Using Digikam with other image editors

Software digiKam
1

Greetings all,

Firstly let me preface by saying that I’m a Windows user.

I’ve been toying with Digikam off and on for some time now, but never really had justification to embrace it until recently.

My primary image processing tool is Capture One. It’s an awesome application for processing images. It’s an abysmal application for managing images. I could live with the small percentage of capability of other DAM’s and the eccentricities, of which there are many, if Cataloging worked. Short answer, it’s broken, and gets progressively more broken as the image count rises. I’ve got about 60k images in my library and it’s virtually unusable and definitely unstable. Twice now, the catalog has been unrecoverably corrupted.

So, I went through a prolonged process to export my images with the associated sidecar files. No, Capture One doesn’t use XMP for this unfortunately. Just another one of the eccentricities. C1 uses XMP for a bit of metadata storage.

Their credo is “we don’t write metadata to archival images”. Meaning EVERYTHING gets written to WMP files, even for jpg’s which have storage space allocated in the file for the data.

Where this gets amusing is when shooting jpg+RAW. C1 uses the same XMP file to hold data for BOTH files… LR uses XMP only for RAW image metadata so it doesn’t see the metadata for jpg’s. Luckily John Beardsly’s Syncomagic tool can write the XMP data to the jpg’s. Otherwise I’d have to write aPython script to do that with ExifTool.

Anyway, I’m to the point of evaluating separate DAM app’s. I’ve got a copy of the last non-subscription version of LightRoom (v6.14) which works fine as all my current cameras are supported.

But, I am evaluating if I wish to move to Digikam. In the event that I bought a newer camera that my copy of LightRoom doesn’t support, this leaves me in a bind. Although from what I’ve read the DAM in LR Classis still functions if you terminate your subscription. So for the price of a months rental I could get an up to data version of LR.

Saying all that Digikam seems to have everything I’m looking for, and that’s one of the reasons I’m posting. Without spending an inordinate amount of time with the package, perhaps someone here could answer a few questions:

  1. Can I turn the Image Editor function completely off? I realize you can remove it from the Menu, but I’ve not been able to discern if/where to extinguish it.
  2. Is it possible to set up several different outside apps for Image Editing with customized command lines? Unfortunately, Capture One doesn’t play well with others, but there are few tools that can be brought to bear in working with a DAM. Unfortunately those require specific command line calling features. C1 is not the only editor I use and would want to be able to easily access those as well.

That’s all I have for now. Appreciate any assistance you could provide.

Chris

2

Well,

I’m guessing the silence means not do-able.

Thanks!

3
  1. No.
  2. There is Open, Open With, etc if you right click an image.
2 Likes
4

I’m not on Windows, but perhaps setting up workflows in Batch Queue Manager using shells scripts as outlined here would work?

6

Thanks for the tip! It would be even better if it’s possible to custom a keyboard shortcut / the context menu aside from Windows default “open with”.

Cheers.

7

If this is a feature request, you’ll need to make it in the bug tracker.

8

Closely related question: does anybody know if the “Open with…” option works in the Flatpak version? I only see the internal Showphoto editor when using it, and I wonder if this is a problem of missing permissions or packaging.

9

For flatpak you’d need to grant the flatpak sandbox permission or use a flatpak portal.

10

Do you know which permission in particular? Portals shouldn’t be installed by default if required?

11

I don’t know, I don’t use the flatpak of digikam. There is a GUI app called flatseal that let’s you adjust permissions for flatpak.

12

Thanks.
Yes, I’m using flatseal to manage the permissions, but after giving digikam all the “standard” permissions presented in the GUI the external editors don’t show in the “Open with…” dialog.
I guess either I’m missing some permission that must be added manually or the flatpak package is not built with this option.

13

i am not sure, you probably want to ask on the mailing list.