont leave you looking for functions like Lightroom sometimes does. There is hardly a learning curve. digiKam not only helps you organize and arrange the tons of photos that you may have on your hard drive, it also allows you to do quick editing work on the photos before helping you share them online through various popular services like Picasa or Flickr.
The editing options in digiKam are not just for beginners but willl also serve the advanced users well. digiKam also supports over 1100 digital camera models to help you detect and import from those cameras on connection. GPS information can also be added to the images using GPX files that are generally generated by GPS devices or tools.
The screenshot tour below gives more information on various screens and tools that are available in digiKam.
The Library lists all the folders in the watch list. The folder to watch can be specified in the program options. The thumbnails are shown on the right with image information that can also be chosen from the options.
The “Image” menu in the library allows you to carry out actions on the selected images. You can add tags, metadata, geolocation information etc. to the images that you have selected. You can also use advanced tools like the “Find Similar Images”.
The “Export” option in the library allows you to transfer your images to all the popular online services like Flickr, Picasa or Facebook.
The “Tools” menu in the library allows you to carry out more advanced actions on the images that are selected in the library.
Using “Queues” you can carry out multiple changes to a batch of images. This screen allows you to choose the images, the actions and the settings for the actions to be carried out on the images. Just ”Run“ the queue to carry out the changes.
The Light Table is a really useful tool in case you have multiple images of the same subject. Using the LIght Table you can quickly compare (side-by-side) similar images and choose your favourite ones. Zooming and panning is synchronized to make the task easier for you.
There is a full gamut of color adjustment and enhancement tools available in the “Color” menu to apply to any selected image.
The “Filters” menu allows you to add slightly more advanced effects to your selected image.
The “Enhance” menu lets you take care of the commonly found errors in any image like Red-Eye and Hot-Pixels. You can quickly apply corrections to images here.
Having used other photo-management tools on both Linux and Windows, I find that digiKam is as simple to use a tool as you can get. Add to that the advanced editing and the export options and you have a one-stop-shop solution available to you at no cost. You can always use the GIMP if you need to go more advanced.
Also, the colour scheme of the interface is changeable.
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Abhilash is a part time blogger and blogs about photography, technology and travel. When not blogging Abhilash is either selling outsourcing solutions to companies or indulging in marathon episodes of various science fiction shows and movies.
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