5.2. Digital Cameras

5.2.1. Configuring Your Digital Photo Camera

This section describes the different functions of digiKam. We go through basic configuration, image transfer from your camera to your computer, image editing, and creating web albums.

 To start using digiKam, plug your camera in a free USB slot, turn it on in “play” mode [5] (if available), and choose GraphicsdigiKam Photo Management Program from the main menu to launch digiKam. The 1st time you do this operation, you must provide a folder to store pictures into: you can accept the default.

Figure 5.8. The digiKam Main Window

The digiKam Main Window

Detecting The Camera.  If your camera is not listed in the Import+Digital Cameras menu, then choose Import+Cameras Added Manually+Add Cameras and click on Auto-Detect. If detection fails, click on Add and look for your camera in the list, or fill the parameters corresponding to your camera, and accept your settings.

Check GPhoto2's supported cameras list for more information on camera support. If your camera uses the Picture Transfer Protocol (PTP), it may be supported even if it's not in the Gphoto2 list. You can also consult the very complete Digital Camera Support for UNIX, Linux and BSD web page.

5.2.2. Handling Digital Camera Storage Media

If your digital camera is not recognized, you can still try to use a “card reader” which lets you plug in the camera's memory. They usually appear mounted under the /media folder, so you can access them as you would any other storage device. Many card readers support multiple memory card types: Compact Flash, Secure Digital, etc.

If you have a laptop computer with a PCMCIA slot, you can use the ATA photo memory PCMCIA card adapters in order to access your pictures. They are mounted just like any other ATA device (CD-ROM, hard disk, etc.). This is the fastest method to access photo cards. It also means the camera's batteries could last longer.

5.2.3. Transferring Pictures

  1. Choose your camera from the Import menu.

  2. Select the photos you want to transfer: images not yet transferred have a star in the upper-right corner.

  3. Click on the Download Selected button.

  4. Choose the album to store photos into and click OK. You can also click on Create and enter an album name to create a new album.

  5. Selected pictures are transferred to that album [6].

5.2.4. Touching Up Pictures

[Warning] Warning

All transformations on pictures are made on the on-disk file, digiKam doesn't make a backup of the transformed pictures. Transformations are, when possible, loss-less, but may affect the quality of the picture's on-disk file.

 Select a picture and click on this button to open the image edit window. Bear in mind that on-screen rendering is quite different from printing your digital pictures on photographic paper. So if you intend to both print and publish your pictures for online viewing, it might be wise to treat both copies differently from the beginning.

[Tip] Tip

Press Ctrl+Z to undo the last transformation operation. However, once you have saved the image, changes cannot be undone.

We will overview a few tools in this introduction, feel free to experiment with all the available menus and tools.

5.2.4.1. Rotation

 Simply choose one of the entries (Left or right) from the Transform menu.

[Note] Note

When rotating pictures “by hand”, it is better to correct the EXIF orientation information in order for the EXIF information to reflect the picture correctly. Choose the appropriate entry from the ImageAdjust Exif Orientation Tag menu.

5.2.4.2. Brightness, Contrast and Gamma

 Choose ColorsBrightness/Contrast/Gamma from the menu and use the sliders to adjust the brightness, contrast and gamma of the picture using the picture copy as a guide.

5.2.4.3. Image Resizing and Cropping

Resize (Change Resolution).   Multi-megapixel images are excellent for photographic paper print-ups, but are far from adequate for e-mailing or publishing on the Web. Choose TransformResize from the menu, then select the desired size, either in pixels or in percentage, and whether or not to keep (recommended) the aspect ratio.

Crop.   You can also crop an image to a desired size while keeping aspect ratio. Choose TransformAspect Ratio Crop from the menu, drag the rectangle to frame the part of the image you are interested on, and select the aspect ratio, orientation, width and height.

[Tip] Tip

For electronic publication, the usual aspect ratio is 4:3, while for printing the usual aspect ratio is 3:2.

Usually a size of 640x480 is enough when e-mailing a photo, while 800x600 is enough for web publishing.

5.2.5. EXIF Photographic Settings, Comments and Tags

You can use the tabs located at the right of digiKam's window to view EXIF information, add comments and tags, etc.

 Most digital cameras produce EXIF (Exchangeable Image File Format) files. EXIF provides extra tags containing information about the image such as the date, camera model, exposure time, ISO speed setting, aperture, etc. Select the picture, open the Metadata tab, and select the EXIF tab.

 To add a comment to a picture, open the Caption/Tags tab, then enter your Comments(see Figure 5.9, “Adding a Comment and a Tag to a Picture”). Using the same tab you can also add tags to your pictures, for example, to organize them. Click on Apply once you are satisfied with your settings.

Figure 5.9. Adding a Comment and a Tag to a Picture

Adding a Comment and a Tag to a Picture

Those tags and comments can then be used to search your photos and be used as captions when exporting your albums on the Web.

5.2.6. Sharing your Photos

If you want to share your pictures with your family and friends, you can easily either:

  • create a Web publishable version of your album (HTML, Flash, etc.),

  • or automatically publish your photos to a public sharing website like Picasa or Flickr.

Figure 5.10. The digiKam Export Menu

The digiKam Export Menu

Each export option needs its own parameters.



[5] As opposed to “record” mode, which is the mode used to take pictures.

[6] Albums are stored in the /home/user_name/Pictures folder by default.