DigiKam Tutorials & How to...

By: Mohamed Malik

i@mohamedmalik.com
www.mohamedmalik.com

These tutorials are dedicated to the digiKam team, users and most importantly
everyone who reads my blog. All these tutorials were initially posted on my blog,
and since I have written many, I thought it is time that I published them as an
ebook.

Enjoy!

Please note that as I write more articles I will update this book as necessary from
time to time.
Permission is hereby granted to share and modify any texts and screen captures
that I have used.

Special Thanks:
A very special thanks to the following people, without whom this book will not
exist.
The Digikam Team
Gilles Caulier
Dmitri Popov
Mohamed Hussein
Mariyam Shahinda
Introduction:

Over the past few years, I have been using many image management applications. These
applications include Google Picasa, digiKam, Shotwell, F-spot and many more. Up until a few
months back my favorite image management application was Google Picasa. Even though I
was also using digiKam at that time, I never delved much into it. When Picasa released
version number 3.5 they dropped support for the Linux platform, and The only option I was
left with was Wine I never liked the idea of running applications under Wine. I only do it when
there is no alternative. This was my turning point. Instead of Picasa I discovered a perfect
alternative that has a lot more features than Picasa. So here is my user guide and tutorials
about DigiKam. I have arranged the tutorials in the same order as I have published them on
my blog.
 Contents

digikam: Manage your photographs like a professional with the power of open source ----------3
Reducing Noise ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------4
How to enable fast thumbnail loading --------------------------------------------------------------------------6
How to find duplicate images-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------7
Geotaging Photos -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------9
How to geotag photos in digiKam using Google maps -----------------------------------------------------11
How to export and import pictures to Picasa web --------------------------------------------------------- 13
How to upload pictures to facebook ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- 15
How to download facebook albums ------------------------------------------------------------------------15, 16
Straighten Your Pictures ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------17
Re-compress Images -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------19
Applying Image Effects ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------21
Creating Calendars ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------22
Remove Red Eyes From Your Pictures ---------------------------------------------------------------------------25
Batch Renaming Photos ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------28
Batch Converting Your RAW Files ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------29
Adding Textures To Your Images -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------30
Generating Aspect Ratio Crops ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------31
Optimising digiKam’s Performance -------------------------------------------------------------------------------32
Using The Time-Line View ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------33
digikam: Manage your photographs like a professional with the power of open
source

digiKam is definitely the best image management tool that is available for Linux users. It
supports all major image formats - including RAW files from all major DSLR camera
manufacturers such as Canon, Nikon etc..., We can organize collections of photographs into
directory-based albums or dynamic albums, by date, time-line, or by tags. Moreover, users
can also add captions and ratings to their images, search through them and save searches for
later use. Furtherplugins enable you toexport albums to 23hq, Facebook, Flickr, Gallery2,
Google Earth’s KML files, SmugMug, Simpleviewer; burn them on CDs, or create web galleries.

Features
digiKam provides functions for organizing, previewing, downloading and/or deleting images
from digital cameras. Basic auto-transformations can also be deployed on the fly during
picture downloading. In addition, digiKam offers image enhancement tools through its KIPI
(KDE Image Plugins Interface) framework and its own plugins like red-eye removal, color
management, image filters and special effects. digiKam is the only free photo management
application on Linux that can handle 16 bit/channel images. Digital Asset Management is the
mainstay of digiKam.

The 0.10 version is a hallmark in development as it integrates digiKam in the KDE4/Qt4

desktop environment which is now available on all major platforms including Unix-like, OS X
and Windows (XP and Vista). New features are: XMP metadata, DNG format read and write,
database file is independent of photo libraries, enabling remote paths, multiple roots and
offline archives, improved database with many more metadata that can be searched (e.g.
camera or lens), Marble integration for geolocation, non-modal image editor, live search boxes
(in both sidebars and main window) and many more.

Due to these high end features that are available on digiKam, it can satisfy the most serious
photographers and people who have tons of pictures or picture collections.

digiKam has two views: one is the default viewer and the other is the editor view. In editor
view, users can edit the picture by using various tools that are available. In this regard, many
filters such as artistic, color paint and emboss are available. By using the editor view users
can also apply various effects to their pictures as well .In this manner it can be regarded as a
fully fledged replacement for proprietary photo management tools like Apple’s Aperture and
Adobe’s Lightroom

Due to its usefulness and popularity, it has been awarded the TUX 2005 , 2008 & 2010
Readers’ Choice Award in the category of Favorite Digital Photo Management Tool.
Optimize digiKam’s Performance

There are a few things that you can do in order to optimize the performance of digiKam when
you are using it for the first time.

1. Rebuild All Thumbnails - when digiKam starts it loads the thumbnails when ever an
album is opened, most of the time this takes sometime. However, you can solve this issue by
generating thumbnails. To do this, go to Tools > Rebuild All Thumbnails. This will take time
depending on the amount of images in your collection

2. Rebuild All Finger Prints - this option is a must if you want to search your images for
duplicates or if you want to enable fuzzy searches. To do this, go to Tools > Rebuild Finger
Prints.

3. Disable Scanning For New Images At Start up -by default digiKam scans your collections for
new images. If you feel digiKam is slow when starting up disable this option.

To do this, go to Settings >Configure digiKam. When the window opens go to the last
option named “miscellaneous” and disable it. Observe screen capture below.
Using Image Versioning In digiKam 2.0 Beta 3

digiKam 2.0 beta comes with image versioning support, meaning that when an image is
edited the user can create a new version of the image there by leaving the original
untouched. The most interesting thing about this feature is that users can set there own
preferences while using it.

In digiKam go to Settings > Configure digiKam

Navigate to the section go to editing images and you will be presented with many options.

——- Choose the workspace file format, meaning when ever an image is edited, you can
choose the file format for the modified image.

——- You can set the image editor to ask you to save a new version or to automatically save a
new version.

——- Keep a snap shot of an edited image, this give a few options too

——- After converting from a RAW file

——- After each editing session

——- Or after each step that is not complete reproductible

And also in the mail album view you can choose to show the original image and intermediate
snap shots.

When the configuration of editing images is done, you can edit the configuration of saving
images. Navigate down to saving images and set your preferences. You can choose the file
format and there compression ratios or not to compress any image at all.

Here is how it really works.

You can set in the options to have only the latest selected version visible in the main digiKam
view, or to have all of them visible and viewable all the time. In the first case, you select the
image, then in the sidebar you select which version do you want to see/edit/work with and the
pics get switched. Simple as that. They are all physically in the same folder, with the same
filename but with “_v1″ appended for the first version, “_v2″ for second etc. So yes, the
versions are complete images, just like in F-Spot versioning. The image’s versions are saved
in the original image format, except RAW (of course) – format for storing RAW versions is
settable in the Settings, for now it’s possible to do the saving in PNG or JPG.
Next new thing is list of all used filters/transformations/effects on a particular image. This is
part of the new right sidebar tab. So you can see what modifications you did to the selected
image. This comes very handy in the Image editor. You apply some filter, it will show up in the
new sidebar. When you press undo, the last entry will get a ‘disabled’ look, so you know what
was undo-ed. Also when you press redo, the entries will get ‘enabled’ accordingly. Then when
you have a bunch of disabled entries and you apply some new tool, the disabled entries will
get lost and they will be replaced by the new applied tool, just as you would expect. So in
short, in image editor this list presents a visualized undo/redo list. In the future I’d like it to be
able to dynamically switch any entries on or off to see how would the image look and also to
change the used values for particular filters. Basic foundations for this are already layed
down. This will later also allows you to take one set of modifications and apply it to any other
images.
In the image editor, the ‘Save’ button is now replaced by ‘New version’ button. By default,
when you’re editing again some already created version, not the original image, the changes
are saved back to that version. The new version file is created only in case you’re editing the
original. So, when you’re editing some version of the original image and you want to have the
changes in a new image (and preserve the old version), that’s what the ‘New version’ button
is for. It will create a ‘subversion’ of the current version. Another use is to open the original,
modify, click ‘New version’, click ‘Revert’, do another set of changes, click again ‘New version’
and this way you can quickly create several versions off of the original image and after closing
the Image editor, see them all next to each other.
Reducing Noise In Your Photos

All DSLR cameras produce noise up to some extent. This is most true for entry level and
consumer level DSLR cameras. These cameras have very good ISO performance, up to almost
ISO 800.

I use a Nikon D3000 and its ISO performance is good up to ISO 800. ISO 1600 is good too and
it can be used in smaller sizes. However, images taken at an ISO of 3200 are very grainy and
noise reduction is obligatory..

digiKam has an exceptional noise reduction tool. Double click the image that you want to
reduce noise and right click > edit or press f4 on the keyboard. You will be presented with
the editor view. In the editor view go to ‘enhance > noise reduction’ and you will be
introduced to this window.

You can either copy my settings or adjust till you get your preferred result. . Below are
outcomes from my tryout. The images are much more presentable after the noise reduction.
Before Applying Noise Reduction

After Applying Noise Reduction

How to enable fast thumbnail loading

One of the things that bothered me during the first few days of using digikam is that the
thumbnails take forever to load.. Given that I had been a Picasa user for a long time, I am
well accustomed to the speedy thumbnails it delivers. However, this is mostly due to the fact
that Picasa is developed by Google - a multi-billion dollar company who has all the money in
the world. Yet, digiKam can also be tweaked to load thumbnails quite fast, although probably
not as fast as Picasa.

When you install digiKam for the first time, it creates two databases: one for images which
carries all the information about the images in your library and the other for thumbnails. By
default, thumbnails are generated as the folders are being accessed. However, you can
generate the thumbnails faster with just a few clicks.

After installing digiKam and showing it the root folder where you have kept your images it is
very simple to enable the thumbnail to load faster. First, go to tools and select the option
“Rebuild All Thumbnails”. It will give you two options.

1. Scan - this option scans for missing thumbnails in your library and generate them. This is a
fast process.
2. Rebuild all - this option scans all the images in your collection and generates the
thumbnails – this process is slow and time consuming.

After choosing either one of the above you will find that the thumbnails now load almost
instantly . Doing this is beneficial for you and it enhances the performance of digiKam.

You can choose either one of the above options. After the process, digikam loads the
thumbnails noticeably faster, enhancing the performance abundantly.
How to find duplicate images on digiKam!

If you are, like me who have numerous pictures in your database then this feature is definitely
worth having a look at. Most of us, including myself, will surely have a thriving amount of
photos in their library, and it only gets bigger and more chaotic. Thankfully, digikam has a
very nice feature to make sure we don’t have any duplicates hogging our hard disk space.
However, in order to use this feature you need to do something beforehand.

First go to tools on digiKam’s tools bar and go to “rebuild fingerprints”. Just like the
thumbnail generating options, this too has two options.

1. Scan - this option scans your library for missing fingerprints (this is a fast process).

2. Rebuild all - this option scans all of your images for fingerprints and rebuilds them (this is
a slow process).

When you have done that it is easy to identify duplicates. From the bar on the left, click the
icon resemble a magic wand and you will be greeted with three options. From the three, I will
talk about the last option - “duplicates”. When you go to the “duplicates” section you will get
a menu similar to the one below, where you will be asked which folder to search. Choose a
folder.

Then click the button ‘find duplicates’.

When the folder is scanned, it will show you pictures on the left hand side that it feels are
duplicates. Go on to click on an an image and viola, it will show you the duplicates and look
alikes. Here is an example:
Using The Time-Line View In DigiKam

DigiKam comes with some useful features and among them is the time-line view, where it
shows the images according to days, weeks, months and years. This is useful when you are
trying to find a picture that was taken at a certain date.

Click on the time-line view and the following window will appear.

In the screen capture I’m asking digiKam to display my images according to the month. So it
displays the months. If you take a closer look you can see that below the bar graph it has
some letter “J” and “F”, here “J” stands for January and “F” stands for February. Meaning that,
it will display images taken during the month selected. Here the year is divided into months
within the time line. When you are done selecting the month, click on the red dotted square
that you see around the month. It will display all the images taken during January 2011. And it
also gives you the total number of pictures taken in January 2011. It shows that I have taken
2947 picture in January 2011!
How to enable video thumbnails in digiKam

If you have videos within your image collections, then you need to have the previews of them
too, however there are a few things which has to be done first. First open up your package
manager and install one of the following packages

“mplayerthumbs” or “kffmpegthumbnailer”

When the package is installed. Open Dolphin and go to Settings > Configure Dolphin And
enable the previews of video thumbnails

Now open digiKam and navigate to any video files that you may have, you will see that video
thumbnails are now generated!
Adding Captions To Images In digiKam

Captions are what describes your images, giving you the possibility to define when where and
why the image was taken. You can add a more detailed summary of your images as captions
and adding them to digiKam is very simple.

Select the images that you want to apply captions to and go to the right hand menu bar.

When you click here the following window will appear

In the area mentioned captions you can add a detailed description to your pictures.

You can also add “tags” and “ratings” to all the pictures.

As of digiKam 2.0 beta 3 you can apply color labels and pick labels directly from the captions
menu aswell. However adding pick labels and color labels are not availabe in current stable
versions.

If you are applying captions RAW files then you need to enable write meta data to RAW files,
you can find detailed instructions to enable it here…

When you done click apply and digiKam will write the captions to pictures!
Using Pick Labels In digiKam 2.0 beta 3

Digikam 2.0 beta 3 includes support for pick labels and color labels, the pick label feature
come with 3 options

Rejected ( Alt +1), Pending ( Alt +2) & Accepted ( Alt +3)

For a person who has a large number of pictures in there collection this will become very
handy, while managing pictures. Basically for all the pictures that he has processed he can
select the pictures and hit Alt +3 and the accepted pick label will be assigned to those
pictures, however to reject the pictures in an album you can apply the rejected pick label by
using Alt +1. For images that you still haven’t decided on you can apply pending by using the
keyboard short cut Alt +2. However this is not the only way to do this.

Searching your library for pick labels. On the right hand side menu click filters
And on the left hand go to the root of your albums so that it will display all the pictures in your
database. In order to view all the images in your database at once you need to go to View>
and enable Include Album Sub-Tree From there you can select the pictures that you want to
show by adding filters, go to the album view on the left hand side and select the album or all
of your albums and select the filter you want from the right hand side to display the pick
labels that you have used.
Using Color Labels In digiKam 2 beta 3

By assigning color labels it makes it very easy to find pictures if you have a huge amount of
them in your collection. At the moment i have some 70000+ pictures in my database so it
gives me the option to find the ones easily and efficiently. First you need to assign color labels
to your pictures.

Inorder to do this select some pictures and give a right click and give it a color label from the
available choices.

You can assign various color labels to as many pictures in your collections. When you are done
assigning color labels you need to find the pictures according to the color labels that you have
assigned.

On the right hand menu click filters.

And on the left hand go to the root of your albums so that it will display all the pictures in your
database. In order to view all the images in your database at once you need to go to View>
and enable Include Album Sub-Tree

In the filters menu you can click on the color labels so that it will only display pictures which
has been assigned to that color labels. You can select as many has you want. In the screen
capture below i have selected yellow and blue therefore all the pictures that has been
assigned with yellow and blue appears in the previews pane.
Geotagging Photos.

Geotagging has become a popular hype amongst a lot of individuals, and not without its benefits. Digikam
also lets you do this, and also rather simply.

In digiKam, select the photo(s) you want to geotag and from Image > Geolocation

This opens the Edit Geographical Coordinates window containing a map. Drag the map
with the mouse and zoom on a specific area to locate the exact place where the photo was
taken. Alternatively, you can use the Search field to enter the address, for example: botanic
garden, Berlin, Germany. Hit the Search button and you should see a list of results pinned on
the map. To add geographical coordinates to the photo, click on the exact spot on the map to
add a pin to the place where the photo was taken. You can then drag the pin with the mouse
for more accurate adjustments of the pin’s position. Hit OK and you are done.

But if you have used a GPS device to record your track while shooting photos, you can use
digiKam’s Correlator tool to geotag the images (mapping photos using a GPX file is often
called geocorrelation). To do this, you have to export the recorded track from your GPS unit as
a GPX file. In digiKam, select the photos you want to correlate. Choose Image ->
Geolocation -> Correlator. Then press Load GPX File button and select the GPX file. Hit
the Correlate button and digiKam does the rest. Keep in mind that for this feature to work
properly, the time on your GPS device and digital camera must be in sync. If the time on both
devices differs, don’t fret. You can also specify the time gap in the Difference in min[utes]
field.

Once you’ve geotagged your photos, you can view them on the map without having to leave
the convenience of digiKam. To do this, click on the Geolocation sidebar to expand it and
select the photo you want. You should be able to see it on the map. DigiKam even lets you
choose between different map providers including Google Maps, OpenStreetMap and MSN
Maps. To switch to the desired map, choose it from the drop-down list at the bottom of the
Geolocation sidebar.

Adapted From: scribblesandsnaps.wordpress.com/2009/11/03/geotagging-photos-with-

digikam/
How to geotag photos in digiKam using Google maps

Notably, Google Maps is one of the most accurate and precise maps that are available to use
for the general public. Digikam has two options when using maps. The first option (default) is
the marble virtual globe which uses the open street map and Google maps. Open street map
is good and it has many quality features. However, it is just not powerful enough compared to
Google maps. The only reason that I prefer Google Maps over Open Street Map is that the Map
of the Maldives is much more complete. In my case, my home town of Inguraidhoo and many
other places are not included in Open Street Map. And this goes true for most of the other
remote areas comparable to Maldives.. Thereby using Google maps I can pin point the exact
location of my pictures and geotag them more accurately. Here is how to use it.

On the right hand side of digiKam click the tool maps and change it to Google Maps. Screen
shot is shown below.

Now go to album view and choose your snaps and go to Image --> Geolocation and the
geotag tool will appear. If that window still contains the Marble Virtual Globe, then change it to
Google Maps. See screen shot below.
When the map loads, drag and drop the images on to the exact location where you want
them. Since this map uses Google maps, in-order to use this feature you have to be
connected to the internet.
Using Reverse Geocoding In digiKam

The description of the project says this

“The idea of reverse geocoding is that when the coordinates on earth of an image are known,
the application retrieves the associated human readable location: City, street, country, etc.
and stores this information in the image. The location names can be stored in the images as
new tags, allowing the user to easily search for all pictures he took in a country, city or even
street”

I am using this picture of Fernando Alonso in Brazil, which i downloaded from Google image
search, please bear in mind that i do not own the copyright of this image. I don’t have any
images of my own from another country and the Maldivian included in Google Earth, Marble &
Open Streets Map has a very few locations and cannot be fully used to unlock this feature.

First go to the tags menu and apply a new tag named “Places”, inside a new tag you can write
your country, here im tagging Brazil and assigned the tag to the picture that I’m using.

Second, go to the image that you have select and go to Image > Geolocation

I’m using Google maps, you either use the Marble Interface or Open Street Maps.

Go to search and type the location of where the picture was taken, here I’m searching for
“interlagos”, the circuit and which the image was taken. See Screen Capture

Then Click Apply…

Then go to the tab ” Reverse Geocoding” and navigate to Places Tag and the sub tag Brazil,
give a right click and select ” add all address elements“, there are many options you chose
any option that you prefer.

Choose from the options and the click apply “reverse geocoding”

And then you will see that the select address elements are now applied..

You now close the window, go to Tags and see the places tag when you choose country now
you will also see all the address elements, this now means while searching for pictures within
digiKam, now you can for city’s and sub address rather than searching for a specific country.
How to export and import pictures to Picasa web using digiKam

I had used Google Picasa for sometime, before when they released Picasa 3.0 for Linux.
However, since the release of Picasa 3.5 and the discontinuation of their support for Linux
systems due to low adoption. Even in those days I used digiKam as well. Since then digiKam
has been my first choice to manage images. As I have mentioned previously, I was previously
an avid Picasa user, and some of you use Picasa Web Albums along with digikam. For those of
you who do, digikam has a very clear-cut route.

Exporting Images

In order to export images to Picasa web, select the images that you want to export and then
go to export menu on digiKam and select “Export To Picasa Web”. When you select this
option you will be asked to enter your Google account password and username. Once you
enter your credentials you will find a window as shown below.

You can either choose to create new albums or upload into an existing album. You can also
adjust the size of the files that you to upload. When you are ready, just simply press Start
Upload.
Importing Images

Importing pictures is also as simple. Go to import>import from Picasa web.

If you have already entered your account information when you were exporting the images,
you will not have to do so again. On the contrary, seamlessly, you’ll come to this window.

Select the album you want to download and choose where that album goes to. Give it a name
and click Start Download
How to download Facebook albums by using digiKam

Need to download Facebook albums of you or your friends? Don’t want to save each and
every image individually? Well in that case digiKam has got you covered. It is easy and less
time consuming. Here is how to do it.

Go to import and select import from Facebook.

When you press it you will be asked to log in to your Facebook account or either link your
Facebook account with digiKam. Your web browser will pop up and give it permission to
connect. Then you will be greeted with this window.

Here you can download your own albums or your friend’s albums. If you choose ‘my album’
then when you click the menu named album you will see all the albums uploaded by you. If
you wish to download a friend’s album, then choose the name of your friend and then select
the album you want to download. As you can see on the screen shot, you need to specify
where you want to download the photos. Select the location on your albums and select “new
album” and give it a name. And press “start download”. It will download the pictures that you
have selected.
How to upload pictures to Facebook using digiKam

In the previous article I wrote about how to download pictures from Facebook using digiKam.
Now let us learn how to upload pictures to Facebook using digiKam.

This too is immensely simple, select the images that you want to upload and export to
Facebook and with a new window,you will be asked to log on to Facebook. Follow the on-
screen instructions and you will see this window.

As you can see the process is very easy and straight forward. You can create a new album
give it a name. And choose to resize the pictures to your preference and can even alter the
JPG quality settings. When you are done with settings just press start upload.
Straighten Your Pictures Using Digikam

Do you have any images where the horizon is not straight? I have many. In that case you can
straighten them using digiKam. Here is how to do it.

Take a look at this picture. It definitely needs a serious alignment job.

From the picture view press either press F4 on your keyboard or right click on the picture
and press edit to go to the editor view

From the editor view go to transform>free rotation

Then you will see this window. Take a look on to the right.

And you will see two sliders-marked; main angle and fine angle. Change these and you will
be able to contemplate the effects in real time. Alter these values until you have straightened
your image. Here is what I got.
Batch Processing Images Using digiKam

digikam comes with a nifty features called batch processing, meaning that many image editing features can
be applied to many pictures at once, rather than editing each them individually.

Select the images that you want to batch process and press B on the keyboard. The batch queue manager
appears.

Drag and drop the editing tools to the list of “Assigned tools” if you want to alter the settings of individual
tools, simply select the tools and the options which are available for that tool will appear on the right hand
side.

In the bottom left you will find queue settings, from there select a target folder or a new album.

When you are done press RUN ( Control + P)

Adding Borders To Use Photos Using digiKam..

Many people add borders to there images, since they make the image look better and stands out unique and
digiKam makes this very easy and simple. There are two ways to apply image borders in digiKam

Method 1

Select the photo that you want to apply a border and click f4 on the keyboard. This will take you to the
editor view. From there select Decorate > Add Border

And you will be presented with many options.One option is the solid color, this option gives you many
colors that you can choose from.

The color options are

——-Forty Colors

——-Oxygen Colors

——-Rainbow Colors

——-Royal Colors

——-Web Colors

——-Named Colors

You can change the hue, saturation and value of any color and add it to your list of custom colors. See screen
capture below.
When you are done press ok.

If you prefer predefined textures to apply as borders you can select from the available options menu, this
give many choices.

If you choose this option then you can choose the first color and second color, first color is the color that you
will see in the inner area, where as second color is the color you will see on the outer area.

When you are done press OK.

Method 2

Method 1 is very useful when to test the feature and try to get a border that really suits your needs, however
if you have many images that you want to apply borders to then the batch queue manager would be the best
option. Select all the images that you want to apply borders and click B on the keyboard and the batch queue
manager appears.

Drag and Drop the Add Border Tool to the list of assigned tools and set your preferences select a target
folder and click RUN ( Ctrl +P)
Watermarking Photos With digiKam

Each and every photo is a hard work, when people do share there pictures online or when they print they
always water mark them, showing there identity. It is also one of the most effective ways of keeping your
images safe from unauthorised use.

Choose Tools | Batch Queue Manager (or press the B key) to open the Batch Queue Manager tool. Drag the
photos you want to watermark from a digiKam album onto the Queues pane to add them to the current
queue. Click on the Base Tools tab in the Batch Tools Available pane and double-click on the Add
Watermark tool to add it to the Assigned Tools pane.

digiKam can use text or images as watermarks, and you can choose the desired watermark type in the Tools
Setting pane. If you want to use the Image type, make sure that you already have a graphics file handy.
Specify then the available settings such as Placement, Size, and Margins. Next, select the target folder in the
Target section of the Queue Settings pane. In the Behavior section, you can specify what the system should
do if it detects a file with the same name as the processed one in the target folder. You can either choose to
overwrite the existing file or rename the processed file before saving it. You can also use the options
available in the File Renaming section to specify a renaming rule to automatically rename the processed
files.

Once you are satisfied with the settings, hit the Run button, and once digiKam’s finished, you’ll find the
watermarked photos in the target folder.
Re-compress Images Using digikam

Many people argue that pictures should always be taken using the highest JPEG setting
available. However I am someone who doesn’t agree with them due to many reasons.

When I’m shooting pictures of friends and family and other normal occasions I always keep
the JPEG setting at the basic level. In this case we have several factors that have to be taken
into consideration. I’m not an expert in the field of photography; however this is just my
personal opinion. Most cameras have JPEG settings which are FINE, NORMAL & BASIC. JPEG is
a lossy format meaning it is compressed. However, the main difference between JPEG FINE
and all other options is that each compression eliminates colors which are concealed to the
human eye.

If I’m shooting JPEG FINE, I can only shoot 2300 pictures into my 16GB memory card.
However, at the BASIC setting I can shoot 8200 pictures onto the same memory card. For me
storage matters and there is no need to shoot high quality images if they all look the same on
the computer. We only need high quality if we are printing each and every image to a canvas.
For any other reason, I don’t find it necessary.

Digikam gives you the option to re-compress your images. This is useful if you have many
JPEG pictures with JPEG setting FINE (on scale 0-100). Changing the scale from 100 to 85 can
significantly reduce the file-size & still can look exactly like the original picture.

Example: a 3.1 MB file at JPEG setting 100. When this image was re-compressed to a quality of
85 the image size reduced to just 1MB.

Meaning hundred similar files will require a total of 310MB. When these hundred pictures are
re-compressed to a scale of 85 you will only require approximately 100Mb of storage, saving
210MB of hard drive space. If you have many images like I do and if you need to convert
these images it will save GB's of hard-drive space.

To re-compress your files using digiKam go to Tools > Recompress Images and a wizard will
pop up.
Then click options. By default digiKam has a compression level of 75, change this setting as
you wish. Please bear in mind that when you move the scale below 75 it will alter image
quality. In my personal opinion a value of 75-85 is most adequate.

DigiKam can re-compress JPEG files as well as TIFF and PGN files.

Choose either to remove the original or to keep it. If you are doing this for the first time, I
advice you to keep your original and later observe them yourself and delete them as you
wish.

Note: This is just my personal opinion regarding image compression and quality. 75% of the
images in my Flickr photo stream (http://www.flickr.com/photos/malikdhadha) have been shot
by the camera at BASIC default setting. I only shoot high quality when needed.
Applying Image Effects Using DigiKam

Digikam can apply various image effects to a batch of images. To do this go to tools menu and
select apply image effects.

It gives you a few options. For instance, on the above screen shot the specified image effect
to be applied is “charcoal” however that is not the only effect that is available. The screen
shot below shows several effects which can be applied.

Choose any image effect from the list. If you want to adjust the settings press the options
button on the left. I have chosen “paint”. When you are done press the preview button to see
the outcome. Case in point seen below. If you click “remove original” option in the window
your original file will be deleted. It is better to leave this option off since digiKam will create a
new modified file, thereby leaving your original files untouched.
Creating Calendars Using Digikam

Did you know that you can create calendars using digiKam? It is very simple and easy to do
this. First you need to select some photos, most preferably 12 photos so that those 12 photos
correspond to 12 months in the calendar.

After selecting the pictures go to Tools> Create Calendar.

When you click Create Calendar, the window shown below appears.

Here you can alter your settings accordingly.

Paper size: you have two choices standard A4 and US Letter size.
Image position: set the position you want the images to appear in the calendar.
Draw lines on calendar: meaning that you can either disable or enable the lines which
appear on the calendar.
Image to text ratio: Increase the size of the image or decrease them according to the ratio,
move the slider and the preview will change duly.
Set your font: choose a default font to be used.
When you have completed this click next in the wizard and you will be greeted with this
window.

The website http://www.icalshare.com has many great templates that can be used. It is free to
use and download, all you need to do is register and account with them. It includes templates
which contain information about public holidays and events of many countries. I searched this
website for Maldives; however, I didn’t find anything about my country here so I skipped this
step.

If you are using Korganizer to organize your daily work and if you have marked special days
like birthdays of friends and relatives you could really use this feature, and rather seamlessly
too. Firstly, open Korganizer and go to file> export>calendar and save the calendar file on
your computer. Next, select the folder button on the current screen-shot and show it to the file
manager and select open. This will add that to your calendar. Finally, press next in the wizard.
And you will be provided with the window below.
Here you need to select the year and images. Since this is 2011 I have chosen 2011 and if you
by any chance want to change any images you still have the option to do it. Left click to
change the image and the file manager will pop up, show it the new image and press open. If
you need to clear an image, give it a right click and the image will be cleared. Moreover, you
can add any other image that you prefer. When you are done, press next.

You can either send it directly to your printer or print it as a PDF file. However, personally I
feel it would be a wise decision to print it as a PDF first so that you can see what you have
created.

If you need to change the printe setup click “properties”. Here you will be able to change the
page layout (portrait, landscape) and the units of measurements (cm, inches, pixel etc). You
can change the ultimate location of the file by clicking on the button on the right.

When you are done press print and it will generate a 12 page PDF file exactly like a calendar.
Remove Red Eyes From Your Pictures

Take a look at the picture above. The eyes are blood red and they look like one of those
vampire eyes, that we see in movies like Twilight and it needs to be corrected. Mostly the red
eye occurs when we use flash. Most cameras come with an option to correct red eye by
default. However, that function does not always work properly. digikam can remove them very
conveniently and let’s you remove them.

Select the pictures that you want to remove red eyes and then go to Tools>Red-Eye
Removal

From there you will see this window. Here you have two tabs, one is the file list and the other
is settings.

Remember it is very important to take a look at this window and understand it before
proceeding.
It gives you many options on the left hand-side

Slower - removes red eyes better but process is slower

Standard - the standard setting are applied

Faster - means the process is faster. I personally didn’t get good results with this option

On the right hand side,

It gives you the option to rename the files. When red eye reduction is applied to a file it
creates a new file. You can add a prefix or a suffix or choose from the other options that are
available.

Example: if you choose prefix.

If the original had a file name “malik.jpg” then the corrected file will have the following
name “malikcorrected.jpg” if you choose suffix the corrected file name will be
“correctedmalik.jpg”.

If an image cannot be processed – (which basically means that red eyes cannot be removed),
it gives the user a few options. First option is “ask the user”, next option is “keep the file in
the list” or “remove the file in the list”. I have processed many files and no such thing has
occurred to me so I leave it at “ask the user”.

On the right hand side you can see a button named “advanced mode” click this if you want
some more options. You can use these setting to make more adjustments. When you are done
adjusting, click “correct photos”.
This is not the only way to remove red eyes using digiKam. This option is useful when you
want red eyes to be removed from many pictures at once. However, if you think you should do
them individually select the image and press f4 and this will take you to editor view. From
there select the part where the eyes are red and got to enhance --> red eye.

Remember the picture at the top of this article is the original photo? If not, here it is again.

Before

After, hmm the eyes no longer look like the ones we see in Twilight!
Batch Rename Photos In DigiKam

I am someone who is very serious when it comes to file management . Many of my friends
keep there entire data on the desktop. I have advised them many times to use the file-
manager effectively. I keep my pictures in a folder named “my pictures” in a separate
partition and within the folder I have several subfolders (Friends, Family, College etc.) .

Within each subfolder I create yet again new subfolders, and give these subfolders related
names. For Exampleyesterday I shot our college’s six a side football tournament. So the name
of the subfolder within college folder is named as below.

College – Feb 19th 2011 Faculty of Education Football…

This way, it becomes a lot easier to find it when needed. I also rename the files, rather than
keeping files like DSC0215 etc. The file names should be related to the event should also
enable it to be better organized. If we don’t organize these files I don’t see the need of file-
managers and picture managers. The sole purpose of these are to keep your files organized.

If you want to batch rename pictures in digiKam, it is very simple. digiKam’s main user
interface has this button by default. See screen capture below. Select the images you need to
rename and click it.

Then, you will see the window below

Choose from the options and when you are done, click ok.
Batch Convert Your RAW Files Using Digikam

Do you have a lot of RAW files that need to be converted?

If you do digiKam has got you covered and this saves a lot of time. As for me I don’t have time
to process each and every image separately. Here is how to convert them seamlessly and
easily.

Select the RAW files and go to Tools > Batch RAW Converter and the wizard below will pop-
up.

The wizard gives you to choose from the following settings.

-8 bits or 16bits

–White balance

–Exposure correction, brightness

–Noise reduction, chromatic aberration correction

–Color management

–Various output file formats such as PNG, JPEG, TIFF & PPM

Remember you can alter each and every one of these settings. When you are done applying
your personal touches to the images just click convert on the menu and digiKam will do the
rest.
Adding Textures To Your Images Using DigiKam

Many people add textures to their images which most of the times produces very good
results. If you want to apply textures to your image here is how to do it. Select the image you
want to add texture and press F4 on the keyboard, this will take you to editor view.

From the editor view go to Decorate> Apply Texture

On the right hand side you will see the texture options available, and another option called
“relief”. You can use that option to control the amount of texture that you are applying for the
texture that you choose.
Generating aspect ratio crops in digiKam

Each and every monitor has an aspect ratio where the ratio of the width versus the ratio of
the height. DigiKam can produce these crops very easily. This is very useful if you are creating
wallpapers and images to fit a certain ratio. I use this feature when I upload my wallpapers to
kde-look.org

Here is how to create them.

Choose the image and click f4 or right click on the image and go to edit. In the editor view
menu bar click transform> aspect ratio crop and this window will appear.

The tool has the following predefined ratios, they are,

1:1,

3:2,

4:3,

5:4,

7:5,

10:7 & 5:8

It also gives the option of custom aspect ratio. Therefore you can choose any ratio that you
may prefer.

After choosing aspect ratios hold the tiny square that you see on the edges of the highlighted
area and move to the area of the image that you want to crop. Any area you select will have
the aspect that you specified.
Sharpening Your Pictures Using digiKam.

A few months ago i met Mauroof Khaleel, Official Photographer to the President of Maldives ( i
don’t think he remembers me). A few friends of mine were in Villingili and we saw him and
asked him to take a portrait of us, he saw my camera setting and i have kept the sharpness at
“hard” and he told me that applying that level of sharpening to pictures destroys the picture.

However there are situations, where you want to apply a bit of sharpening to your images to
make them look better. digiKam has a very simple and advanced sharpening tool available,
here i’m doing to discuss about the simple sharpening tool.

Select the image and press f4 on the keyboard and the editor view opens. Go to Enhance >
Sharpen

Choose a level of sharpening and try it. If you want more advanced controls select method
menu and select either unsharp mask or refocus options and give it a try.
Here is a sample of before and after….

Before sharpening was applied

After sharpening was applied

Five Simple Image Fixes Using digiKam

digiKam image editor comes with many useful features, making imaging editing and fixing a
breeze. It has five automatic fixes for images. If you are eager to try this select an image and
press f4 to take you to the editors view.

In the editor view go to Color > Auto Correction

Or within the editor view press Control + Shift + B and a new window pane will appear on
the right hand side, giving you five very simple fixes for your pictures.

These include, Auto Levels, Normalize, Equalize , Stretch Contrast & Auto Exposure

I find these fixes very handy and effective.

Writing Meta Data To Raw Files In digiKam

Almost all images contain meta-data and these data contains all the setting that you used to
create the picture, these include, shutter speed, aperture, focal length etc.

Most image management applications allows you to add and remove custom meta data to
your files. This can be easily done while using JPEG’s files. However the same is not very true
for RAW files.

While we add more labels and captions to the meta-data of an image we need to save it. If
you have a lot of RAW files, digiKam gives you the option to write meta-data to RAW files as
well. However please bear in mind that this feature is still experimental

Inorder to enable the writing of meta-data to RAW files, you need to edit your configuration of
digiKam

From the main menu go to Settings> Configure digiKam

Then you will see the configurations menu. On the left hand side select meta-data. And
enable the option Write meta-data to RAW files.