[Digikam-users] Digikam Workflow Questions

[Gilles Caulier]

2015-05-12 17:03 GMT+02:00 Eric Mesa <ericsbinaryworld at gmail.com>:
> Hello Digikam list,
>
> Back in 2012 I did a comparison of Lightroom and Digikam and it seemed like
> Digikam was pretty awesome, I just happened to have been involved in
> Lightroom for a long time and didn't want to change without reason.

I remember to have read your blog post in the past. Great review and objective.

> However,
> with the latest Lightroom 5, performance has slowed to a crawl, making me
> wonder if it's worth the $150/year vs FLOSS software I already know is
> pretty awesome.
>
> So I had a couple questions about workflow that I couldn't find in the
> online documentation.
> 1. Does Digikam write metadata do DNG files or just use XMP sidecar files?

Both. DNG is tiff/ep standardized and very well documented.
This depend of your Metadata settings of course.

> 2. Right now if I want to create a black and white version of one of my
> photos, here's what I do Lightroom:
>    a. On my DNG file I create a Virtual Copy
>    b. I make that Virtual Copy Black and White (and any tonal changes I'd
> like to do)
>    c. I export the Virtual Copy as a JPEG (so I have B/W files to upload to
> the net, share, etc)
>    d. I export the original as a JPEG (so that I have a color version to
> upload, share, etc)
>
> Does Digikam have anything like that? If Digikam doesn't have virtual
> copies, how do I represent multiple versions of a DNG file?

Globally, yes. Feature is called Versionning in Setup dialog, with
multiple tunes.

> 3. There's a lot I can Google, but especially in the world of FLOSS software
> this is ever-changing: What is the best RAW/DNG-based workflow with the
> latest version of Digikam? Does it involve RAWTherapee/DarkTable/something
> else to interpret the RAW/DNG file? Or is Digikam currently the best? If
> someone on the list uses one of these external programs - would you mind
> letting me know your current workflow?

I personally started to implement RAW to DNG converter in kipiplugins.
This tool use libraw and Adode DNG sdk. But as i don't use DNG, i
cannot said if this solution is better than another one. I don't use
also RAWTherapee/DarkTable. digiKam is enough for me, and this is why
i code in this project.

Best

Gilles Caulier