DAM: Anyone Use digiKam for Asset Management?

Thanks for the heads-up on this, I've downloaded it and am checking it out, looks great so far.

newmikey said:

It is my goto tool for managing huge photo collections on network shares, removable (USB) drives and internal harddrives. It makes searching and tagging incredibly easy.

But Digikam is the Grand Central Station of my entire workflow and has been for, well almost forever.

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The Preferences have an insane number of options. Any tips or recommendations on settings?

Nothing wrong with it as an asset manager, but I didn't like it as a Raw developer. So, it isn't what I am looking for which must include raw development. At this point, I feel ACDSee Ultimate still works best for me.

But it WAS fun to play with! I'm a bit of a software nerd. I think I could recommend it to someone who wanted to explore using raw without spending any money. It isn't a BAD raw developer however; I do think there are better raw tools out there.

Glen Barrington said:

Nothing wrong with it as an asset manager, but I didn't like it as a Raw developer. So, it isn't what I am looking for which must include raw development. At this point, I feel ACDSee Ultimate still works best for me.

But it WAS fun to play with! I'm a bit of a software nerd. I think I could recommend it to someone who wanted to explore using raw without spending any money. It isn't a BAD raw developer however; I do think there are better raw tools out there.

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I don't blame you! I tend to agree it is not the best option for raw conversion and I use DarkTable for that. Of course digikam was not intended as a raw conversion tool to begin with and the whole raw development side is somewhat rudimentary.

I've been singing the praises of digiKam for about 3 years now, as a DAM, photo viewer photo importer, and a batch procedure tool.

I'm not so hot on the clunky Image Editor. But once in a while it produces very good results when my other raw editors can't. I took some pictures of my grandson's birthday party, and the indoor flash raws came out way too underexposed. I fiddled & futzed with some of them in my "real" photo developers, & got ok results. But the digiKam Image Editor brightened the raw pictures instantly & perfectly. DigiKam's raw interpretation really saved the day -- wish I'd started there first. It seems to do a great job with my raw cloud photos too; somehow it produces better dynamic range in the clouds, whereas in my other apps the clouds have too many blown highlights that I can't recover well.

I think the sharpening tool is excellent. I barely understand how it works, so I just stick with simple sharpening mostly. I like the results better than ACDSee's sharpening tool or C1's. It doesn't overcook the sharpening the way Capture One does with my Sony raws. C1 sharpening looks great in C1, but when viewed in other apps, my pictures often look fried to a crackly crunch. DigiKam's Image Editor sharpening tool results look good no matter what I view the photo with.

contadorfan said:

I've been singing the praises of digiKam for about 3 years now, as a DAM, photo viewer photo importer, and a batch procedure tool.

I'm not so hot on the clunky Image Editor....

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Yes, I started using it and find it way better than Bridge. As a plus, it is not Adobe.

Does it show actual RAW images embedded JPG previews?

Is there GPU acceleration in DigiCam?

I actually tried it and upon specifying my image folder it started to import images very slowly sort of like Lightroom, is there way to simply use this software as image viewer FastStone Image Viewr or IrfanView?

IvankoPetro said:

Does it show actual RAW images embedded JPG previews?

Is there GPU acceleration in DigiCam?

I actually tried it and upon specifying my image folder it started to import images very slowly sort of like Lightroom, is there way to simply use this software as image viewer FastStone Image Viewr or IrfanView?

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Showfoto is the image viewer/editor that comes with digikam. It does not build a database and instantly loads images in the current folder after right-clickeing an image and selecting it to open the image with.

TorsteinH said:

Glen Barrington said:

Such as Affinity Photo? I see an Open with default software, but it seems to be set up to default to ACDSee with no way to change it.

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Default editor is what you select in the OS ( Windows, Mac ) and if I remember right with the key press CTRL - F4 together. At least on a Windows machine you should see different options when selcteing open With...

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Which in my little mind is a major shortcoming on a Windows box. I've got no less than 4 post processing tools installed, none of which is the "default" application to open graphics files.

I use the Windows photo viewer for that.

I would also like the option to completely disable the editor. Again, I have tools I know how to use for that.

I'm just sticking my toe in the digikam waters, I haven't decided if it's a good alternative to LR v6.14 or not.

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Chris