Jamie's Random Musings
Various thoughts and adventures, including but not limited to Video IM, Linux, Windows XP and Widows Vista, and various bits of hardware new and old.
Monday 24 November 2008, 8:48 PM
Photo Management on Linux - Part 1
There are a number of different photo management programs available for Linux - more than I have either the time or interest to look at, honestly - and of course different versions of Linux have different programs available. I'll try to give a brief overview of both of these areas.
- Ubuntu (Intrepid Ibex): Includes the F-Spot Photo Manager and the Eye of Gnome Image Viewer in the standard installation. I have added the gThumb Image Viewer. When I insert an SD Flash Card in the memory card slot of my laptop, or I connect a digital camera via USB cable, Ubuntu adds an icon for it to the desktop, and it pops up a window asking if I want to start either F-Spot or gThumb on the photos.
- Fedora 10 (Cambridge) Preview: includes the gThumb Image Viewer in the standard installation. I have added the F-Spot Photo Manager. When I insert an SD card or connect a camera, it asks if I want to start gThumb or F-Spot.
- openSuSE 11.1 Beta5: Same as Fedora 10
- MEPIS 8.0 Beta5: includes digiKam (0.9) and showFoto in the standard installation. When I insert an SD card or connect a camera, it asks if I want to start digiKam or simply open a browser window on the new photos.
- Mandriva One 2009.0: includes Gwenview Image Viewer in the standard installation. I have added digiKam (0.10). When I insert an SD card or connect a camera, it briefly shows a notification in the desktop window, but it doesn't ask me if I want to start any program automatically.
A couple of things are worth noting here. First, the photo management and image viewing programs are generally built on top of one of the Linux desktop management systems - either Gnome (F-Spot, gThumb, Eye of Gnome) or KDE (digiKam, showFoto, Gwenview). Further, digiKam was very extensively modified from KDE 3.5 (digiKam 0.9) to KDE 4 (digiKam 0.10).
The next step will be to take a closer look at each of these programs.
jw 24/11/2008
PreviousComments on this post
Nice article Mr. Watson. I haven't tried all of these programs, but after using digiKam I am spoiled. Now it is the only program I use to download photos from the camera, and I use the GIMP to resize, and touch up.
@ator1940 - Thanks, I appreciate your reading and positive comments. May I ask if you use the KDE 3 (0.9) or KDE 4 (0.10) version of digiKam?
Unfortunately one can't use F-Spot, since it changes the DateTimeOriginal EXIF field value of any picture it touches. This is a bug that's been around for 3 years, and despite the seriousness of the problem (destroying user data is among the worst things a program could do) it has remained unfixed, which is particularly odd considering how easy it is to implement a basic fix (you just disable whatever code modifies that value).
So, please don't recommend people to use F-Spot, without at least warning them that their EXIF data is in jeopardy.
