[Digikam-users] digiKam and digikamimageplugins 0.8.0 released

[Joern Ahrens]

digiKam is a simple digital photo management application for KDE, which makes 
importing and organizing digital photos a "snap". The photos can be organized 
in albums which can be sorted chronologically, by directory layout or by 
custom collections. An easy to use interface is provided that enables you to 
connect to your camera and preview, download and/or delete your images.

The digiKam team is pleased to bring to you the next generation of the 
user-friendly digital photo management software and its image plugins. The 
primary focus for this release is new ways of photo organization and 
searching. We hope it will be as much fun for you to use it as we had 
developing it.

The noteworthy features in this release:

* Albums and Tags have been separated out into different views and these views 
are collapsible.

* PHOTO DATES AND COMMENTS: Photos are now scanned for their metadata which is 
then stored in the database. The EXIF timestamp (if available) is used for 
sorting and searching

 * DATE BASED VIRTUAL FOLDERS: Each corresponding to the month in which the 
pictures were taken. Its also possible to filter this view to show photos 
from single or multiple day(s) and week(s)

* SEARCHING: Two interfaces have been implemented for searching on photos:
   o QUICK SEARCH: a keyword based search which also allows date based lookups
   o ADVANCED SEARCH: build rules and groups of rules to do very precise 
searches
   o LIVE FEEDBACK: Both searches show instant results based on the current 
search criteria

* SEARCH BASED VIRTUAL FOLDERS: The searches can be saved as virtual folders 
and its possible to edit the search criterion later.

* TAG FILTERING: A new view has been added to the right side which allows 
quick drag and drop tag assignments and also filtering of photos in the 
current view. This view is again collapsible

* ALBUM LOCATION INDICATOR: When photos are shown from a virtual folder (tag, 
date or search), the photos are grouped together based on album locations

* MEMORY OPTIMIZATION: Thumbnails are now loaded on demand and only a fixed 
cache of thumbnails is kept in memory

* NEW THEMES: Dark, Sandy and Orange Crush

* BACKEND CHANGES: - Database upgraded to sqlite3 - New kioslaves for handling 
date, search, tag, album listing

* SHOWFOTO : new slide show tool

* IMAGE PLUGIN CHANGES
   o Plugin dialogs have been revamped for better usability and easier 
comparison of filter effects.
   o Plugin computations are now threaded
   o Plugin preview is now resizable
   o BigEndian fixes

* NEW IMAGE PLUGIN FEATURES :
   o Aspect Ratio Crop : new photograph composition guide tool based on 
Fibonacci series (golden mean)
   o New Color AutoCorrection tool with preview (Normalize, Autolevels, 
Equalize, and Stretch Contrast)
   o Free Rotation : Auto crop and antialiasing options
   o Shear Tool : Antialiasing option

* NEW IMAGE PLUGINS :
   o Refocus : An advanced sharpness editor
   o HotPixels : An hot pixels removal tool to fix bad pixels from camera CCD

<< Where to get it >>

You can download both from digiKam's SourceForge area:
  http://sourceforge.net/projects/digikam/

<< How to install >>
http://www.digikam.org/?q=download

Joern Ahrens
digiKam team
http://www.digikam.org/