Velmont Tech

I take a lot of pictures/photos/images (I’m a bit unclear on the difference) and I need to organize them. I’ve tested the programs that looks fit for the purpose, but it’s always clear that digiKam is the only GPL’d program up to the job.

What I need from a photo organizer

• Blazingly fast (I’ve got 24.000+ photos right now)
• Easy tagging (digiKam isn’t perfect here)
• Good search
• Sensible directory structure that I can control
• Store meta information inside IPTC and XMP (when I tag something, I don’t want it to be in a stupid database, I want everyone to be able to use it)
• Fast easy trashing/deleting, I often browse through thousands of pictures and delete ¾ of them. I only linger ½ a second on each photo and hate when the program is too slow to keep up.

Pretty standard features, yes? Well, I found digiKam is the only program to provide this.

Too bad that the Ubuntu version I’m using (in Intrepid Ibex, Ubuntu 8.10) has a few “problems”:

• Looks ugly (that’s Qt for you – looks tacky and cheap)
• Pulls in kdelibs, yuck
• Pulls in Kmail, Dolphin and a load of other crap that I do not want
• No keyboardshortcut for tagging, so I have to use the mouse for such a basic function

But anyway. digiKam is still the best photo organizer for Linux.