6 thoughts on “Digikam 1.0 izir !”

1. This has to be one of the best reviews i’ve read in a while. Thanks matty.

2. First I want to remind it is a digiKam and not Digikam (and I ornspeally like the first one as it is now =)The question is littlebit hard. Avarage joe does not need GIMP features, the F-spot is enough. But removing GIMP, they just made a LiveCD to be such you could not edit images on different computer on the road.There are actually four versions what would be comparable.- F-spot- Picasa- Gwenview- digiKamThe F-spot is tied to Mono. Not good. It is slow, it crash and it actually does not have all features nicely packaged. And it even has hardcoded ~/Photos folder so it does not follow localisation. What is very bad by usability. Tagging is harder because it is just too simple.Picasa is closed source. Does not look so nice but has all features what avarage user would need. Rating is limited and tagging by same way.Gwenview is great but it needs Kipi-plugins to work well. Tagging would be done only by nepomil and rating as well. Dont know how well those write tags to EXIF. But it has almost all needed features as well. But it actually needs more the dolphin to be usefull on big albums.digiKam is best of all these. It has almost all features what you can wait for such software. (I need to ask why digiKam is not official KDE software?!). It only miss layer masks and fixing a few usability things to get straight software. It has lots of potential but still it manages to get the UI keeping simple. What it would need is possibility to have somekind avarage joe mode. But that could be avoided if digiKam gets the sidepanels working better way. Mayby more like the amarok has?but the ubuntu is a distribution focused to use Gnome. So Gwenview and digiKam does not work there because they need too much space for KDE platform. Picasa does not fit to UI and needs the wine. So there is nothing more left than F-spot. So it is F-spot or nothing. It is better than nothing so stick with it. Because GIMP does not offer anykind photo collectioning. It is problematic for normal user.

3. lo Daniel
   yes of course, nothing is perfect. There are many applications projects, each following more or less the same goals. Sometimes, i’d wish to have less, but more efficient too. But only sometimes. From my point of view, Gnome or KDE is not the point. Of course it will be slower if you use a Gnome app on and QT platform but our computer are so powerfull that a common user won’t really see the difference. As you point, most of the softwares are not complete, or are too complex for a normal user. But i guess this is the same in the proprietary world. The trouble with free software is that everyone can have “the best available”. I remember one days a friend wanted to work with darktable which seems very promisefull be disappointed when she saws it cannot open jpeg files and thinking like “everything is so cool but that point is really to ridiculous”. And the answers of core developers something like : “darktable is made to manage RAWs and that’s all”. Well there would be a need for a jpeg management plugin, but how many normal users can do that. It’s still a point we have to discuss and this is the role of Libregraphicsmeeting or AFGRAL. In fact, there wouldn’t be any problem is users where involved in the softwares

4. …you can browse your iagmes with Linux and even browse…I think you meant browse and edit, right?Anyway, I’d like to contraddict and say, that Digikam with some Kipi-Plugins has come very close to Lightroom. I would not say it drew level with it, but things have changed a lot during the last years. For someone who does not have the money to get the Adobe Products the various linux-tools are an alternative. There are shortcomings of course and I wrote about that too.Personally I went back to editing my stuff on 7/64 in the meantime because a) my workflow is much smoother and faster with my usual tools and b) I’ve paid quite a lot of money for apps and plugins both for LR and PS and I don’t like lost investments.I do not agree that you cannot get professional results with linux-tools (not linux, that’s an OS). You sure can, but it may take some more time and more steps and some workarounds. If you don’t mind that and have the time, you’ll be fine. BTW: No offense, mate, but in your gallery I see nothing that could not be done easily with Digikam, Gimp, Darkadtable, Imagemagick and like…

5. i don’t really know what are your usual tools. But i agree we can use floss for professionnal stuffs. I’m doing everyday. Sometimes i get things done faster and sometimes slower than collegues and it’s hard to compare. One thing each sure : my collegues that have made the effort to try have just tried few ours. But it takes days to get used to a new software and change some workflow. I often see them say : it don’t do this or that. But in fact it does, just in a different way. Having to few experience with a software is not a good basis to evaluate it. A benchmark takes time, doing a list of needed fonctionnalities and really look for adequate solutions. If found, then change. If not then keep another software. If it matches your need, then i see no good reason to change. But i take 2 principles into consideration :
   i want my client to pay me, so i pay what i’m using. If i don’t want to pay, i don’t use;
   i want to do be productive on repetitive tasks and be able to adapt the workflow when possible;
   Free software are very good on that 2 points.