digiKam offers several features that can improve photos containing under- or overexposed areas. For example, the Exposure Blending tool lets you merge multiple shots with different exposures into one perfectly exposed photo. But what if you have just a single image? In this case, you might want to give the Local Contrast feature a try. Continue to read

Hi digiKamers, hi KDErs, hi planet,

few days ago I blogged about the progress of non-destructive editing in digiKam. According to your comments, I take it that there is some misunderstaning in the whole concept. So let me explain it to you :)

The non-destructive editing will be done in such way, that if (and only if) you do some edit to some image, there is automatically created new file, which is a copy of the original with applied changes and with list of edits you've made saved in metadata. Next edit you do, is again applied to the same already-created version and the list of edits in metadata is updated. This is done for example for you to be able to edit the edited file with some external app, let's say GIMP. If there would be only the list of edits stored somewhere, you wouldn't be able to edit it with nothing else until you'd export it from digiKam.

However, when you do some non-reproducible changes, like using some effect, which uses random values for initialization, we need to preserve this exact output, because it can't be reproduced in the same way (thanks for the randomness), so this gets saved again to the same file, but next edit you'll do, will need to go to new file. This will still be presented as one version in digiKam. But there is some ideas about adjusting the nondeterministic filters in such way, that even those could be reproduced when the proper values are stored. This approach would be much better, but I'm not sure if that could be done. But we'll definitely look into it.

About the "Originals" folder. As I wrote, this is supposed to be fully customizable. Think about some photos you take, you pull out the card from your camera, stick it to your PC/notebook/netbook/whatever, do some changes in your digiKam and then you want to fly away with the card to give some presentation. But you want to show only the better versions (the edited ones) and not go through three almost-same pictures in presentation again and again. That's why there will be this option, to move the originals into some other folder, so you can still have them present, but they won't get in your way when not using digiKam. Also think about mobile phones. You connect your phone to your PC, do some changes and then you want to show your friends some photos you take, but again, you don't want to show the originals, you want to show only the better versions. Think about having 100 pictures and that you'll do some edits (autolevels for example) to 50 of them. Then you would have 150 images in your mobile gallery and you would show every second picture twice. Again, that's what the "Originals" folder is for. And again again, it will be customizable. Or optional if you want. So you can just turn it off completely and your images will stay all in the same place.

Then there is the version management. Every edit you do to the original file, will create another version. If you edit the already edited version, the it's simply saved to the already created version file. Only when editing the original you'll get a new version. Or you'll have a possibility to 'fork' it to manually to create a new version. So for example you do several crops to your images. You simply open the original, do one crop, new version is there, saved, ready for other operations. You switch back to the original, you do different crop and another version gets created, again, every other edit you'll do will be saved in this same file with updated metadata. No one-effect-one-file-thing. Then you should be able to display all your versions along. Something like virtual album. So you can see all your cropped images next to them. But not only cropped, imagine you do some color changes or some other effects. Then you can see all your versions next to each other and pick up the best.

Next thing is GUI. There will be some kind of indicator, that you have more than one version, or that you have done some edits and you're able to revert them. The looks of this is not clear yet. But we're open to any proposals or mockups you may have. Also, with every opened version, you'll see a list of changes you've made and you should be able to remove any edit in the list. It would be cool if you could simply change the edit's values and have it reapplied, but that will probably take some more time to accomplish. But I'd like to see that happened.

And if you're thinking about buttons in the editor GUI, Save As... definitely won't disappear. Probably Save button could go away as it will be automatically saved after each applied (meaning you click Ok) effect. Instead of Save button there could be a Fork button, which would create completely new version (copy of the current edited version). Other changes in the UI haven't been decided yet. I'm focusing on the foundation right now, GUI will come later (but soon;)

That's basically how the non-destructive editing will be done in digiKam. Hopefully it's much clearer now to all of you :)

Marty

This tutorial is dedicated to guide users who want to compile current whole digiKam implementation from KDE subversion repository under Microsoft Windows.

I will use Windows Seven and KDE 4.4.1. Windows system is installed to C:, and an empty 10Gb hard drive partition E: is ready to use for KDE4 and digiKam.

Note: this tutorial can be also used under Microsoft Windows XP and Vista.

Hi all,

little update about the progress that has been made. So far, there are no visible changes to the user yet (if you don't count tons of new debug stuff on console), all work has been done under the hood. The good news is, that the basics for non-destructive editing has already landed in the codebase. You can now use Brightness/Contrast/Gamma tool and the Autolevels tool in such way, that it will automatically create new version of the edited image, apply the changes on the new version, move the original version to "Originals" folder located in original image's path (will be fully configurable) and save the new version as {originalImageName}_v1.{originalImageFormatExtension}.

There is no GUI yet, which would be able to manipulate with versions and used filters on them, but that's all on plan and I believe, that some basic GUI for reverting the image to its original state could be done at the end of next week. You will find it as a next tab in the right sidebar in digiKam's Image Editor, although the exact appereance of this UI is still a work-in-progress. But as soon as there will be something usable, I promise to bring you some screenshots ;)

Stay tuned,
Marty

Oh yeah and to answer the question "What about editing done with other programs?" - well, this is kinda tricky. It will definitely be possible to revert back to the original image when you edit some of the versions and not the original itself, it should also be possible to just revert this one change. But if you edit the image, that has no version present (and thus not backuped the original, ie. you edit THE original), there's no way to revert back unless we duplicate all of your images, which is rather unwanted. It could be possible to do so, when you open the image in some external app from digiKam, but most probably not if you open it directly.

digiKam is an immensely powerful photo application, so learning all its features requires time and effort. But this capable photo management application also offers a few easy to use features which you can use to instantly improve your shots. Continue to read

Dear all digiKam fans and users!

digiKam team is proud to announce Kipi-plugins 1.3.0 !

kipi-plugins tarball can be downloaded from SourceForge at this url

Kipi-plugins will be also available for Windows. Pre-compiled packages can be downloaded with KDE-Windows installer. See KDE-Windows project for details.

See below the list of new features and bugs-fix coming with this release:

NEW FEATURES:

Dear all digiKam fans and users!

digiKam team is proud to announce digiKam 1.3.0 release!

digiKam tarball can be downloaded from SourceForge at this url

digiKam will also be available for Windows. Pre-compiled packages can be downloaded with KDE-Windows installer. See KDE-Windows project for details.

Giving your photos meaningful names makes it significantly easier to keep tabs on them. Of course, renaming each and every photo by hand is not particularly practical, especially if you take dozens or even hundreds of photos each day. This is when digiKam's Rename feature can come in rather handy. You can use it to define rather advanced renaming rules and apply them to multiple photos in one fell swoop. Continue to read

Using digiKam's Kipi plugins, you can upload your photos to a variety of popular photo services, including Flickr, Picasaweb, and SmugMug. But what if you want to host your own photo album and still be able to populate it with photos directly from within digiKam? In this case, you might want to try Piwigo, a nifty photo application that has everything you need to host and share your photos on the Web. Continue to read

As in 2008 and 2009, a new digiKam and kipi-plugins developers reunion is planned in Europe. This year, i proud to announce that i will organize the event in south of France, in the nice city of Aix en Provence.