[Digikam-users] Review of Digikam

[Daniel Bauer]

On Thursday 21 December 2006 18:00, Gonçalo Valverde wrote:
> I agree that digiKam has a lot of nice features, but i wouldn't say
> that the criticism of the review is totally unfair. The menu structure
> is not only confusing but also not helpfull productivity wise. In
> another thread I've commented on this, but from my point of view an
> approach similar to what was taken with Adobe Lightroom would improve
> a lot the the workflow in digiKam. Digging in menus for the right
> action to use is not only tedious but also has the problem that some
> of the menu items are not intituive.. it doesn't make sense to no
> being able to change the IPTC or the EXIF directly in the tabs of the
> image editor.. it's not even intuitive that you need to do that in the
> editor of the gallery and only through a menu. F-spot seems to go into
> a better approach on this, but it lacks a lot of the functionality
> that digiKam provides.
> IMHO digiKam could become a great program if the user interface
> improves a lot, because almoust all the needed functionality is
> already there.
>
> Best regards

I work a lot with digiKam and (although one can always have wishes, of course) 
I think the user interface is not sooo very bad. There are many things where 
I have to click much less than I had to when I was using photoshop. I was 
extremely used to photoshop over many years but since I use digiKam (and 
UFraw, imageMagick, sometimes the Gimp) I am about twice as fast as I was 
before - on the same machine.

As somebody else already stated in this room, the most important things are 
finishing/debugging the productive tools. In this regard digiKam took huge 
steps forward in the recent past. So I'd say, digiKam already *is* a great 
program.

Nonetheless improvements are always possible. But I think it is not very 
helpful to say: do it like Adobe does it. 

First of all, Adobe isn't infallible, although they have great (and very 
expensive!) apps, I agree. But if you say: "The menu structure is not only 
confusing but also not helpfull productivity wise" then I must say: "Your 
sentence is not helpful at all", because it says just nothing besides of the 
fact that you don't like the menu structure. 

Don't take this as a flame, please. I'd only wish that to criticise was 
accompanied by clear proposals for improvements. Send your proposals to the 
list to discuss them with others and then you can always place a wish on the 
bugs page. Maybe others will vote for it. And maybe the digiKam developpers 
like it and one day you have what you wish - for free!

Have a nice evening!

Daniel

b.t.w. I hope this text doesn't sound harsh - it's not ment to be. If it does, 
then it's just because of my lack of better english knowledge...
-- 
Daniel Bauer photographer Basel Switzerland
professional photography: http://www.daniel-bauer.com
Madagascar special: http://www.sanic.ch