This is an important stage for digiKam project. A native port under Microsoft Windows...
Since digiKam code has been ported to Qt4/KDE4, multi-platform support become a reality. We have already a MACOS-X port done by Gustavo Boiko from Mandriva team... Now, Windows port have been completed by Patrick Spendrin from KDE-Windows team
To be able to compile digiKam under Windows, GPhoto2 support is become optional, because libgphoto2 is not yet ported to this operating system. Perhaps in the future, this will change, but for the moment, it's not the case... Of course under Linux and MACOS-X, GPhoto2 support still here.
The digiKam development team is happy to release the 4th beta release dedicated to KDE4. The digiKam tarball can be downloaded from SourceForge.
Take care, it's always a BETA code with many of new bugs not yet fixed... Do not use yet in production...
KDE3 version still the stable release and have been published this summer.
To compile digiKam for KDE4, you need libkexiv2, libkdcraw, and libkipi for KDE4. These libraries are now included in KDE core but for the moment, digiKam require libkdcraw and libkexiv2 from svn trunk to compile fine (These versions of libraries will be released with KDE 4.2). To extract libraries source code from svn, look at bottom of this page for details
To prepare the future Coding Sprint with kipi-plugins developpers, a second beta release of digiKam plugins box is out.
See below the list of new features and bugs-fix coming with this release:
General : Port to CMake/KDE4/QT4. JPEGLossLess : XMP metadata support. RAWConverter : XMP metadata support. TimeAdjust : XMP metadata support. MetadataEdit : XMP metadata support with EXIF, IPTC, and Comments editor to sync XMP tags. MetadataEdit : IPTC Editor dialog is more compliant with IPTC.org recommendations. MetadataEdit : IPTC Editor add the capability to set multiple values for a tag. SendImages : Complete re-write of emailing tool. GPSSync : New tool to edit GPS track list using googlemaps. RAWConverter : Raw files are decoded in 16 bits color depth using same auto-gamma and auto-white methods provided by dcraw with 8 bits color depth RAW image decoding. SlideShow : Now filenames, captions and progress indicators can have transparent backgrounds with OpenGL SlideShow as well. SlideShow : Added thumbnails into image list. SlideShow : Now you can play your favourite music during slideshow. DNGConverter : New plugin to convert RAW camera image to Digital NeGative (DNG).
A coding sprint is planed to Genoa - Italy by me and Angelo Naselli. The goal of this event is to improve KDE4 digikam and kipi-plugins code.
The event dates are set from 31 october to 2 november. We will hosted by ALID Association which will provide a room with internet connection. The event will be sponsored by KDE-ev.
For a long time, many people asked me to implement a RAW camera image converter to Digital NeGative (DNG). Why should one support DNG under Linux? To improve interoperability with other photo-management programs such as Adobe tools, and to improve Digital Asset Management (DAM), as Gerhard Kulzer discusses in this nice tutorial and in particular in Part 2.
I have already talked about DNG in another ticket. My first viewpoint about DNG SDK from Adobe has been wrong: missing tutorials, weird API documentation, wrong source code licence, etc... But after having found this nice web site from Barry Pearson which provides a huge collection of papers about DNG, I had a second look at the DNG SDK.
3 weeks ago, i have received a mail from a contributor named Holger Berger. He send me a patch against dcraw implementation included in libkdcraw, to parallelize demosaicing operations using OpenMP library. After some tests on my dual core computer i have immediately felt the power of parallelized code: it's faster.
We have tried to contact Dave Coffin to include this patch officially in dcraw... without success (no response). Why ? He don't like OpenMp certainly... So we have looked for another way to use this patch.
I am currently working with Andi Clemens to improve some important usability issues in Image Editor and Showfoto.
In April, Risto Saukonpää, the designer (and photographer) who re-designed digikam.org website and digiKam logo (updates coming about those) provided a great mockup and ideas for Showfoto how to speed-up workflow during image editing.
Well, i'm happy to say that work is in progress in KDE3 branch. I have written a new API for editor named Editor Tool and it will be used for all image plugins. The goal is to remove all independent plugin dialogs and have them as embedded plugins on editor window itself. Preview is stacked over canvas and settings placed as a dedicated tab in right sidebar. The API will plug and unplug all tools automaticlally when changing between them.
The digiKam development team is happy to release version 0.9.4. The digiKam tarball can be downloaded from SourceForge. Noteworthy features added since the last stable release include auto-gamma and auto-whitebalance support for RAW files in 16bit mode, displaying the number of contained items in the overview for all albums, usability improvements, as usual a lot of bug fixes - see below for a complete list of new features and fixed bugs.
