digiKam, the popular KDE photo management software, released new major 8.0.0 version! Here are the new features and how to install guide for Ubuntu users.

digiKam 8.0.0 is a big release after two year of development. It features new online documentation that is well written with plenty of screenshots and screencasts. An EPUB is also available for offline use.

Image support has been greatly improved in this release. It added support for 16-bit float (half float) images in the TIFF Loader, and JPEG-XL, WEBP, and AVIF export settings everywhere.

Other changes include new OCR over scanned text via Tesseract engine, and:

• Port to Qt6, and still compatible with Qt 5.15 LTS.
• Spell-checking in the captions/information/properties edit-text widgets
• Add convert to lossless JPEG-XL, WEBP, and AVIF while importing from camera.
• Add JPEG-XL, WEBP, and AVIF converters in Batch Queue Manager.
• Database search by the number of face regions or without face regions.
• New option to write metadata to files with ExifTool backend.
• Add support for SQLite WAL (Write-Ahead-Logging) mode.
• Update G’MIC-Qt tool to last version 3.2.2.
• Phase One/Leaf IIQ-S v2 support Canon CR3 filmrolls/RawBurst Canon CRM (movie) files Tiled bit-packed (and 16-bit unpacked) DNGs (non-standard) Deflate-compressed integer DNG files are allowed Canon EOS R3, R7 and R10 Fujifilm X-H2S, X-T30 II OM System OM-1 Leica M11 Sony A7-IV (ILCE-7M4) DJI Mavic 3

How to Install digiKam 8.0.0 in Ubuntu & other Linux

The new digiKam release is available to install via both Flatpak and AppImage. Choose either one that you prefer.

Option 1: digiKam Flatpak

1. For digiKam Flatpak package, first press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open terminal. When it opens, run command to enable Flatpak support.

sudo apt install flatpak

2. Then, run command to install digiKam as flatpak package:

flatpak install https://dl.flathub.org/repo/appstream/org.kde.digikam.flatpakref

As you see in the screenshot below, the flatpak package however will do many downloads for the run-time libraries.

Option 2: digiKam AppImage

Some users do NOT like Flatpak, because it take much more disk spaces. In the case, you can choose to use the non-install AppImage package.

1.) First, select download the AppImage package from the link below:

2.) Then, open the Downloads folder in your file manager. And, do following steps to launch digiKam:

1. Right-click on the AppImage package, and click open “Properties”.
2. Navigate to “Permissions” tab, and enable “Allow executing file as program”.
3. Close the “Properties” dialog.
4. Finally, right-click on AppImage, and click “Run” to launch digiKam.

Create shortcut for the digiKam AppImage

Click run the AppImage launches the digiKam software directly. If you want to add a shortcut into app launcher (search results in ‘Show Applications’ and/or ‘Activities’ overview), do following steps one by one.

1. First, it’s recommended to put the AppImage package into a certain folder for long time use. Here I chose the “.local/bin” directory.

Just, press Ctrl+H in Files, and navigate to .local -> bin (create bin folder if not exist). Then, copy or move the digiKam AppImage into this folder.

2. Then, download the logo icon from web. Just, go to its website, right-click on the logo in top-left and select “Save image as” to download the file.

Finally, rename the file to digikam.svg, and store in “.local/share/icons” (also, create the ‘icons’ sub-folder if not exist).

3. Finally, open terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) and run command to create the shortcut config file:

gedit ~/.local/share/applications/org.kde.digikam.desktop

Replace gedit with gnome-text-editor for Ubuntu 22.10+, or use nano instead.

When file opens in text editor (or terminal for nano), paste follow lines and save it. For nano, press Ctrl+X, type y and hit Enter to save file.

[Desktop Entry]
Name=digiKam
Comment=digiKam photo management tool
Exec=digiKam-8.0.0-x86-64.appimage
Icon=digikam
Categories=Graphics;
Type=Application
Terminal=false

NOTE: if the bin folder under .local was previously not exist. You need to log out and back in to make it in your PATH.

4. After that, you should be able to search for and launch digiKam from app launcher.

That’s all. Enjoy!

Darktable, the free open-source photography application and raw developer, released version 4.2.1 a few days ago. Here’s how to install it in Ubuntu 20.04, Ubuntu 22.04 and Ubuntu 22.10.

Darktable 4.2.1 is a new point release. There’s no big features but minor changes. It now uses magic bytes to identify JPEG files, so even JPEG image with incorrect file extension is supported. Also, it adds ability to assign shortcuts to the “quick access” style and preset menus at the bottom of the darkroom view.

The release also added base support for Canon EOS Kiss X10/X10i, Leica M9 (dng), Nikon Z 30 (12bit-compressed, 14bit-compressed), OM System OM-1/OM-5, Panasonic DC-G95D/DC-G99D (4:3), Ricoh GR IIIx (dng).

It also adds White Balance Presets for Nikon Z 9, and noise profiles for Fujifilm GFX100S, Fujifilm X-H2/X-H2S, OM System OM-1, Sony ILCE-7SM3, Canon EOS 250D / Kiss X10 / Rebel SL3 / 200D Mark II, Canon EOS R7.

For more about Darktable 4.2.1, see the release note in github.

How to install Darktable 4.2.1 in Ubuntu via PPA

The software website refers to the OBS repository that contains native packages for Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora and SUSE.

For choice, here’s an unofficial Ubuntu PPA contains the packages for Ubuntu 20.04, Ubuntu 22.04, Ubuntu 22.10.

NOTE: There’s no JPEG-XL support, since the library is not available in Ubuntu repository until 23.04. And, the new release requires libheif >= 1.13.0, so HEIF support excluded in Ubuntu 22.04 and earlier. Please leave comment if you do need them.

1. First, press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open a terminal window. When it opens, run command to add the PPA:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntuhandbook1/darktable

2. Linux Mint use may need to run command to manually refresh package cache:

sudo apt update

3. Finally install the photography software either via the command below:

sudo apt install darktable

Or by installing package updates via Software Updater. NOTE: You are strongly advised to take a backup first.

Darktable is also available as universal Flatpak package that works in most Linux systems.

Fix no window border issue

Darktable seems not rendering its window border in Ubuntu with default Wayland session. As a workaround, either switch back to classic Xorg session, or run Darktable using X11 backend.

To do so, either open terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) and run command to launch Darktable from command line:

GDK_BACKEND=x11 darktable

Or, modify the shortcut icon file via following steps:

1. Open terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) and copy the shortcut file to local folder by running command:

sudo cp /usr/share/applications/org.darktable.darktable.desktop ~/.local/share/applications

2. Change the owner ship to current user:

sudo chown $USER:$USER ~/.local/share/applications/org.darktable.darktable.desktop

3. Edit the file with gedit text editor:

gedit ~/.local/share/applications/org.darktable.darktable.desktop

For Ubuntu 22.10 +, replace gedit with gnome-text-editor.

4. Finally, find out the line started with Exec and change it into Exec=env GDK_BACKEND=x11 /usr/bin/darktable %U. Also remove the line start with TryExec.

Uninstall:

To remove darktable, simple run command in a terminal window:

sudo apt remove --autoremove darktable

And, remove the Ubuntu PPA by either removing source line in ‘Software & Updates’ utility under ‘Other Software’ tab, or running command:

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

If you would like to revert back the stock Darktable package in system repository, just purge the PPA instead of removing it as well as the software packages and install old version back.

sudo apt install ppa-purge && sudo ppa-purge ppa:ubuntuhandbook1/darktable

Converseen image converter announced 0.9.10.0 release few days ago. Here’s how to install it in Ubuntu via PPA.

Converseen is a free and open-source tool for converting or resizing a large quantity of photo images to another format with a few mouse clicks.

The new 0.9.10.0 release redesigned the Images Settings dialog. Previously, it automatically removes the metadata (information including date & time, device, and even location you capture the photo image) in output images, and replaces with only modified date and other non-sensitive data.

Now, it provides a “Remove image’s metadata” check-box. So, user can manually choose to either to remove the metadata information about the photo images in output files.

As you can see in the screenshot above, it now supports configuring the compression level and image quality for WebP images. As well, it fixes a bug that inhibits the overwrite feature when the Rename option is checked.

How to install the new Converseen 0.9.10.0 in Ubuntu

The image converter is available to install in different package formats: AppImage, Snap, and Deb. Choose either one that you prefer.

1. AppImage

The software website provides the universal AppImage for downloading via the link button below:

It’s a non-install package. Just grab it, right-click and go to ‘Properties’ dialog to add executable permission. Finally, click run the AppImage will launch the tool.

2. Snap

For Ubuntu 20.04+, the snap package is the easiest way to get converseen, though it runs in sandbox. Just open Ubuntu Software, search for and install the package marked as ‘Snap Store (snap)’.

3. Ubuntu PPA (.deb)

For those who prefer the classic .deb package format, there’s unofficial PPA that contains the package for Ubuntu 18.04, Ubuntu 20.04, Ubuntu 22.04, and Ubuntu 22.10.

1. First, press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open terminal. When it opens, run command to add the PPA:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntuhandbook1/apps

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

2. Then, install the software package by running command:

sudo apt install converseen

Linux Mint user may have to run sudo apt update first to update cache.

Uninstall:

The PPA also contains some other software packages, so you may remove it immediately after installed Liferea.

To do so, either run the command below in terminal, or remove the source line under “Other Software” tab in Software & Updates tool.

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

To remove the feed reader package, simply run command:

sudo apt remove converseen

That’s all. Enjoy!