[dot] Digikam Plans for KDE 4

[Dot Stories]

URL: http://dot.kde.org/1207150254/

From: m. and Gilles <mikmach at wp.pl>
Dept: all-your-picts-belong-to-us
Date: Wednesday 02/Apr/2008, @08:30

Digikam Plans for KDE 4
=======================

   Readers of Commit Digest probably noticed that Gilles Caulier is
again on top with number of commits. On what does he work so furiously?
Gilles is main developer of Digikam [http://www.digikam.org] which is
under transition from KDE 3 to KDE 4 and simultaneously adding new
features.  Read more to knew more about the future of advanced digital
photo management for KDE and Linux.

     There are many improvements including cleaner user interface,
improved performance, new thumbnail bar, XMP support, works on Mac OS X,
GPS tagging using Google Maps, multiple album collections supporting
collections on network shares and removable media, auto gamma and white
balance with RAW and its the first open source photography tool with 16
bit colour depth support.  Gilles Caulier tells all.

     We have plans to release 0.10.0 in September, if all goes well.

     Regression tests will take a while. I would not provide a "stable"
release full of bugs.

     As you can see, porting of Qt 3/KDE 3 application like Digikam, K3B
or Amarok to Qt 4/KDE 4 is not a simple task. Because changes in API are
huge all elements must be tested, some parts even re-written. The
advantage of this approach is review of all old code with factorisation,
simplification and various other improvements.

     Digikam 0.10 is still in alpha. I advise against use of it in
production, at least until first release candidate.

     There are also kipi-plugins [http://www.kipi-plugins.org] and all
shared libraries where Marcel and me are working hard to port to native
QT 4/KDE 4:

    * libkdcraw (including new 16 bits color depth auto-gamma/auto white
      balance)
    * libexiv2 (including new full XMP metadata support)
    * libkipi (partially re-written and cleaned).
    * 7 kipi-plugins fully ported by me (SendImages, RAWConverter,
      JPEGLossLess, FlashExport, TimeAdjust, MetadataEdit, and
      AcquireImage).

     I present here a few screenshots of Digikam for KDE 4 in action.
  [http://static.kdenews.org/jr/digikam/newsearchwindow.jpg]
     As you can see, a lot of work has been done to design a clean
interface, away from the traditional dialog requiring to build a search
step-by-step with comboboxes, towards a page which offers the available
options at a glance, at the same time retaining the ability to create
complex searches. With this approach we hope to create something more
user friendly.  It is not finished yet, the UI in the screenshot can be
considered a preview, but we want to finalise this interface for beta1.
The need to redesign the search interface came with the rewrite and
improvement of our database schema. Now much more photo metadata
information will be stored and will be available for searching. For
example, GPS information will now be stored in the database, which means
that read-only files (think of your RAW images) can as well be geocoded.
  [http://static.kdenews.org/jr/digikam/thumbbarwithpreviewmode.jpg]  
[http://static.kdenews.org/jr/digikam/thumbbarineditor.jpg]
     In Digikam for KDE 4, thumbnail kio-slave disappears. All thumbs
are now generated using multi-threading (another part implemented by
Marcel) If you have already played with Showfoto, you have certainly
seen a thumbbar. The KDE 3 implementation used kioslaves without a
memory cache mechanism. It was slow.  The new mechanism is faster and
can be included as well everywhere in Digikam without a decrease of
performance. I have included thumbbar in Image Editor (F4) and in
AlbumGUI with Preview mode (F3). The same cache is used everywhere.
 
[http://static.kdenews.org/jr/digikam/digikam_for_KDE4_with_XMP_metadata_support.jpg]
  [http://digikam3rdparty.free.fr/Screenshots/MetadataEditor/]
     In KDE 4, XMP is fully supported. I have improved MetadataEditor
kipi-plugin and rewritten all dialog pages to be more user friendly, and
to be homogenous with other tools available under Mac OS X or Win32.
  [http://static.kdenews.org/jr/digikam/digikamKDE4_under_MACOSX.jpg]
     Gutavo Boiko, have ported some parts of Digikam to compile as a
native application under Mac OS X.
 
[http://static.kdenews.org/jr/digikam/newkipiimagecollectionselectorwidgetKDE4.jpg]

     For KDE 4 I have fixed libkipi to become a pure image collection
interface: no widgets, no dialogs, no translations. All GUI components
have to be re-implemented in kipi-host using the right model/view
implementation. For Digikam, I have already implemented all of them. The
advantage is really visible here: the tree view used for all
physical/virtual albums in Digikam can be used as well with all
kipi-plugins (KDE 3 only provide a flat albums list, which is not really
suitable).
  [http://static.kdenews.org/jr/digikam/gpstracklisteditor.jpg]
     In KDE 4 I have implemented a new tool to edit a GPS track list of
several images at the same time. This tool uses Google Maps, but there
is a plan to use Marble if necessary, especially when the user does not
have network access.
  [http://static.kdenews.org/jr/digikam/digikamKDE4_15.jpg]
     With KDE 4, multiple root album paths are supported, including
removable media and network repositories. There will be no problems to
use Digikam with a NFS server to host your images.
  [http://static.kdenews.org/jr/digikam/digikam0.10.0.jpg]  
[http://static.kdenews.org/jr/digikam/fullcolortheme6.jpg]
     Full colour theme interface: this was also backported to KDE 3. Now
colour schemes are applied everywhere in GUI. With dark themes (my
preferred), Digikam looks like a pro-software :-)
  [http://digikam3rdparty.free.fr/Screenshots/RAW16bitsAutogamma]
     This is a very important feature : auto-gamma and auto-white
balance with all RAW file format using 16 bits colour depth! Before, 16
bits colour depth support required use of colour management to have a
suitable image in editor.  Without colour management, you had a black
hole image... This is due to limitation from dcraw which do not provide
a homogenous interface between 8 bits and 16 bits colour depth workflow.

     On these screenshots, you can compare the same RAW image decoded:

    * On the left by dcraw in 8 bits colour depth and converted to PNG.
      Auto-gamma and auto white balance is performed automatically by
      dcraw.
    * On the middle by Digikam in 16 bits colour depth using libkdcraw
      with a dedicated auto-gamma and auto-white-balance performed in
      Digikam core.
    * On the right by the LightZone... As you can see, Digikam is not
      bad!

     Digikam is now able to play with all RAW images in 16 bits colour
depth without to use a complex colour management settings: in your
workflow RAW pictures can be handled like JPEG file. This is very
productive and fast method, for example LightZone uses this style. Note
that this feature was also backported to KDE 3.

     I would like to remind to everyone that Digikam has been the first
suitable Open Source photo-management program with support of 16 bits
colour depth pictures as well! Gimp or f-spot do not support it!
Cinepaint can do it, but seriously, who will use it to play with
pictures? Of course we have Krita also to work with layers...
Digikam+Krita == the perfect photo suite. :-)

     We want Digikam to take part in Google Summer of Code, here is a
list of our projects.
 [http://www.digikam.org/?q=node/305]
     It is time now for me to close this file and return to the
underground hacking-world...

     Gilles Caulier