cauliergilles's blog

To improve metadata support, 0.9.0 will provides a new sidebar named Metadata including :

- Standard Exif viewer.
- Exif MakerNote viewer.
- Iptc records viewer.
- Printing metadata capabilities.
- Copy metadata to clipboard.

The implementation use Exiv2 library. We can display metadata from JPEG, CRW and PNG files. Writting capabilities will be added later than 0.9.0

New file format metadata parsers can added in Exiv2 library (TIFF,DNG,NEF,MRW, etc). digiKam will use it automaticly.

There is a screenshot available at this url.

Since a long time, i have talking with Unai Garo (the Image Editor Hot Pixels plugin author) about to add zooming features into control panel dialog of all Image Editor plugins. It's done now in svn 'trunk' and will be available to 0.9.0 release.

Current zoom factor are :

- x1.0 (no zoom)
- x1.5
- x2.0
- x2.5
- x3.0

For any memory performance reasons, i have limited zoom factor to 3.0. It's will be enough to see fine details of large image like 10Mpx photograph.

There is a screenshot of "Restoration" plugin in action using 2.5 zoom factor to check JPEG correction artifacts. Take a look at this url

Since i have buy a new USB mass Storage camera (Dynax 5D-Minolta), I have started to work to improve digiKam camera interface. The tasks already done to 0.9.0 alpha from svn are :

1 - Using image Properties SideBar like others digiKam part to display image file properties and Exif informations.
2 - The capability to display Exif informations from RAW files using THM (thumbnail) files provide by recent camera. These THM file are small JPEG like file including all JPEG metadata...

The pending tasks outside 0.9.0 issue are :

1 - The capability to display exif data from RAW/TIFF files directly when it possible.
2 - LossLess convertion on the fly with all metadata backup. The PNG file format will be used in a first time, TIFF file format will doing later.

In DigikamImagePlugins 0.8.x, i have created a new widget using tabs to display and playing with original and target image under all image editor color correction tools (like Adjust Curves for example).

I was not satisfied by this way, for any reasons (usability, performance in memory, etc.) and i have recently building from scratch a new widget with a new design !

The code is now complete in svn and will be available at 0.9.0 release. I have added a new buttons collection on the top of preview image area to select the right preview mode to use :

- Original image only.
- Original and target images together displayed in contiguous (vertically or horizontally).
- Original and target images together duplicated (vertically or horizontally).
- Target image only.

New options are available to svn on 0.9.0 alpha implementation about RAW files. All settings are used by DCraw program to decode RAW images in image editor and Showfoto. There is a screenshot attached to this blog entry.

PNG is my preferred format for archival storage of photographs. It is lossless and more compact than TIFF and TIFF-LZV, more simple to use than TIFF/RAW files, and it's GPL file format...

PNG format can embeded text metadata. Image Magick using this way to save ICC profile from JPEG files when its converted to PNG. The ICC profile is saved like a RAW Bytes Array.

There is no standard for embedding metadata like Exif/IPTC in PNG image files, but i want improved PNG file format support in digiKam, especially about metadata.

My plans are simple:

- Define new digiKam PNG metadata tags names. I think that ExifTools have already define anyone. I will trying to stay homogenous.

Tom will release digiKam 0.8.1 in a near future... but digiKam and showfoto splashscreens aren't yet updated...

We need any nice pictures from digiKam users to make splashs using digiKam frame.

If anybody want contributes with any nice photographs, please let's me hear...