Digital Photo Management In Linux, Part 1

Mac Envy? Hardly...

Do you need a Macintosh computer for high-quality, satisfying digital photo management? Macs include the excellent iPhoto for no extra cost, and if you want to spend money the Aperture photo-management application is first-rate. Naturally, everyone asks "How do they compare to Adobe Photoshop?" The answer is they don't. They are strictly for managing and editing digital photos; they're not full-blown desktop publishing suites. So what does Linux offer for the ace digital photographer who doesn't want to splurge on a Mac? How about a few goodies like:

• Multiple filetype support, including RAW, TIFF, and JPG, as well as host of others
• Support for audio and movie files
• Download and photo archive management
• Light table for side-by-side image comparisons
• Camera profile support
• Batch processing
• Image editing, including color, hue, red-eye correction, gamma, contrast, and white balance adjustments
• Resizing, cropping, and changing aspect ratios
• Read/write EXIF data and comments

You'll find these, and a lot more, in Digikam. Digikam is a sleek, fully-featured digital photo management application for KDE. What about non-KDE users? It runs fine in any Linux window manager or desktop environment, as long as you install the necessary KDE libraries.