Shotwell photo manager released version 0.32.5, then 0.32.6 with quick fixes, few days ago.
The release has better HiDPI displays support, with new .svg app icon that looks way better (perfectly sharp).
The release also fixed that the viewer application always opens in maximized window size, as well as missing viewer app icon in dock, app switcher, and overview screen.
OAUTH authentication now is moved to external browser, so webkit2gtk-4.1 is no longer required as a dependency for building the binary package.
Other changes include remove “Import from Application” menu item, and translation updates.
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).
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:
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.
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.
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
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:
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.
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.
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.
Picty is a free, open-source, and lightweight manager for large photo collections. It is designed around managing metadata and a lossless approach to image handling.
metadata: descriptive and other information about images (created by you, your camera or the programs you use) that are embedded inside image files alongside the pixels.
lossless: by only ever writing information about images, including image processing instructions, as metadata, the original image pixels are never altered allowing you to preserve the images as they were taken on your camera.
Picty is lightweight and has a snappy interface. All the heavy lifting is done on background threads or external processes to ensure the UI never blocks. User is informed of what is going on in the background with progress notifications etc.
Picty Features:
Supports big photo collections (20,000 plus images).
Open more than one collection at a time and transfer images between them.
Collections are:
Folders of images in your local file system.
Images on cameras, phones and other media devices.
Photo hosting services (Flickr currently supported).
picty does not “Import” photos into its own database, it simply provides an interface for accessing them wherever they are. To keep things snappy and to allow you to browse even if you are offline, picty maintains a cache of thumbnails and metadata.
Reads and writes metadata in industry standard formats Exif, IPTC and Xmp
Lossless approach:
picty writes all changes including image edits as metadata. e.g. an image crop is stored as any instruction, the original pixels remain in the file
Changes are stored in picty’s collection cache until you save your metadata changes to the images. You can easily revert unsaved changes that you don’t like.
Basic image editing:
Current support for basic image enhancements such as brightness, contrast, color, cropping, and straightening.
Improvements to those tools and other tools coming soon (red eye reduction, levels, curves, noise reduction)
Image tagging:
Use standard IPTC and Xmp keywords for image tags
A tag tree view lets you easily manage your tags and navigate your collection
Folder view:
Navigate the directory heirarchy of your image collection
Multi-monitor support
picty can be configured to let you browse your collection on one screen and view full screen images on another.
Customizable
Create launchers for external tools
Supports plugins – many of the current features (tagging and folder views, and all of the image editing tools) are provided by plugins
Written in python – batteries included!
How to Install Picty in Ubuntu:
The developer maintains a PPA repository contains the latest Picty packages for Ubuntu 15.04, Ubuntu 14.10, Ubuntu 14.04, Ubuntu 12.04, Ubuntu 10.04, and derivatives (Linux Mint 13/17/17.1).
To add the PPA, open terminal from the Dash or by pressing Ctrl+Alt+T. When it opens, run command:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:damien-moore/ppa
Type in your password when it asks and hit Enter to continue.
After you added the PPA, update package cache and install the software by running below two commands one by one:
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install picty
For basic raw processing, video thumbnailing, flickr collection, and geotagging support, run command to install below packages:
