digiKam and DigikamImagePlugins 0.9.1-beta1 released

The digiKam team is proud to announce the first beta release digiKam 0.9.1 and digiKamimageplugins 0.9.1.

The digiKam team approaches another release step with 0.9.1-beta1 (including
digikamimageplugins-0.9.1-beta1 and libkexiv2-0.1.0 as separate packages,
libkexiv2 is required). The files are online at at this url

This is a bug-fix and useability release with several new features for viewing
and slideshows that even display RAW files. Plans are to put -rc1 in a week
and -final in two weeks time online.

New features since 0.9.0 are listed below:

General:
- New native JPEG2000 image loader using Jasper library witch can support 16 bits color depth pictures.
- New optimized layout to show Comments & Tags side bar contents.
- Tags View from Comments & Tags side bar support drag & drop.
- New Batch tool to sync all pictures metadata (EXIF/IPTC) with digiKam database content.
- Add a status bar to Album Gui with a progress bar, text bar, and navigate
bar.
- New native SlideShow tool witch use the Image Preview feature. RAW files can be slided very fast.

AlbumGUI :
- Improvement of pop-up menu of Tags Filter View and Comment & Tags about auto
selection/deselection of parents/child tags in Tags treeview.
- Main Root album show a Welcome page for new users (like Kmail or Konqueror).
- Video files can be previewed using an embedded instance of default KDE media
player.
- Preview picture mode use a memory cache to speed-up loading.
- Preview picture mode pride a context pop-up menu.
- Comments & Tags now support multiple selection of items to apply properties.
- New option to set the action to do when user right click on picture thumb: Load on Image Editor or Show an embedded preview.
- Prefer Exif DateTimeOriginal for sorting images (DateTimeDigitized and DateTime only used as fallback)

Image Plugins:
- All tools remember settings between sessions.
- All tools render properly preview using Color Managed View.
- All tools use the same keyboard shortcuts than PhotoShop.
- New option in all Color corrections Tools to show under-exposed and over-exposed areas of corrected picture before to apply corrections.
- Brightness/Contrast/Gamma : settings value excursion are the same than Photoshop.
- Add Border Tool : add new option to preserve aspect ratio. Border Width can be set in pixels or in percents accordingly with this setting.
- Perspective Tool : add a grid and vertical/horizontal guide lines.
- Ratio-crop Tool : usability improvements from Jaromir Malenko.
- Auto Color Correction Tool : add new filter to perform auto-exposure corrections.
- all plugins : capability to remember settings between plugin sessions to store configuration in a settings file.

Image Editor:
- Add new advanced options to keep ratio and alignment about print pictures.
- Add 2 new advanced options to show under-exposed or over-exposed pixels.
- Remove View->Histogram menu option. We have a better histogram available in sidebar.
- Color profiles are tested now to avoid invalid files.
- JPEG/PNG/TIFF/JPEG2000 file save settings are now available in File Save
dialog.
- JPEG file save settings include a red warning about this lossy compression image format with a link to wikipedia to aware users.

Bug fixes since 0.9.0 are listed below:

#115157 : Usability: Image comments/tags dialog: hard to find/see all
already selected tags (and to 'de'select them).
#132309 : Wish: enhance video support in digiKam.
#115153 : Assigns tags not only to selected images with drag and drop.
#131743 : Comments and tag edit widgets should retain focus when
changing image.
#140412 : Comments/Tags sidebar steels focus.
#137491 : Editor image cache not flush when an image is modified
outside digiKam.
#138949 : Save/overwrite fails: wrong dialog.
#139197 : Crash during import of raw imagefiles (DNG).
#139313 : UTF-8 image comments are mangled when input from image
editor.
#136903 : If partition gets full during camera/card copy there is no
warning and empty files are created.
#133955 : Rating search: less, equal, and larger comparison.
#139547 : Tag hierarchy automatic fill.
#138816 : gpcamera.cpp compile failure CameraList camList.
#93542 : Improvements to digiKam print interface.
#139658 : Tiff generated by photoshop is either ignored by digiKam
image browser, or kills digiKam when regenerating the database.
#102032 : Wish: rating system for photos, show/hide/sort by rating.
#111446 : Bad behaviour when out of disk space.
#133516 : Tags set in Comments/Tags end up on the wrong picture.
#140136 : Aspect ratio crop and selection widget improvements.
#131600 : Set tag for multiple selection of images.
#137545 : Helper lines / cross wanted.
#131170 : Add grid/auxiliary lines for perspective correction tool.
#138158 : Allow to edit multiple image tags/comments at same time.
#140234 : Thumbnail click default action.
#135141 : Border size in pixel.
#137696 : Border extent should not follow image aspect ratio.
#138444 : More clear/consistent color management terminology.
#140176 : Showfoto crashes when selecting a filter.
#130237 : Typos in digiKam plugin files.
#138925 : External modules config dialog lacks a select all button.
#140038 : digiKam Image Editor crash on right click after changing
toolbar.
#139766 : Crash when displaying EXIF metadata with Unicode comment
#130017 : Wish: batch operation to save existing comments in the files.
#140320 : View menu should better fit after Edit.
#127617 : "Toggle Fullscreen" should be located in "View" menu instead of "Settings" menu.
#139264 : digiKam sorts pictures with wrong exif tag.
#140417 : Crash digiKam when delete image.
#110514 : Enhanced selection, refactored histogram.
#140933 : Typo: Album Library Path.
#141190 : digikam crash when invalid ICM file at color profile directory and you enter into PREFERENCES->COLOR SPACE PROFILES.
#123649 : JPEG/PNG quality settings at the "save" dialog.
#116518 : Use KIPI plugin for displaying slideshows.
#140304 : Start slideshow from the current image.
#140303 : slideshow must be relocated to View menu from tools menu.
#137503 : Tags are not written to image file automatically.
#136254 : Editing tags does not change IPTC-keywords.
#135655 : Proper full screen mode (no menu, toolbar, statusbar, sidebars)