The documentation (especially the screenshots) is woefully out of date. And the user interface leaves a lot to be desired. I've had it crash on me more than a few times (but it has never lost anything important - another good reason it never writes to original files). LibreOffice, GiMP) it's far from perfect. Of course, as with (most?) big, complex open-source software like this (ex. It has several different plugins for adjusting levels, from a simple brightness/contrast/gamma tool, to a powerful histogram + curve tool. For example, it's got a plugin that will un-warp images based on the camera and lens you used. The editor itself isn't particularly flashy, but it gets the job done and has plenty of powerful plugins baked in. The RAW is always there in case I want to try again. Currently I'm just making versions ad hoc when I feel the edited photo looks "good enough". You can choose if you want it to store a new version after each edit, or only after each edit that can't be completely reversed (for example, a 16->8 bit conversion or a blur operation). The editing tools default to maintaining "versions" of images. Or, I can take a bunch of JPGs straight out of the camera, and do a bulk resize with auto levels, if I just want to quickly publish to Facebook or something.ĭigiKam NEVER changes the original image - it's literally impossible to tell any of the tools to overwrite the original image. then dump out 16-bit PNGs for further editing. So I can take a folder full of RAWs and do a customized export process, adjust color balance and exposure, etc. Includes a very powerful batch processor, that supports multi-processor and can run any of the editing plugins. I haven't found much use for it, but I imagine for a professional photographer that would be important. It includes a light table so you can do side-by-side comparisons of sets of photos. If I've taken bracketed photos, I add "color" to them so they're visually obvious as a group, so I can run them through Luminance HDR later. Currently, I'm using the "flags" to mark the photos that are no good (red), maybe (yellow) and accepted (green). This lets you come up with your own organizational system for your photos. The album organizer lets you assign tags, flags (red/green/yellow), color groups, and "stars" to each image. Having never used Lightroom, I can't say with any authority how well they have done in this pursuit, but for me as a beginner photographer, I find that DigiKam has some VERY powerful features: In other words, I doubt the developers are trying to literally copy Lightroom, but rather want to replicate its functionality in their own tool. It seems to be a Lightroom substitute/clone, in the same way that GiMP is a substitute/clone for Photoshop. I usually create a sub-album of the main one to store the low-resolution exports. Use the batch processor to do a 16->8 bit conversion, resize, and save as JPG. Select the latest versions of all the files I want to upload Full-resolution 16-bit PNG files are not easy to work with, and can't easily be uploaded to Facebook or whatever. DigiKam will only show the most recent version of an image in the tray, but you can flag certain versions to always appear if you want.Įxport for sharing. The downside is that 16-bit PNGs take up a LOT more disk space than a 12-bit RAW and don't compress very well.įor each image that needs extra work, open it in the image editor and do the additional tweaks. The result is images that usually look pretty close to the camera-generated JPGs that were generated alongside the RAWs. I usually throw in a few minor adjustments to the levels and saturation, since a straight RAW export usually looks muted and dim. Run a batch process to export all the RAWs to 16-bit PNGs (or TIFFs, or whatever you want). This leaves me with just green and red flagged images. Then only show "yellow" and make final decisions (red/green). I then switch to showing just unflagged pictures (in case I missed any) I have my display filter set to only show yellow, green, and unflagged, so the rejects just disappear from the tray as I flag them. Go through the RAWs and flag each of them red, yellow, or green (ctrl+1,2,3). Here's a general workflow that works for me: So your input files (whether they're RAWs or JPEGs) will always be kept pristine, and your edits always applied to new files.ĮDIT: This page helped me figure out the editor a little better: The screenshots are way out of date, but the basic information is sound. One thing I do like about DigiKam is that it has a hard rule to NEVER overwrite/replace any original file. DigiKam seems to have all the same photo editing features as Darktable, but the interface is a bit more awkward. I looked at Darktable too, and while I like its RAW editor, it wasn't immediately obvious to me how you could use it to organize/tag/process lots of photos in albums.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |