Using Digikam
Computer programs are already globalized. Down under they use as well Windows and down under they are knowing Linux too. In a supermarket I saw the magazine apc - High-Performance Computing. I was not that interested in the stuff they wrote about (beside a test of the Adobe Acrobat - a program I use more and more). More important was the DVD on the cover. Beside videos and test versions there was a full workable SuSE Linux 9.2. Okay, I thought, let's borrow the money and install it.
Today is I think the forth day I'm using it and well: It was for sure worth the 10NZDs. Here I want to talk about the tool Digikam. Like the name says it is written for digital cameras. The special name shows immediately that it is part of the windows manager KDE, beside Gnome one of the most popular desktops for Linux.
What does the program?
The program can be used as bridge between camera and computer. Means it can manage, download and remove pictures on the digital cam. The program offers functions for managing pictures on the harddisk. And finally the program is able to modify pictures by using the mighty ImageMagick functions.
Who can use the program?
My first experiences showed me, that the program should be used only by people able to deal unfinished software. Digikam offers much but still a lot of comand combinations lead directly to the nice Kde debug screen. The download of pictures from the digicam looks unstable. Don't know if the problem is the camera firmware or the Digikam software. Fact is that my Nikkon D70 must be use the PTP USB mode (change must be done in the camera configuration). Fact is that the camera entry Nikkon D70 in Digikam was not working at all. Workaround: Let Digikam autodetect the connected and switched on D70. Digikam called my D70 USB PTP Class Camera. A little bit strange but finally it worked. During the download of the last pictures (White Cliff Tour) some of them were damaged, partly unreadable. The unreadable ones I deleted immediately. Here again I don't know if the problem is really the Digikam program but I as long this is unclear the software must be used with caution!
What makes the program cool?
The problems look severe but anyway: I like Digikam. Why? First the picture management is great. Easily albums can be created. They are used to bring some order into the mess. The picture informations from the camera can be used for rotate the pictures automatically into the proper position. Something IrfanView (by the way: a really good picture tool for Windows) is not able to do till now. Very cool is the usage of so called tags. With them pictures are marked. Later they can be ordered with the tags. It does not matter anymore, in which album they are. This is very interesting when You want to feed Your blog: Create a tag Blog and mark all pictures You want to insert with it. Later one click on the Blog tag filters all marked pictures.
What makes the program a real useful tool?
Your sick of using five programs to prepare pictures for Your homepage? Digikam offers an intelligent alternative. The secret: The ImageMagick libraries. They offer a lot of possibilities to rework the raw files from the camera. Resize, convert, filter and even effects. Some may knew this libraries from other applications. Digikam is using batch processes. Means it sends not only one picture to ImageMagick, it sends all of the actual library. This is just great. If everything works fine, the preparation of 200 pictures is the work of 5 to 10 mouseclicks. All the other stuff the computer does. Means the computer is really doing its job.
Some tips:
Make sure that the ImageMagick libraries are installed. Unfortunately the standard installation of the SuSE I have here was not doing this. Therefore Digikam cannot use its batch processes.
My blog pictures are using normally the same size (320px x 212px) and the same picture format (png). The camera stores the pics as jpeg's in a little bit higher resolution ;-) Therefore I have to resize, sharpen and convert. Do it in this order. It looks like that not properly stored jpegs can create a lot of trouble. My problem was that I converted immediately after resizing. Quit a lot of png's contained information which made it impossible for ImageMagick to sharpen them. First sharpening before converting helped to get nearly all pictures through the processes.
For information:
I used Digikam 0.7.0 together with KDE 3.3.0 and ImageMagick 6.0.7-4.1
So and now I have to startup again Windows ;-)
Today is I think the forth day I'm using it and well: It was for sure worth the 10NZDs. Here I want to talk about the tool Digikam. Like the name says it is written for digital cameras. The special name shows immediately that it is part of the windows manager KDE, beside Gnome one of the most popular desktops for Linux.
What does the program?
The program can be used as bridge between camera and computer. Means it can manage, download and remove pictures on the digital cam. The program offers functions for managing pictures on the harddisk. And finally the program is able to modify pictures by using the mighty ImageMagick functions.
Who can use the program?
My first experiences showed me, that the program should be used only by people able to deal unfinished software. Digikam offers much but still a lot of comand combinations lead directly to the nice Kde debug screen. The download of pictures from the digicam looks unstable. Don't know if the problem is the camera firmware or the Digikam software. Fact is that my Nikkon D70 must be use the PTP USB mode (change must be done in the camera configuration). Fact is that the camera entry Nikkon D70 in Digikam was not working at all. Workaround: Let Digikam autodetect the connected and switched on D70. Digikam called my D70 USB PTP Class Camera. A little bit strange but finally it worked. During the download of the last pictures (White Cliff Tour) some of them were damaged, partly unreadable. The unreadable ones I deleted immediately. Here again I don't know if the problem is really the Digikam program but I as long this is unclear the software must be used with caution!
What makes the program cool?
The problems look severe but anyway: I like Digikam. Why? First the picture management is great. Easily albums can be created. They are used to bring some order into the mess. The picture informations from the camera can be used for rotate the pictures automatically into the proper position. Something IrfanView (by the way: a really good picture tool for Windows) is not able to do till now. Very cool is the usage of so called tags. With them pictures are marked. Later they can be ordered with the tags. It does not matter anymore, in which album they are. This is very interesting when You want to feed Your blog: Create a tag Blog and mark all pictures You want to insert with it. Later one click on the Blog tag filters all marked pictures.
What makes the program a real useful tool?
Your sick of using five programs to prepare pictures for Your homepage? Digikam offers an intelligent alternative. The secret: The ImageMagick libraries. They offer a lot of possibilities to rework the raw files from the camera. Resize, convert, filter and even effects. Some may knew this libraries from other applications. Digikam is using batch processes. Means it sends not only one picture to ImageMagick, it sends all of the actual library. This is just great. If everything works fine, the preparation of 200 pictures is the work of 5 to 10 mouseclicks. All the other stuff the computer does. Means the computer is really doing its job.
Some tips:
Make sure that the ImageMagick libraries are installed. Unfortunately the standard installation of the SuSE I have here was not doing this. Therefore Digikam cannot use its batch processes.
My blog pictures are using normally the same size (320px x 212px) and the same picture format (png). The camera stores the pics as jpeg's in a little bit higher resolution ;-) Therefore I have to resize, sharpen and convert. Do it in this order. It looks like that not properly stored jpegs can create a lot of trouble. My problem was that I converted immediately after resizing. Quit a lot of png's contained information which made it impossible for ImageMagick to sharpen them. First sharpening before converting helped to get nearly all pictures through the processes.
For information:
I used Digikam 0.7.0 together with KDE 3.3.0 and ImageMagick 6.0.7-4.1
So and now I have to startup again Windows ;-)
skaifyomonul - 18. Mär, 07:41
