![\"Cloudeight](\"http:\/\/thundercloud.net\/infoave\/images\/2018\/digikam.png\")
<\/p>\nThis freeware program is not point-and-shoot-easy. It’s not install-and-use-easy. It will take you a while just to figure out how to use its basic features —\u00a0 and a very long, long time to learn how to use all its features. That being said, it’s free and you have as long as you need to learn it.\u00a0 All you have to have is a lot of time to and the desire to learn. So… if you love a challenge, one that will be worth the time and trouble in the end, then DigiKam might be just the photo manager extraordinaire you’ve been looking for.<\/p>\n
I’ve been using DigiKam for over a week now, and while I know a whole lot more about the program\u00a0 than I did a week ago, I realized today that I have barely scratched the surface. It has far more features, functions and options than I’ve had time to discover, and far more I will probably ever use. But if you’re looking for a very powerful photo manager, organizer and editor,\u00a0 you may find DigiKam worth the time and effort it will take you to learn it. It’s not at all intuitive and it’s not for you if you need something you can install and learn in a few minutes.<\/p>\n
DigiKam is a complete comprehensive package. You can import you images into the program in several different ways. You can organize your photos into albums. You can browse through you collection by location, time, tags, faces, more. You can edit your photos, retouch them and add professional effects with DigiKam’s powerful built-in photo editor. You can create calendars, build panoramas, create slide shows and videos, save your photos and your creations\u00a0 or share them via an impressive list of social media and online services.<\/p>\n
DigiKam is a powerful image management program that focuses more on helping you search and organize your photos than it does on editing them. However you’ll find the available editing tools far superior those of Google’s old Picasa program or Windows Photos. For instance, when you click on the “Color” menu,\u00a0 you’ll have many options including: “Auto-Correction”, “Brightness\/ Contrast\/ Gamma”, “Hue\/ Saturation\/ Lightness”, “Color Balance”, “Levels Adjust”, “Curves Adjust”, “Invert”, “Color Negative”, “Black and White”, “Channel Mixer”, “White Balance”, “Depth” and “Color Space Conversion” – and each of those have many sub settings and sub-options available to you also.<\/p>\n
The program has far more positives than negatives, but we need to mention the negatives. As we said, it’s not a point-and-shoot, open-and-use kind of application. It will take you a long time to learn. It will take you time just to learn some of the basic features – so if fast and easy is on your list, you can scratch this program right now.<\/p>\n
DigiKam was not originally designed for Linux, not for Windows, so some of the interfaces may seem strange to Windows users. But the Windows version works well on Windows 7, 8.1 and Windows 10.\u00a0 The fact that it has such a huge number of options, features and functions can be aggravating when you’re looking for a particular feature, option or function. But, again if you’re willing to take the time and put in the effort, you may find this program to be one of best of its genre.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
![\"Cloudeight](\"http:\/\/thundercloud.net\/infoave\/images\/2018\/digikam1.png\")
<\/p>\n
Above: Screenshots from our DigiKam tests.<\/p>\n
And now… some words from the developer:<\/p>\n
\nSummary<\/h3>\n
The following is a concise overview of features and tools available in digiKam. The application covers the photographic workflow consisting of five major stages:<\/p>\n
Import photos, raw files, and videos
\nOrganize your library
\nBrowse and view items in the library
\nProcess and edit raw files and photos
\nShare and publish photos
\nImport
\nSupport for all digital camera models that work with Gphoto2<\/p>\nImport module supports the following actions:<\/strong><\/h3>\n
Delete images
\nUpload images
\nLock images
\nAuto-rename pictures during import
\nAuto-rotate pictures during import
\nAuto-creation of albums during import
\nLossless conversion during import
\nShow camera information
\nOrganize
\nGroup photos, raw files, photos, and videos into albums and sub-albums
\nAdd tags and comments to albums
\nSort albums by folder, category, and creation date
\nSort items in albums by name, path, date, and file size
\nFilter album items by rating, filename, file type, tags, and labels
\nView
\nSupport for RAW pictures using LibRaw included in libKdcraw Support of more 800 proprietary RAW camera file formats. Complete camera list is given here<\/p>\nEasy comparing similar pictures using Light Table:<\/h3>\n
Files displayed side by side
\nSynchronized panning and zooming
\nNavigation by pair
\nRaw files support
\ndigiKam core, image editor and image filters support 16 bits color depth pictures (RAW, TIFF, PNG, JPEG2000). Image Editor has a full Color Management support using ICC color profiles.<\/p>\nThumbnail sizes can be adapted to your screen size on the fly<\/p>\n
Sidebar used everywhere to display<\/h3>\n
metadata
\nImage information
\nMetadata
\nGeolocation
\nimage file properties
\ncomments\/tags\/rating\/date
\ntag filter information
\ncolors information: histogram and ICC profile
\nFast preview pictures mode embedded into albums interface with zoom and panning features<\/p>\nPlugins architectures<\/h3>\n
To ease development and to share code with other applications, digiKam make use of plugins architecture.<\/p>\n
Share<\/h3>\n
Export to 23
\nExport to Flickr
\nExport to Flash
\nExport to Google services
\nExport to SmugMug
\nExport to Piwigo
\nImport From\/Export to FaceBook
\nImport From\/Export to Shwup
\nExport to Zooomr
\nExport to a local directory or remote computer using KIO protocols (ftp, ssh, smb, fish, svn, tar \u2026)<\/p>\nOther tools available in digiKam core<\/h3>\n
Calendar creation wizard
\nPrint wizard
\nCreate slideshow
\nLossless transformations with JPEG pictures
\nAdd GPS coordinates to images by synchronizing them with a GPX files (created by GPS receivers and\/or GPS tools), or by manually editing the longitude\/latitude\/altitude or also by using Google Map capabilities.
\nAcquire image (eg. with a flat scanner)
\nRAW image converter
\nDNG converter
\nAdjust time and date
\nEdit Pictures Metadata
\nCreate video-slideshow
\nImages batch processing
\nEdit
\n…<\/p>\nFeatures available in Image editor are:<\/h3>\n
16 bits image color depth support.
\nRAW camera image support.
\nHistogram viewer
\nColor Management support.
\nICC profiles tool to perform advanced color corrections into images
\nICC profile viewer
\nExporting to another image format
\nRemoving images from current Album
\nImage comments editing
\nImage file properties
\nEXIF\/MakerNote\/IPTC\/GPS viewer
\nZooming
\nPrinting images
\nRed eyes correction<\/p>\nBrightness \/ Contrast \/ Gamma correction<\/p>\n
Hue \/ Saturation \/ Luminosity correction<\/p>\n
Color balance<\/p>\n
Invert colors<\/p>\n
Color auto-correction tools: Normalize \/ Equalize \/ Auto levels \/ Stretch Contrast<\/p>\n
Blur \/ Sharpen<\/p>\n
Ratio-cropping with proportion aids and composing tools based on Fibonacci rules<\/p>\n
Free cropping<\/p>\n
Black and White and tonality converter using curves adjustments<\/p>\n
Rotation<\/p>\n
Flipping<\/p>\n
Adjust levels : a tool to adjust the photograph histogram levels manually<\/p>\n
Adjust curves : a tool to adjust the photograph colors using curves<\/p>\n
Noise Reduction : noise filter based on wavelet algorithm<\/p>\n
Liquid Rescale : content aware resizing to change ratio of a picture while keeping the content intact<\/p>\n
Local Contrast : a pseudo HDR-tonemapping tool to recover highlights and shadows while keeping local contrast<\/p>\n
Unsharp Mask : a photograph unsharp mask filter to unblur picture without increase noise<\/p>\n
Lens Distortion : a tool for correct lens spherical aberration on photograph<\/p>\n
Vignetting : a tool for removing or adding vignetting on photograph<\/p>\n
Channel Mixer : a tool to mix the photograph color channels<\/p>\n
White Balance : a tool to adjust white color temperature balance of photograph<\/p>\n
Photograph Inpainting : a tool to remove unwanted photograph area using CImg library<\/p>\n
Photograph Refocus : a sharpness editor to refocus a photograph<\/p>\n
Hot Pixels Correction : a tool to remove photograph hot pixels generated by a deficient camera<\/p>\n
Photograph Restoration : a tool to reduce photograph artifacts using CImg library<\/p>\n
Free Rotation : a plugin to rotate a photograph with a free angle in degrees<\/p>\n
Shear Tool : a plugin to shear a photograph horizontally and vertically<\/p>\n
Perspective Tool : a plugin to adjust the photograph perspective<\/p>\n
Add Border : a tool to add decorative frame around a photograph<\/p>\n
Insert Text : a tool to insert text under a photograph<\/p>\n
Apply Texture : a tool to apply a decorative texture to a photograph<\/p>\n
Solarize : a tool to solarize a photograph<\/p>\n
Oil Paint : simulate oil painting on photograph<\/p>\n
Emboss : an effect filter to emboss photograph<\/p>\n
Rain Drops : adding the visual effect of raindrops on photograph<\/p>\n
Charcoal : simulate charcoal drawing on photograph<\/p>\n
Film Grain : simulate film grain on photograph<\/p>\n
Infrared : simulate infrared film effect on photograph<\/p>\n
Blur FX : apply blurring special effects on photograph<\/p>\n
Distortion FX : apply distortion special effects on photograph<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Please note this is a 275 MB download…<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n
Ready for challenge? You can read more about and download DigiKam for Windows here<\/u>.<\/a><\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
DigiKam – Photo Manager, Editor, and Much More This is NOT freeware for the faint of heart! This freeware program is not point-and-shoot-easy. It’s not install-and-use-easy. It will take you a while just to figure out how to use its basic features —\u00a0 and a very long, long time to learn how to use all its features. That\u2026 Read More »<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13837,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,1668],"tags":[2535,75,2534,2531,2533,2532],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15299"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15299"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15299\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15303,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15299\/revisions\/15303"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13837"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15299"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15299"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15299"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}