digiKam 0.9.4-rc1 release
Dear all digiKam fans and users!
The digiKam development team is happy to release 0.9.4-rc1. The digiKam tarball can be downloaded from SourceForge.
NEW FEATURES (since 0.9.3):
General : external libsqlite3 depency removed. sqlite3 source code is now included in digiKam core (see B.K.O #160966).
General : English words review in whole GUI by Oliver Dörr.
General : Updated internal CImg library to last stable 1.2.8 (released at 2008/04/18).
General : New search text filter for all metadata sidebar tabs.
General : New dialog to list all RAW camera supported. A search camera model tool is available to easily find a camera from list.
General : Creation of tags simplified everywhere. Multiple tags hierarchy can be created at the same time. Tags creation dialog re-designed.
General : Color theme scheme are pervasively applied in graphical interfaces, giving digiKam a real pro-look when dark schemes are selected.
General : Color theme scheme can be changed from either Editor or LightTable.
General : Add capability to display items count in all Album, Date, Tags, and Tags Filter folder views. The number of items contained in virtual or physical albums can be displayed next to its name. If a tree branch is collapsed, parent views sum-up the number of items from all undisplayed children views. Items count is performed in background by digiKam KIO-Slaves. A new option from Setup/Album dialog page can toggle on/off this feature.
ImageEditor : Raw files can be decoded in 16 bits color depth without to use Color Management. An auto-gamma and auto-white balance is processed using the same method than dcraw with 8 bits color depth RAW image decoding. This usefull to to have a speed-up RAW workflow with suitable images.
ImageEditor : New “save as” image file dialog with photo thumbnail/informations.
Showfoto : Added support of color theme schemes.
Showfoto : Added 2 options to setup images ordering with “File/Open Folder” action.
Showfoto : New open image file dialog with photo thumbnail/informations.
AlbumGUI : Add a new tool to perform Date search around whole albums collection: Time-Line. Timeline is a new left sidebar tab. It’s a great tool complementary to the calendar. Try it out!
AlbumGUI : In Calendar View, selecting Year album shows all images of the full year.
AlbumGUI : New status-bar indicator to report album icon view filtering status.
AlbumGUI : Auto-completion in all search text filter.
BUGS FIXES:
001 ==> 146393 : No gamma adjustment when opening RAW file.
002 ==> 158377 : digiKam duplicates downloaded images while overwriting existing ones.
003 ==> 151122 : Opening Albums Has Become Very Slow.
004 ==> 145252 : Umask settings used for album directory, not for image files.
005 ==> 144253 : Failed to update old Database to new Database format.
006 ==> 159467 : Misleading error message with path change in digikamrc file.
007 ==> 157237 : Connect the data when using the left tabs.
008 ==> 157309 : digiKam mouse scroll direction on lighttable.
009 ==> 158398 : Olympus raw images shown with wrong orientation.
010 ==> 152257 : Crash on saving images after editing.
011 ==> 153730 : Too many file format options when saving raw image from editor in digiKam.
012 ==> 151157 : Right and left keys goes to first picture and last picture without shortcuts.
013 ==> 151451 : Application crashed using edit.
014 ==> 139657 : Blueish tint in low saturation images converted to CMYK.
015 ==> 147600 : Showfoto Open folder - files shown in reverse order.
016 ==> 149851 : Showfoto asks if you want to save changes when deleting photo, if changes have been made.
017 ==> 138378 : Showfoto opens file browser window to last the folder used upon startup.
018 ==> 148964 : images are blur only inside shofoto.
019 ==> 146938 : Themes Don’t Apply To All Panels.
020 ==> 135378 : Single-click on picture open it in editor.
021 ==> 142469 : Splash screen to be the very first thing.
022 ==> 147619 : Crash when viewing video.
023 ==> 136583 : Album icon does not show preview-image after selecting given image as preview.
024 ==> 129357 : Thumbnails not rotated for (D200)-NEF.
025 ==> 132047 : Faster display of images and/or prefetch wished for.
026 ==> 150259 : media-gfx/digikam-0.9.2 error/typo in showfoto.desktop.
027 ==> 150674 : Turn of live update of preview when moving points in curves dialog or in histogram.
028 ==> 141703 : Show file creation date in tooltip.
029 ==> 128377 : Adjust levels: histograms don’t match, bad “auto level” function.
030 ==> 141755 : Sidebar: Hide unused tabs, Add tooltips.
031 ==> 146068 : Mixer does not work for green and blue selected as main channel and monochrome mode.
032 ==> 135931 : Reorganise Batch Processing tools from ‘Image’ and ‘Tools’ menus.
033 ==> 159664 : Background color of live/quick filter not updated on folder/date change.
034 ==> 096388 : Show number of images in the album.
035 ==> 155271 : Configure suggests wrong parameter for libjasper.
036 ==> 155105 : Broken png image present in albums folder causes digikam to crash when starting.
037 ==> 146760 : Providing a Timeline-View for quickly narrowing down the date of photos.
038 ==> 146635 : Ratio crop doesn’t remember orientation.
039 ==> 144337 : There should be no “empty folders”.
040 ==> 128293 : Aspect ratio crop does not respect aspect ratio.
041 ==> 157149 : digiKam crash at startup.
042 ==> 141037 : Search using Tag Name does not work.
043 ==> 158174 : Precise aspect ratio crop feature.
044 ==> 142055 : Which whitebalance is used.
045 ==> 158558 : Delete Function in Tag Filters panel needs to make sure that the tag is unselected when the tag is deleted.
046 ==> 120309 : Change screen backgroundcolor of image tools.
047 ==> 153775 : Download from camera: Renaming because of already existing file does not work.
048 ==> 154346 : Can’t rename in digiKam.
049 ==> 154625 : Image-files are not renamed before they are saved to disk.
050 ==> 154746 : Album selection window’s size is wrong.
051 ==> 159806 : Cannot display nikon d3 raw files.
052 ==> 148935 : digiKam hot pixel plugin can not read canon RAW files.
053 ==> 158776 : Confirm tag delete if tag assigned to photos.
054 ==> 148520 : Change of rating causes high CPU load.
055 ==> 140227 : Remove or modify D&D tags menu from icon view area.
056 ==> 154421 : Live search doesn’t search filenames.
057 ==> 118209 : digiKam hotplug script kde user detection problem.
058 ==> 138766 : JPEG Rotations: Give a warning when doing Lossy rotations (and offer to do lossless when applicable).
059 ==> 156007 : Canon Raw+Jpg Locks up download image window during thumbnail retrieval.
060 ==> 114465 : Simpler entry of tags.
061 ==> 159236 : Corrupted file when downloading from CF card via digiKam.
062 ==> 121309 : Camera list sorted by brand.
063 ==> 137836 : Usability: Configure camera gui add and auto-detect camera.
064 ==> 160323 : Changing the album name from sth to #sth and then to zsth causes the album to be deleted along with the files.
065 ==> 145083 : Space and Shift-Space isn’t used for navigation between images.
066 ==> 158696 : digiKam image viewer crashes when “Save As” is clicked.
067 ==> 156564 : Light table crashes when choosing channel.
068 ==> 147466 : digiKam crashes on termination if an audio file played.
069 ==> 146973 : Crashes when clicking on preview image.
070 ==> 148976 : digiKam Deleted 2.3 g of Pictures.
071 ==> 145252 : Umask settings used for album directory, not for image files.
072 ==> 125775 : digiKam way to save and delete “Searches”.
073 ==> 150908 : Canon g3 not recognised works version 0.9.1.
074 ==> 152092 : Showfoto crashes ( signal 11 ) on exit.
075 ==> 160840 : Wrong filtering on Album-Subtree-View.
076 ==> 160846 : Blurred preview of pics.
077 ==> 157314 : Zoom-slider has no steps.
078 ==> 161047 : Shift and wheel mouse doesn’t work.
079 ==> 161087 : Conflicting directions of mouse scroll when zooming.
080 ==> 161084 : Not properly updates status bar info.
081 ==> 162132 : Crash while saving tiff (possibly caused by present
alpha channel).
082 ==> 155046 : light-table useability, possible improvements.
083 ==> 161085 : Zoom steps in image editor.
084 ==> 162247 : The photos thumbnails list would be better if in the
end of an album/date/tag start the next.
085 ==> 160523 : Crash when saving picture as new name after resizing.
086 ==> 162428 : debug info needed ?
087 ==> 147597 : Typos in the digiKam KDE3 PO file.
088 ==> 162496 : When Digikam saves file as JPEG - JPG options are not
always presented.
089 ==> 160740 : Handbook says that libgphoto2 is required but does
not say whether it should be compiled with exif support.
090 ==> 148400 : Problem loading 16bit Grayscale TIFF image.
091 ==> 160925 : digiKam crash, I don’t know why, but I have the bugreport.
092 ==> 162691 : 0.9.4 beta5 compile error imagehistogram.cpp.
093 ==> 160966 : Some searches don’t work properly with the new sqlite3-3.5.8.
094 ==> 162245 : Assigned tag list not updated correctly when “show
assigned tags” filter is active.
095 ==> 158866 : Advanced Search on Tags a mess.
096 ==> 162814 : digiKam crashes when using light table (page down).
097 ==> 163151 : Red eye correction doesn’t work fine.
098 ==> 163227 : Searching for tag names in simple and advanced search
doesn’t work.
099 ==> 163474 : Config UI using external media.
100 ==> 156420 : Canon EOS 400D, no thumbnails displayed then digikam segfaults.
101 ==> 163118 : digikam-0.9.4_beta5 compilation hangs with gcc 4.3.
Screenshots and standard values
You might be proud of the user defined skin for digikam, but for new users it really looks unfamiliar and makes the whole software more geeky/less appealing. Don't show off with you features. Show some standard use case, mention some special functions, but make sure people see, that they might need your software. But we don't need a black coloured background!
Wrong!
Using a black background when working with photos enhances while searching for details in dark or under-lighted photos and black-and-white photos. For those of us with large image collections (I have thousands with my kids in them) working on a dark background makes things infinitely easier.
Both are right
I think both of you are right!
Perhaps show two screenshots - one with a normal KDE color scheme for the amatuer users and one with a dark background for the pro users.
Dark background
Actually when managing/editing photos, enviroment lighting and colors should be as neutral as possible. This means that middle gray is needed to be used.
If you use bright colors or too dark ones, it change the way how user sees the photo and it's not good for editing.
And this is taste question too, some people just like to use the bright ones. And it is good reason to use default color-schema of KDE but there is better reason to use middle gray because digiKam is photo management application.
And when Pro's edits photos, it is done in color calibrated monitor and color calibrated editing room. It is actually bretty depressive to work whole daile on such enviroment but it just makes 100% sure that colors are accurate. In home usage and most situations, user has not so much money to build controlled lighting enviroment with special lights and 10-32bit monitors, instead they use normal 8bit monitors and work under normal light conditions and it's great if they have color calibrated monitor (what is not big help if monitor is just 8bit and editing 16bit RAW).
So we need to offer users all the help what they can possible get when editing/viewing their photos. I have seen many times that just normal user edits his/her photos too much because they have white color schema on their application.
This is one reason why Adobe turned even the home users software, the Photoshop Elements to gray one, so home users wouldn't do so much big mistakes when editing photos and they can success more to get good photos. This means that these users more likely promote Adobe softwares for other persons too.
And for normal KDE application, there is no way to change color schema in app itself, just for whole KDE if needed, but beause digiKam can handle this easily, it is needed to promote too.
that is not the prob for a prof
Everyone can choose a colorscheme - I use the dark one. And a - I don't know the english word - "daylight-lamp" isn't so expensive as all think.
But the professionals they are using digiKam have problems with the RAW-support:
1. Kipi-Plugins lacks it and so you can't create a html-gallery for or send emails to customers.
2. The RAWs are a little bit to dark. But with 0.9.4 this should be no problem anymore.
3. But if you have a lot of RAWs (f.e. 4000 pics after a potoshooting in the wild) digiKam is very slow to rate them. A lot of other applications like LightZone works with JPEGs in a high quality to rate and delete them. Thats very nice. And fast. I hope this will be implemented in 0.10 soon. At least a bigger cache can help a lot I think.