Archives For photo manager

Darktable, free opensource photography application and raw developer, released new major version 3.8.0 few days ago. Here’s what’s new and PPA for Ubuntu users.

Darktable 3.8.0 reworked the keyboard shortcut system. User may now control the app via other devices, such as MIDI devices and game controllers. And, standard keyboard/mouse shortcuts can now make use of mouse movements.

The release comes with new diffuse or sharpen module, allows to simulate or to revert diffusion processes to reconstruct images from lens blur, hazing, sensor low-pass filter, or noise. And, new scene-referred blurs module, to synthesize motion and lens blurs in a parametric and physically-accurate way.

Other new features in Darktable 3.8.0 include:

  • Rename perspective correction module to rotate and perspective.
  • Support for multiple images in the print view.
  • New LMMSE demosaic algorithm
  • Support Canon raw CR3 format
  • Read HEIF/HEIC images.
  • Faster mask handling.
  • Support PNG in watermark module.
  • Add RYB option to the vectorscope.
  • Support for ARM64/Apple M1.
  • Lua 5.4, and much more other changes.

There are also new cameras support, including base support for

  • Canon EOS R, RP, R5, R6, 250D, 850D, 90D.
  • Canon EOS 1D X Mark III
  • Canon EOS M6 Mark II
  • Canon EOS M50, M50 Mark II
  • Canon EOS M200
  • Canon PowerShot G5 X Mark II, G7 X Mark III
  • Fujifilm GFX50S II (compressed)
  • Leica C (Typ 112) (3:2)
  • Leica Digilux 3 (4:3)
  • Leica M10 (dng)
  • Ricoh GR II
  • Sony DSC-HX95
  • Sony ILCE-7M4
  • Sony ZV-E10

How to Install Darktable 3.8 in Ubuntu:

The software provides official DEB packages via the OBS repository. And, it also available to install via the universal Flatpak package.

The OBS repository is recommended, though (don’t know why 😓) some are still using my unofficial PPA, which contains the package so far for Ubuntu 18.04, Ubuntu 20.04, Ubuntu 21.04, and Ubuntu 21.10.

1. Open terminal either from system app launcher or by pressing Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard. When it opens, run command to add the PPA:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntuhandbook1/darktable

Type user password (no asterisk feedback) for sudo prompts and hit Enter to continue.

2. If an old version was installed, upgrade it using Software Updater:

upgrade darktable

or run commands in terminal to install Darktable:

sudo apt update

sudo apt install darktable

Uninstall:

To remove the PPA, either launch Software & Updates navigate to Other Software and remove the relevant line:

or run command in terminal:

sudo add-apt-repository --remove ppa:ubuntuhandbook1/darktable

To remove the RAW developer, either use Ubuntu Software or run command in terminal:

sudo apt remove --autoremove darktable

digiKam 5.6.0

Open source photo management software digikam 5.9.0 was released a day ago with lots of bug fixes and improvements.

“Following the release of 5.8.0 published in January, the digiKam team is proud to announce the new release 5.9.0 of the digiKam Software Collection. In this last version of 5.x, we has focused all developements to close bugs.”

Changes in digiKam 5.9.0 include:

  • Many small fixes has been commited over XMP sidecar support
  • Fixes to Mysql database schema migration which can introduce errors while converting old database files generated with digiKam 4.x.
  • Small fixes to group and ungroup operations done by end users in icon-view while cataloging items.

How to Install / Run digikam 5.9.0 in Ubuntu:

So far there’s no PPA repository maintaining the latest digikam packages for Ubuntu. The easiest way to run it is using the Appimage:

Download digKiam (.appimage)

Select download i386.appimage or x86-64.appimage for 32-bit or 64-bit systems. Then run it to launch digiKam after making it executable:

digiKam 5.6.0

The digiKam photo management software has reached the new stable 5.6.0 release with exciting new features and more than 81 issues closed.

New features in digiKam 5.6.0 according to the announcement:

  • The HTML gallery and Video Slideshow tools are back and available via tools menu.
  • database shrinking is also possible for MySQL databases.
  • improved the grouping items feature
  • support for custom sidecars
  • Geolocation Bookmarks has been rewritten to work with bundle version of digiKam (e.g., Appimage).

digiKam 5.6.0

How to Install digiKam 5.6.0 in Ubuntu 17.04:

Due to requirement of higher Qt5 library version, digiKam 5.6.0 is only available for Ubuntu 17.04 through PPA.

1. Open terminal via Ctrl+Alt+T, then run command to add the PPA:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:philip5/extra

Type your password when prompts and hit Enter.

2. Then upgrade digiKam via Software Updater (Update Manager):

or simply run commands in terminal to install /upgrade the software:

sudo apt update && sudo apt install digikam

Install digiKam 5.6.0 in Ubuntu 16.04:

For Ubuntu 16.04, Ubuntu 16.10, and old versions download the AppImage from the link below:

Download digiKam (AppImage)

AppImage is a single executable package, give its permission from file’s ‘Properties’ window:

Then run the file to launch digiKam (don’t see ‘Run’ option? go to menu Edit -> Preferences -> Behavior -> Run Executable text files when they are opened):

The first launch will ask you if to install a shortcut for the AppImage.

Shotwell Ubuntu 16.04

The Gnome photo management software, Shotwell 0.23.5, was released a few days ago with user experience improvements, bug fixes, and translation updates.

Shotwell 0.23.5 adds an option under View menu allows users to hide the bottom toolbar. Tags below the thumbnails now behave like hyperlinks, so that clicking it brings you to the page with all other photos with that tag.

Shotwell 0.23.5

Other changes in the 0.23.5 release:

  • Remove obsolete files
  • Plugins: Load icons and GtkBuilder files from GResource
  • Fix .desktop file generation
  • Use Gtk.MessageDialog’s printf-style API for strings
  • Add SQL indexes to PhotoTable
  • Add Language headers to po files
  • Update INSTALL file
  • Really remove reference to external hmac_sha1
  • Disambiguate strings for time ranges
  • Implement linked tags
  • Make it more clear that something failed if SSL conncetion was not possible
  • Add option to filter by saved search
  • Explicitly link plugins to their dependencies
  • Fix typo in GSettings schema
  • Re-add –disable-extra-plugins configure option
  • Fix settings migrator and thumbnailer path
  • Bump debian compat for proper –libexecdir parameter

How to install Shotwell 0.23.5 in Ubuntu 16.04:

For Ubuntu 16.04 LTS and derivatives, you can install or upgrade to Shotwell 0.23.5 using Jens Georg’s PPA.

1. Open terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) and run command to add PPA:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:yg-jensge/shotwell

shotwell-maintainer-ppa

2. Then updated package index and upgrade shotwell:

sudo apt update

sudo apt install shotwell

3. To restore the stock Shotwell 0.22 version, run command to purge the PPA:

sudo apt install ppa-purge && sudo ppa-purge ppa:yg-jensge/shotwell

digiKam

After two years of development, digiKam 5.0 stable was finally released one day ago with fully Qt5 port.

In addition to code porting, digiKam 5.0 now uses many Qt dependencies instead of KDE dependencies. To provide a pure Qt5 version of digiKam in the future, around 80% of KDE dependencies have been removed, 10% become optional for Linux Desktop. This simplifies the porting job and code maintenance on Windows, OS X, and other operating systems.

Other changes in digiKam 5.0:

  • remove KIO-slaves, instead a multi-threaded implementation is used to query the database
  • use virtual trash folder, accessible from album tree, instead of KDE desktop trash
  • improve metadata workflow in digiKam with a new Lazy Synchronization Tool
  • port kipi-plugins to Qt5
  • The whole database code has been reviewed, polished, cleaned, and documented.
  • database configuration panel rewritten
  • possible to setup MySQL datebase at first run

For more details, read the official release note.

digikam 5 splash

How to Install digiKam 5.0 in (K)Ubuntu:

Philip Johnsson is maintaining a PPA with digiKam binary for Ubuntu. Now digiKam 5.0 is available in the PPA for Ubuntu 16.04, Ubuntu 15.10, and derivatives.

1. Add PPA.

Open terminal emulator and paste the command below and run:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:philip5/extra

Type in your password when it asks. There’s no visual feedback on password typing, so just type in mind and hit Enter.

digiKam 5 PPA

2. Now search for and install digikam5 using your package manager after refresh package caches.

Or just run the commands below one by one in terminal:

sudo apt update

sudo apt install digikam5

The digiKam5 packages is independent of previous digiKam 4.x. You may have both version installed at the same time.