To set up a camera in Digikam, select ‘Camera’+‘Add Camera’. First, try to autodetect the camera with ‘Auto-Detect’. If this fails, browse the list for your model with ‘Add’. If your camera model is not included in the list, try an older model or use ‘USB Mass Storage’ or ‘USB PTP Class Camera’. Normally, this should work. Confirm with ‘Ok’.

After your camera has been configured correctly, connect to your camera with the ‘Camera’ menu and the name that you gave in the dialog from Section 16.6.1, “Configuring Your Camera”. Digikam opens a window and begins to download thumbnails and displays them as in Figure 16.2, “Downloading Pictures from Camera”. Right-click an image to open a pop-up menu with the options to ‘View’, display some ‘Properties’ and ‘EXIF Information’, ‘Download’, or ‘Delete’ the image. With ‘Advanced >>’, select renaming options and how the camera-provided information (EXIF) should be handled.

Figure 16.2. Downloading Pictures from Camera

The renaming options can be very convenient if your camera does not use meaningful filenames. You can let Digikam rename your photographs automatically. Give a unique prefix, and optionally give a date, time, or sequence number. The rest is done by Digikam.

Select all photographs to download from the camera by pressing the left mouse button or clicking individual photographs with Ctrl pressed. Selected photographs appear with inverted colors. Click ‘Download’. Select the destination from the list or by creating a new album with ‘New Album’. This automatically suggests a filename with the current date. Confirm with ‘Ok’ to start the download process.

Getting information about the photograph is not difficult. A short summary is displayed as a tool tip if you point with the mouse cursor at the thumbnail. For longer information, right-click the photograph and choose ‘Properties’ from the menu. A dialog box opens with three tabs, ‘General’, ‘EXIF’, and ‘Histogram’.

‘General’ lists the name, type, owner, and some other basic information. The more interesting part is the ‘EXIF’ tab. The camera stores some metadata for each photograph. Digikam reads these properties and displays them in this list. Find the exposure time, pixel dimensions, and others. To get more information for the selected list entry, press Shift-F1. This shows a small tool tip. The last tab, ‘Histogram’, shows some statistical information.

Digikam inserts a ‘My Albums’ folder by default, which collects all your photographs. You can store these into subfolders later. The albums can be sorted by their directory layout, by the collection name that has been set in the album properties or by the date that the albums were first created (this date can also be changed in the properties of each album).

To create a new album, you have some possibilities:

After selecting to create and album in your preferred way, a dialog box appears. Give your album a title. Optionally, choose a collection, insert some comments, and select an album date. The collection is a way of organizing your albums by a common label. This label is used when you select ‘View’+‘Sort Albums’+‘By Collection’. The comment is shown in the banner at the top of the main window. The album date is used when you select ‘View’+‘Albums’+‘By Date’.

Digikam uses the first photograph in the album as the preview icon in the ‘My Albums’ list. To select a different one, right-click the respective photograph and select ‘Set as Album Thumbnail’ from the context menu.

Managing lots of different photographs with different albums can sometimes be complex. To organize individual photographs, Digikam provides the ‘My Tag’ system.

For example, you have photographed your friend John at different times and you want to collect all images, independent of your album. This let you find all photographs very easily. First, create a new tag by clicking ‘My Tags’+‘People’. From the context menu, choose ‘New Tag’. In the dialog box that appears, enter ‘John’ as title and optionally set an icon. Confirm with ‘Ok’.

After creating your tag, assign it to the desired pictures. Go to each album and select the respective photographs. Right-click and choose ‘Assign Tag’+‘People’+‘John’ from the menu that appears. Alternativly, drag the photographs to the tag name under ‘My Tags’ and drop them there. Repeat as necessary with other albums. View all the images by clicking ‘My Tags’+‘People’+‘John’. You can assign more than one tag to each photograph.

Editing tags and comments can be tedious. To simplify this task, right-click a photograph and select ‘Edit Comments & Tags’. This opens a dialog box with a preview, a comment field, and a tag list. Now you can insert all the needed tags and add a comment. With ‘Forward’ and ‘Back’, navigate in your album. Store your changes with ‘Apply’ and leave with ‘Ok’.

Digikam provides several tools to simplify some tasks. Find them in the ‘Tools’ menu. The following is a small selection of the available tools.

16.6.6.1. Creating a Calendar

If you want to please someone, a custom calendar can be a nice gift. Go to ‘Tools’+‘Create Calendar’, which opens a wizard dialog like that in Figure 16.3, “Creating a Template for a Calendar”.

Figure 16.3. Creating a Template for a Calendar

Customize the settings (paper size, image position, font, etc.) and confirm with ‘Next’. Now you can enter the year and select the images to use. After clicking ‘Next’ again, see a summary. The final ‘Next’ opens the KDE Printer dialog. Here, decide if you want to see a preview, save as PDF, or just print directly.

16.6.6.2. Finding Duplicate Photographs

Sometimes you photograph similar scenes repeatedly and want to keep only the best shots. This is the perfect task for the ‘Find Duplicate’ plug-in.

Go to ‘Tools’+‘Find Duplicate Images’, which opens a window similar to Figure 16.4, “Finding Similar Pictures”. Select the albums or tags to handle. Under ‘Method & Cache’, choose the search method: a more accurate or a faster method. After you confirm with ‘Ok’, Digikam proceeds with the investigation.

Figure 16.4. Finding Similar Pictures

If it finds some duplicates, it shows the result in a window like Figure 16.5, “Results of Find”. Decide which images to delete by activating the desired check boxes then clicking ‘Delete’. Leave the window with ‘Close’.

Figure 16.5. Results of Find