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Sorry for somewhat unrelated query: is Digikam a replacement for Darktable? If not what's a good workflow between the two? I am a hobbyist photo taker and have

Sorry for somewhat unrelated query: is Digikam a replacement for Darktable? If not what's a good workflow between the two? I am a hobbyist photo taker and have only recently started using Darktable and really enjoy using it. However, it isn't a very efficient photo manager in my opinion (I may very well be missing something).

black_puppydog 6y ago
I would say they're complementary. Digikam is more of an all-around organizer and has lots of import/export stuff, tagging, and now good face recognition too apparently (the old one was based on classic Haar cascades). Darktable is for selecting a series of shots, going through them, developing the ones you want to keep.
- virtualmic 6y ago
  Thanks, I will try Digikam too.
- MR4D 6y ago
  Which would you use to replace Picasa (on a Mac) ?
  - morsch 6y ago
    Darktable's targets digital photography enthusiasts or professionals. The learning curve is steep. Picasa's target demographic was "everyone". So probably Digikam.
    - distances 6y ago
      I can confirm. Every now and then I want to edit some of my photos and run Darktable, only then to remember it has zero automation and a hundred of sliders for individual adjustments. It definitely requires dedication to use, more of that than I have to give for holiday photo editing.
      - morsch 6y ago
        You can get by using the same 5 sliders for almost all your photos. The other sliders remain available for edge cases or when you want to go the extra mile.
- toredash 6y ago
  Would you say I replaces iPhoto/Photos on Mac?
  - callahad 6y ago
    I'm not sure how seamless the experience is on macOS, but I'm happily using digiKam on Linux as an iPhoto/Photos replacement. It's nowhere near as polished as Photos, but it's capable, open source, and multi-platform. I hope to maintain my photo library for decades, so avoiding proprietary software / service lock-in was my most important consideration. This decision was reinforced earlier this year when we had to do some surgery on my spouse's meticulously curated Photos library: it's damned near impossible to completely preserve metadata when moving items between Photos libraries, and it is impossible to remove RAW files from stacked RAW+JPEG pairs in the Photos library. If I ever ran into those issues in digiKam (which I haven't), I'm confident that my SQL abilities would be sufficient to work around them.
    - tinus_hn 6y ago
      FYI Photos/iPhoto also store their metadata as SQLite
- throw0101a 6y ago
  > lots of import/export stuff, tagging So perhaps closer to Photo Mechanic?
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
_visgean 6y ago
Darktable is mostly for RAW processing, Digikam is for organization / tagging afaik.
- caseyf7 6y ago
  What is considered the best DAM (digital asset manager) for photos?
  - dewey 6y ago
    Adobe Lightroom for a lot of people.
    - StavrosK 6y ago
      Adobe Lightroom is only okay/good enough at management (same for Capture One. Picasa was the best I had used, unfortunately it's dead.
  - formerly_proven 6y ago
    I haven't seen anything open source that comes close to Lightroom, even if you only consider LR versions from ten years ago. Although LR used to have the habit of getting really slow with larger libraries, it mostly just works and doesn't get in the way, while stuff like darktable is just... weird. Darktable has similar issues to GIMP, as in, that it hypothetically has a lot of features, but the usability is pretty poor overall, and it lacks some pretty vital things. GIMP only did 8 bit color until recently and a lot of operations are comically slow, while darktable has a very low legibility UI and keyboard shortcuts that don't make a lot of sense (e.g. navigation keys are different between modes), it isn't good at actualling keeping a library of photos, and crucially it has no way to quickly go to 100/200/400 % magnification (in LR you could hold the middle mouse button to instantly snap to 400 % iirc, extremely useful, completely absent in darktable). Overall photo editing with open source software is kind of a drag. The features are more or less there, the UX isn't.
    - flo123456 6y ago
BlackLotus89 6y ago
https://www.digikam.org/news/2019-11-09-6.4.0_release_announcement/ https://www.digikam.org/news/2019-11-09-6.4.0_release_announ... Search for "External Raw Import Tools as Plugins". I suggest you take a look at rawtherapee as well. I personally use both darktable and rawtherapee and find rawtherapee to be better suited for some usecases.

black_puppydog 6y ago

I would say they're complementary. Digikam is more of an all-around organizer and has lots of import/export stuff, tagging, and now good face recognition too apparently (the old one was based on classic Haar cascades). Darktable is for selecting a series of shots, going through them, developing the ones you want to keep.

virtualmic 6y ago
Thanks, I will try Digikam too.
MR4D 6y ago
Which would you use to replace Picasa (on a Mac) ?
- morsch 6y ago
  Darktable's targets digital photography enthusiasts or professionals. The learning curve is steep. Picasa's target demographic was "everyone". So probably Digikam.
  - distances 6y ago
    I can confirm. Every now and then I want to edit some of my photos and run Darktable, only then to remember it has zero automation and a hundred of sliders for individual adjustments. It definitely requires dedication to use, more of that than I have to give for holiday photo editing.
    - morsch 6y ago
      You can get by using the same 5 sliders for almost all your photos. The other sliders remain available for edge cases or when you want to go the extra mile.
toredash 6y ago
Would you say I replaces iPhoto/Photos on Mac?
- callahad 6y ago
  I'm not sure how seamless the experience is on macOS, but I'm happily using digiKam on Linux as an iPhoto/Photos replacement. It's nowhere near as polished as Photos, but it's capable, open source, and multi-platform. I hope to maintain my photo library for decades, so avoiding proprietary software / service lock-in was my most important consideration. This decision was reinforced earlier this year when we had to do some surgery on my spouse's meticulously curated Photos library: it's damned near impossible to completely preserve metadata when moving items between Photos libraries, and it is impossible to remove RAW files from stacked RAW+JPEG pairs in the Photos library. If I ever ran into those issues in digiKam (which I haven't), I'm confident that my SQL abilities would be sufficient to work around them.
  - tinus_hn 6y ago
    FYI Photos/iPhoto also store their metadata as SQLite
throw0101a 6y ago
> lots of import/export stuff, tagging So perhaps closer to Photo Mechanic?

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

_visgean 6y ago

Darktable is mostly for RAW processing, Digikam is for organization / tagging afaik.

caseyf7 6y ago
What is considered the best DAM (digital asset manager) for photos?
- dewey 6y ago
  Adobe Lightroom for a lot of people.
  - StavrosK 6y ago
    Adobe Lightroom is only okay/good enough at management (same for Capture One. Picasa was the best I had used, unfortunately it's dead.
- formerly_proven 6y ago
  I haven't seen anything open source that comes close to Lightroom, even if you only consider LR versions from ten years ago. Although LR used to have the habit of getting really slow with larger libraries, it mostly just works and doesn't get in the way, while stuff like darktable is just... weird. Darktable has similar issues to GIMP, as in, that it hypothetically has a lot of features, but the usability is pretty poor overall, and it lacks some pretty vital things. GIMP only did 8 bit color until recently and a lot of operations are comically slow, while darktable has a very low legibility UI and keyboard shortcuts that don't make a lot of sense (e.g. navigation keys are different between modes), it isn't good at actualling keeping a library of photos, and crucially it has no way to quickly go to 100/200/400 % magnification (in LR you could hold the middle mouse button to instantly snap to 400 % iirc, extremely useful, completely absent in darktable). Overall photo editing with open source software is kind of a drag. The features are more or less there, the UX isn't.
  - flo123456 6y ago

BlackLotus89 6y ago

https://www.digikam.org/news/2019-11-09-6.4.0_release_announcement/ https://www.digikam.org/news/2019-11-09-6.4.0_release_announ... Search for "External Raw Import Tools as Plugins". I suggest you take a look at rawtherapee as well. I personally use both darktable and rawtherapee and find rawtherapee to be better suited for some usecases.