# How to use Digikam for Photo Management
by Seth Kenlon

[Digikam](https://digikam.org) bills itself as a digital photo
management application. Suffice it to say that it's a humble
application, because "digital photo management" barely touches on the
feature set.


## Digikam Basics

If you don't have Digikam installed, you can either grab it for Linux,
Windows, or, with a little bit of work, on OS X from
[digikam.org/download](https://www.digikam.org/download) or, on Linux,
from your distribution's software repository. Your distribution may or
may not have the latest version, but don't get overly concerned about
that; Digikam is in the enviable position of having been essentially a
complete and stable application for years now, so unless you're
looking for a very specific feature that only exists in the latest
version, it's going to be a good experience, at least just getting
started.

Upon first launch, there's a brief setup wizard to step through. Some
choices affect performance and file size, so read the screen carefully
to decide what you really want, but all of the decisions can be
changed later, so accepting the defaults is safe if you're not sure.

![Decisions, decisions.](01preview.png)

The initial launch will be slower than usual, since Digikam must
analyse the photographs in your collection and record information
about each one. Depending on how many photos you have and how large
they are, you might want to let it run over night.


## Interface

The layout of Digikam is fairly intuitive, especially if you're a KDE
user. The basics are pretty simple: on the left are panels that
control how you view photos, in the middle are the photos themselves,
and on the left are effects and filters.

The initial default view is a filesytem view, starting from whatever
directory you defined as your image folder during Digikam
setup. Digikam refers to whatever directories it finds within your
image directory as an **Album**, and it parses each image file, along
with its native metadata plus metadata Digikam allows you to add, into
a thumbnail view.

When you select a directory (or an "album", if you prefer), the photos
within are displayed as an array in the right panel. There are lots of
other ways to view your photos, though, and they're all accessible as
verticle tabs (a time-honoured KDE interface tradition) along the left
edge of the main window. In addition to the **Album** view, there is:

**Tags** filters the photos in your collection by arbitrary metadata
  tags. There probably won't be tags at first (unless you've created
  or imported some), but you can create tags in the Tag Manager
  interface and assign them to pictures. Clicking on any tag (or
  control-clicking on several tags) in the Tag panel filters the
  thumbnail view to show photos with that tag assigned.

![The tag manager.](tag.png)

**Labels** filters your photos according to how many stars you've
  assigned to a photograph. There are other forms of labels, such as
  colour labels and flags, all user-assignable from the thumbnail
  view.

**Dates**, **Timeline**, and **Map** lets you view photos by relevant
  data contained in the photo's EXIF information.

**People** scans your photo collection for faces. Digikam recognises faces as faces, and can even take guesses as to their identities (an "experimental" feature). Scanning your entire collection from the very start can take a while, but once the initial scan is done, Digikam only scans photos upon import, so be patient on the first use and you won't even notice it happening from then on.

There are more filtration options, including fuzzy searches to find images similar to one another, a sketch search to try to match a photo with a rough drawing of what you're looking for, and more.


## Thumbnail View

The thumbnail view is the central panel of Digikam, but its
right-click menu provides a host of important features, like switching
to fullscreen mode, assigning tags, and assiging labels, but also file
management functions and access to Digikam's digital darkroom.

Aside from organising your photos, the first thing you're likely to do
once you have imported an SD card full of pictures is to figure out
which of the group are the really good ones, and especially choose
between several very similar shots of the same subject. The method
Digikam provides for this is its light table view: a separate window
that helps you focus on just two or three photographs at a larger size
than a little thumbnail.

![Comparing photos on the light table.](05lighttable.png)

To add a photo to your light table, either right-click on it and
select `Add to Light Table` or select a photo and press
`Ctrl-L`. Since it's often used for comparing photos, you can add
several photos to the light table at once; to add more photos, either
right-click and select `Add to Light Table` again or press
`Ctrl-Shift-L`.

The light table interface also has facial recognition overrides. If
you've got a photo that Digikam hasn't identified faces in, or has
mis-identified faces, then load it into the light table and
right-click on the image. Select `Add a Face Tag` for the face tag
editor. Draw a box around the face that you want to identify, and type
the person's name into the text field.

![https://www.flickr.com/photos/delicategenius/234727065/in/photolist-mK3bn-4D8L5g-4PbN8E-E7o8P3-9PXokZ-7gXAeJ-9Zrqn6-t1VJb-4vvzoB-ihUKQL-4tqjyj-2JebDf-pHP8Jp-4FPeYP-6jj6iP-9qeAVH-uAzfm-9TJMSJ-jw3KJ-fMNYMT-ebdkc6-8g7kCL-3r3Zg-6WadJa-5uxXwN-kMTw5-dMX7Uz-9wU5TF-hZHbr-25CGB1-2Li49c-iGHjmf-aaRpWE-9xY191-7LpkoJ-8P8KLX-9d8D9r-3Qxo5E-a4Q9pi-8LNwM3-4FTwB7-CMEN6-hZFXZ-9H8Sjr-bUhjPp-9ARJyb-apF9PL-7trVpm-7ePPnQ-dsUJRa](06face.png)

The thumbnail view also can help manage your photos. Right-clicking
enables common file management tasks, like renaming photos, adding
a photo to a specific album, or moving irreparable ones to the trash,
and so on.

To see information about a photo, use the vertical tabs on the right
edge of the Digikam window. These show metadata, colour data,
versioning data, and more.

Also from the thumbnail view, you can edit photos using Digikam's
robust effect plugins.


## Editing and Effects

Digikam has an inbuilt editor for most common photo effects and
touch-ups. To get there, select a photo and click the *Image Editor*
button along the top toolbar. This opens a new window for dedicated
editing.

The image editor interface has two entry points for nearly every
function: you can select effects from the window menu or from the
*Select Tool* button in the top toolbar.

All the usual effects are present; colour balance, saturation, levels,
red-eye removal, and so on. Special effects are included too;
textures, oil paint filters, borders, film grains, film emulation
(profiled by popular film stocks), and much much more. Feel free to
try them *all*, because none of them alter your original photo until
you save the changes.

Filters and effects can be un-done, too, from the Edit menu, but only
in the order they were applied. The filters *are* linear (unlike in
Darktable, where filters are truly *filters* that can be slotted in at
different points in the filter stack), so if you apply a Colour
Balance filter and then a Vivid effect, if you undo the Colour Balance
then you also implicitly undo the Vivid effect that followed it.

![Make pictures better. Edit them.](06edit.png)

To see the effects applied to a photograph, click the *Versioning* tab
along the right side of the Image Editor window and select the *Used
Filters* tab.

When you're finished, save your changes directly to your original
photo, or save the changes as a new version. If you save a photo as a
new version, then you'll see your new version in your thumbnail view,
but you'll always have the option to view previous versions.


## Exporting

Getting images out of Digikam, strictly speaking, is automatic,
because photos are never "in" Digikam. Digikam reads images straight
from your file system, so to get an image from Digikam, all you have
to do is look in the place you last left it. It'll still be there.

In fact, not just the photo will be there; saved versions of the photo
will also be there, named as you'd expect (the first new version of
`IMG_050.jpg` becomes `IMG_050_v1.jpg`, and so on).

Digikam does have some convenient export options, though, depending on
how you installed it (certain export options require additional
libraries that you may or may not ever need). Export tartgets include
Piwigi, email, Flickr, Google Photos, Google Drive, Facebook, Debian
Screenshots, MediaWiki, SmugMug, raw HTML, any remote computer you
have an account on, and, believe it or not, many many more.

## But Wait, There's More!

Digikam is an easy but powerful photo management and re-touching
application. It's got lots of great features, and this article has
only touched on the basics. There's so much more to explore in
Digikam, including some features (like the easiest Batch Queue
processing system I've ever seen in a GUI photo application) that
still elude other editors. Digikam isn't just efficient, it's *fun* to
use; it brings your photos to life, it makes it a pleasure to rummage
through directories and directories of pictues to find the really good
ones and the freedom and courage to make them better. If you're not
using Digikam, and you also find yourself ignoring your photos, you
owe it to yourself to give Digikam a go. If you're looking for a good
photo manager with facial recognition, photo effects, and all the
export options you could ever want, then get Digikam.

In short, if you take photographs, you should treat yourself to Digikam.