A new version of digiKam has been released.

digiKam 7.1.0 is released

Dear digiKam fans and users,

After this long summer, we are now proud to release digiKam 7.1.0 today. This maintenance version is a result of a long bugs triage on bugzilla. It introduces plenty of fixes and some features. Check out some of the highlights listed below and discover all the changes in detail.

Better Canon CR3 metadata support

digiKam tries to support as many digital cameras’ file formats as possible. Support for RAW files is a big challenge. Some applications have been especially created only to support RAW files from specific cameras, as this kind of support is complex, long, and hard to maintain over time.

RAW files are not like JPEG images. Nothing is standardized, and camera makers are free to change everything inside these digital containers without ever documenting it. RAW files allow camera makers to reinvent the wheel and implement hidden features, to cache metadata, or encrypt information.

When you buy an expensive camera, as last Canon devices, you would expect the image provided to be seriously pre-processed by the camera firmware and ready to use immediately. This is true for JPEG, but not RAW files where the format change for each new camera release, as it depends on the camera’s sensor data. This is the case for Cnon CR3 which requires an intensive reverse-engineering that the digiKam team cannot always support well. This is why we use  the powerful Libraw library to post-process the RAW files on the computer. This library includes complex algorithms to support all kinds of different RAW file formats, including Canon CR3.

digiKam 7.1.0 is released