2009.06.19

apps,photography

• So, I’m on a quest to find a photo organization tool for Linux (or, on a later note, for any OS) that does some things like…

  • Allow me to apply metadata to images, like comments and groups and tags (preferably hierarchical)

  • Store the metadata IN THE ACTUAL IMAGE, IN A STANDARD FORMAT. This also means it will probably need to support IPTC or XMP, preferably XMP. (No, shut up about GQview, it doesn’t cut it.)

  • Allow me to set metadata as a batch operation. I am thoroughly uninterested in having to manually go through the process of setting metadata for each individual image. And when I say “batch operation”, “batch” really needs to be more generic than “all files in a directory.” (No, shut up about scripting it with ExifTool or Exempi or Exiv2. Yes, they can edit XMP data on groups of files, but scripting doesn’t cut it as a solution unless someone can show me how to make this integrate with a GUI.)

• Here are the apps recommended thus far:

  • digiKam

  • F-Spot

  • imgSeek

  • Picasa

  • GQview

  • KPhotoAlbum

  • gThumb

  • GwenView

  • Mapivi

  • LightZone

  • Razuna

  • Lightroom

  • PicaJet FX

• And my responses thus far:

  • digiKam:

    • Has a pretty nice UI (though overdone sometimes)

    • The built-in editing features and plugins are handy and quick. I’m kind of cheating here because I’m already pretty familiar with digiKam.

    • Searching capabilities are pretty good.

    • Only wants to edit IPTC/XMP metadata one image at a time.

    • All its metadata (besides IPTC/XMP that you do one image at a time) is stored in an SQLite database, not in the image

    • Interface can get pretty slow sometimes.

  • imgSeek:

    • The interface works okay but it’s a little clumsy, and sometimes things are slow (I loaded about 10K pictures).

    • Finding pictures based on similarity to other pictures or to a hand-drawn image is an interesting feature.

    • The grouping/batching features are powerful, but a bit slow.

    • I am unsure if imgSeek lets me add IPTC or XMP data easily.

    • There is no easy way I can see to search based on date.

  • F-Spot:

    • I’m told the IPTC/XMP support in this isn’t that great.

    • I have yet to try this program.

  • LightZone:

    • This is proprietary, but they have a 30-day trial.

    • “Linux users will especially enjoy access to the new LightZone Relight Tool l which can achieve HDR effects from a single negative revealing hidden HDR detail in both the highlights and the shadows, using just a single exposure. For instance, you’ll see both saturated colors of a sunset and bright detail in the face of a back lit subject that was formerly lost. Achieving such stunning results from a single exposure without LightZone would require multiple flashes, reflectors and shades at the time the photograph — if it could be possible at all.” . . . sorry, but if you honestly believe this, you don’t have the slightest understanding what HDR is. Oh well, it’s all marketing.

    • Having tried this software, I cannot see any batch metadata editing capability, or any reason why I’d want to pay for this.

  • PicaJet FX:

    • This is proprietary with a 15-day trial.

    • I tried this software and could not find any batch-editing features for XMP.

  • Lightroom

    • This is the expensive stuff from Adobe ($300, but there’s a 30-day trial). Some people in #photogeeks on Freenode recommended it.

    • This is a “workflow app designed for professional photographers” and it’s from Adobe. If anything at al supports XMP batch-editing, and a billion other features, this would have to be it.

  • Razuna

    • I don’t know. This is an open source, web-based Digital Asset Management application.

    • It looks very nice (check out the videos there), but I don’t think it’s what I need for this task.

  • Any application I failed to mention: I either ignored it on the basis of provided specifications, or I ignored it because I’m just too lazy.