[Digikam-users] New User: is digiKam right for me? and if not, what alternative?

[Arnd Baecker]

Hi Yuv,

you raised quite a few points (not unlikely that some will
fall through  the cracks... ;-), but let me try to answer part of them:

On Mon, 28 Jan 2008, Yuval Levy wrote:

> Arnd Baecker wrote:

[...]

> > But: even for well-sorted image collections digikam provides
> > features, which I find extremely useful:
> > - rating of images:
> >   Together with the new quick filters this allows to simply
> >   display a subset of the really good images
> >   (e.g. if you want to show it to someone else who only
> >   has time to see the best 10% ;-)
> > - tagging of images:
> >   once all images are tagged properly (well, this takes a bit of time ;-)
> >   this allows for finding images with specific characteristics
> > - adding comments
> >
> > All these can be searched for very quickly and efficiently.
> > As digikam can be configured to write this information
> > into the image metadata, these could be accessed from other applications
> > as well.
>
> I like all of those features. Even if I personally don't have a use for
> them, I am sure they are useful to other people.
>
> What I am extremely allergic to are applications that write into the images.
>
> The paradigm should be:
> 1. don't touch the originals.
> 2. in case of doubt, all images are to be considered originals.
>
> I love XMP sidecars and application databases to contain these and more
> metadata - the more the merrier - just stay away from my files. I
> understand the good intentions, but mistakes happen. I don't need to
> recall the damage done by Microsoft's Vista to Nikon RAW files.

The important sentence in my mail was
"""As digikam *can* be configured to write this information
into the image metadata, """ (emphasis added ;-).
So the point is: this is configurable.

In addition this is also a question of the workflow:
for example, I copy all my images via card-reader
to one hard-disk and leave that completely untouched
(Apart from deleting the bad images immediately)