Features

Summary

The following is a concise overview of features and tools available in digiKam. The application covers the photographic workflow consisting of these major stages:

• Setup your collections
• Import photos, raw files, and videos
• Organize your collections
• Search in your collections
• Browse, compare, and view items in your collections
• Post-processing, editing, assembling, and transforming your photos
• Share and publish photos

Setup

• digiKam support multiple collections hosted from different media, as local, removable, or from the network
• All collections are scanned to populate a database with most importants information from your items, as camera settings, geolocation, lens, copyright, captions, etc
• Complex queries can be processed to search and found quickly items inside your collections using technical criteria
• Directories and files can be ignored during scan

• Database can be stored in local or to a remote server. Sqlite, Mysql, and Mariadb databases are supported.
• Database files are separated by main features, to simplify backups:
  • Core database to store items properties
  • Thumbs database to store all thumbnails with efficient PGF wavelets compression format
  • Faces database to store recognition vectors from neural network processing based on OpenCV
  • Similarity database to store image finger-prints to search duplicate items

Import

• Support for all digital camera models that work with Gphoto2
• Support of USB Mass Storage devices
• Import module supports the following actions:
  • Delete images
  • Upload images
  • Lock images
  • Auto-rename pictures during import
  • Auto-rotate pictures during import
  • Auto-creation of albums during import
  • Lossless conversion during import
  • RAW to DNG conversion during import
  • Run customized scripts during import
  • Identification of already downloaded items
  • Show camera information

Organize

• Albums are directories to host images, raw files, and videos

• Albums use hierarchies on disk with sub-albums
• Tags are virtual albums stored on database but using same properties than physical albums
• Tags hierarchies and properties can be organized by a special tool named Tags Manager

• Labels are special tags to mark items for your workflow (rating, color, pick)

• Group items together by file-name, by date, time-lapse

• Add tags, comments, and advanced textual properties to items

• Sort albums by folder, category, and creation date
• Sort items in albms by name, path, date, file size, or manually

• Separate icon-view items as flat list, by file format, by album, or by month
• Filter album items by rating, filename, file type, tags, and labels

Search

digiKam provide plenty of tools to search items in your collections using simple criteria based on items properties as:

• By Tags

• By Labels (rating, color marks, flags)

• By Dates using calendar

• By Time Range using timeline histogram

• By Geolocation using world maps

In addition, more advanced search tools are also provided using post processed properties computed in second stage by end users:

• By Similarity to find duplicates or by drawing a sketch to find items with specific shapes

• By faces (detection and recognition)

Finaly, if these methods are not enough to complete a search on your collections, an ultimate very powerful tool can process complex queries on the database using multiple criteria at the same time. All items properties stored in database can be used to compose a search.

View

Central view can use multiple visualization modes:

• Icon view to display items as thumbnails
• Item preview to display items in full size

• Map view with items position show as overlay

• Table view to display item with a list as a file manager

• Video support as photo: thumbnails, preview, and metadata

• Support of RAW pictures using LibRaw included in digiKam core. More than 1000 proprietary RAW camera formats are supported

• Easy comparing similar pictures using Light Table:
  • Files displayed side by side
  • Properties displayed side by side
  • Synchronized panning and zooming
  • Navigation by pair
  • Raw files support

• All digiKam components support 16 bits color depth pictures (RAW, TIFF, PNG, JPEG2000)
• All digiKam components has a full Color Management support using ICC color profiles

• Thumbnail sizes can be adapted to your screen size on the fly and support Hdpi monitor
• Thumbnail can show all main properties from items

• Sidebar used everywhere to display
  • Item information
  • Item Metadata
  • Colors information: histogram and ICC profile
  • Geolocation information
  • Captions/tags/labels/date
  • Item versionning information
  • Tag filter information
  • Quick access to post-processing tools

• Fast preview pictures mode embedded into albums interface with zoom and panning features

Post-processing

Plugins Architecture

• To simplify development using stand-alone modules, digiKam make use of own plugins:

  • Generic tools to process group of items (assembly, export, import, etc)
  • BQM tools to batch process items on queues following workflow settings
  • Image Editor tools to fix/improve/transform photo

• Plugin architecture allows to create new tools without to touch core implementations

• Plugins are also shared with Showfoto application

• Plugins can be disabled in application

Generic plugins

• Print creator

• Create calendar

• Adjust time and date

• Share items with DLNA/Upnp compatible devices

• Geolocation editor

• Create presentation

• Create panorama

• Send items by e-mail

• Edit Pictures Metadata

• Create video-slideshow

• …and more…

Image Editor

• Fast image editor with:
  • Free cropping
  • Rotation
  • Flipping
  • Photo editing without losing metadata
  • Histogram viewer
  • Under and Over Exposure indicator on the canvas
  • Color Management support
  • Export to another image format
  • Zooming and panning
  • Printing images
  • Multiple editor tool preview to compare side by side results
  • 16 bits image color depth support
  • RAW camera image support

Image Editor Plugins

• Hue / Saturation / Luminosity correction: to adjust hue, saturation, and luminosity on photograph

• Brightness / Contrast / Gamma correction: to adjust brighness, contrast, and gamma on photograph

• Colors balance: to adjust balance of colors

• Colors auto-correction tools: to apply Normalize / Equalize / Auto levels / Stretch Contrast histogram filters

• Invert colors: to generate positive photograph
• Color-Space conversion: to switch image color space to another one

• Red eyes correction: to fix automatically red eyes on photograph

• Apply Texture: to apply a decorative texture to a photograph

• Simple blur: to apply gaussian blur on image
• Ratio Crop : to cut photograph with proportion aids and composing tools based on Fibonacci rules

• Rain Drops: to add a visual effect of raindrops on photograph
• Adjust levels: to adjust the photograph histogram levels manually

• Vignetting: to remove or add vignetting on photograph
• Noise Reduction: to filter noise using on wavelet correction

• Liquid Rescale: to change ratio of a picture while keeping the content intact by content aware resizing
• Local Contrast: to generate a pseudo HDR-tonemapping by recover highlights and shadows while keeping local contrast

• Distortion FX: to apply distortion special effects on photograph

• Lens Correction: to correct lens spherical aberration on photograph using Lensfun library

• Shear Tool: to shear a photograph horizontally and vertically
• Adjust curves: to adjust the photograph colors using curves

• Channel Mixer: to mix the photograph color channels
• White Balance: to adjust white color temperature of photograph

• Perspective Tool: to adjust the photograph perspective
• Photograph Restoration: to reduce photograph artifacts using CImg library

• Hot Pixels Correction: to remove photograph hot pixels generated by a deficient camera
• Free Rotation: to rotate a photograph with a free angle in degrees

• Add Border: to add decorative frame around a photograph
• Insert Text: to insert text over a photograph

• Blur FX: to apply blurring special effects on photograph

• Oil Paint: to simulate oil painting on photograph

• Emboss: to apply emboss filter on photograph
• Black and White: to simulate black and white and infrared film effect on photograph with possible tonality change

• Charcoal: to simulate charcoal drawing on photograph
• Film Grain: to simulate film grain on photograph

• Color FX: to apply color effect on photograph as Solarize or Lut3D

• Sharpen: to apply a filter to refocus a photograph without increase noise

Batch Queue Manager

• Items to batch process can be hosted in queues
• Each queue has a dedicated settings as target album, Raw decoding, renamings, etc
• BQM Plugins provide same tools than Image Editor
• Plugins can be chained as assinged to queues to speed-up processing

• Parallelized processing of queues using multi-cores
• Save and restore queue settings as workflow
• RAW image converter
• DNG converter

Share

• Export to Dropbox
• Export to Flickr
• Export to Google Photo
• Export to Google Drive
• Export to Piwigo
• Export to Pinterest
• Export to Twitter
• Export to HTML Gallery
• Export to a local directory or remote computer
• …and more…