Image Database Software | Test
digiKam
digiKam is a richly featured open source image
database application developed for Linux and
now ported to the Mac and Windows
environments (see Issue 6 of c’t Digital
Photographyfor a full review). Our test
revealed stability problems on Ubuntu and
64-bit Windows 7 systems, with fairly frequent
crashes and freezes, especially when writing
metadata to image files.
digiKamcopies imported images to a
folder that you specify during installation,
while its default settings copy metadata to the
database only. This means you simply have to
remember to update your image files on a
regular basis.
The program, with its promising RAW
converter, is similar to Lightroomin many
ways and recognized just as many RAW files
and just as few standard formats as the Adobe
product.
Files can be managed using the program’s
own file system, but using logical links is much
more flexible. Views can be filtered using
keywords and the package offers XMP and
IPTC Core metadata support.
The built-in face recognition functionality
often recognizes miscellaneous objects as
faces. At the start of our test run, digiKamkept
matching names to the wrong faces, although
it did ‘learn’ every time we confirmed a hit. It
doesn’t support the IPTC Extension field for
people’s names, but does allow you to build
up and manage effective hierarchies of
keywords.
The built-in geotagging module supports
a whole slew of map tools, and includes a
really useful area search function that allows
you to filter your photos according to place
names. Overall, the basic and advanced search
functionalities are just as good as those
offered by the commercial competition. Once
you are used to the slightly clunky handling,
batch application of geotags works smoothly
too.
Overall user-friendliness is of an acceptable
standard for an open source application,
although switching from digiKam to one of its
commercial counterparts feels like the move
from your first car to a brand new BMW –
simply worlds apart. Under the hood, the
open source offering has a number of goodies
(such as an Exif editor) that Adobe and the like
don’t include in the price.
digiKam uses SQLite as its default back end,
and is designed as a single-user solution.
Version 1.3 introduced the option of usingMySQL, accompanied (in theory at
least) by multi-user support. However,
we have heard reports that
configuration and use of this new
functionality is anything but
trivial and appears to be still
at the development stage.
All in all, digiKamis an
interesting alternative to its
commercial cousins, with a
feature set to match any
offered by the competition.
Nevertheless, it still has a lot
of catching up to do before
it can compete in terms of
handling and general
user-friendliness.digiKamoffers a freely rotatable and scalable virtual
globe, as well as conventional two-dimensional maps