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digiKam and DigikamImagePlugins 0.8.0-beta1 has been released:

The digiKam team is pleased to bring to you the next generation of the user-friendly digital photo management software and its image plugins. The primary focus for this release is new ways of photo organization and searching. This release is the result of 4 months of development and we hope it will be as much fun for you to use it as we had developing it.



<<< What's News >>>

The noteworthy features in this release:

* NEW USER INTERFACE: Albums and Tags have been separated out into
different views and these views are collapsible.
* PHOTO DATES AND COMMENTS: Photos are now scanned for their
metadata which is then stored in the database. The EXIF

timestamp (if available) is used for sorting and searching.
* DATE BASED VIRTUAL FOLDERS: Each corresponding to the month in

which the pictures were taken. Its also possible to filter this

view to show photos from single or multiple day(s) and week(s)
* SEARCHING: Two interfaces have been implemented for searching
on photos:
- QUICK SEARCH: a keyword based search which also allows

date based lookups
- ADVANCED SEARCH: build rules and groups of rules to do

very precise searches.
- LIVE FEEDBACK: Both searches show instant results based on

the current search criteria
* SEARCH BASED VIRTUAL FOLDERS: The searches can be saved as

virtual folders and its possible to edit the search criterion
later.
* TAG FILTERING: A new view has been added to the right side

which allows quick drag and drop tag assignments and also
filtering of photos in the current view. This view is again
collapsible
* ALBUM LOCATION INDICATOR: When photos are shown from a virtual
folder (tag, date or search), the photos are grouped together
based on album locations.
* MEMORY OPTIMIZATION: Thumbnails are now loaded on demand
and only a fixed cache of thumbnails is kept in memory
* NEW THEMES: Dark, Sandy and Orange Crush
* BACKEND CHANGES:
- Database upgraded to sqlite3
- New kioslaves for handling date, search, tag, album listing
* SHOWFOTO : new slide show tool
* IMAGE PLUGIN CHANGES :
- Plugin dialogs have been revamped for better usability

and easier comparison of filter effects.
- Plugin computations are now threaded
- Plugin preview is now resizable.
- BigEndian fixes.
* NEW IMAGE PLUGIN FEATURES :
- Aspect Ratio Crop : new photograph composition guide tool based

on Fibonacci series (golden mean).
- New Color AutoCorrection tool with preview

(Normalize, Autolevels, Equalize, and Stretch Contrast).
- Free Rotation : Auto crop and antialiasing options.
- Shear Tool : Antialiasing option.
* NEW IMAGE PLUGINS :
- Refocus : An advanced sharpness editor
- HotPixels : An hot pixels removal tool to fix bad pixels from

camera CCD.

<<< Bugs Fix >>>

110214
110115
109703
109705
107742
109355
109946
109253

<<< About digiKam >>>

digiKam is a digital photograph management application for KDE, which makes importing and organizing digital photos a "snap". The photos can be organized in albums which can be sorted chronologically, by directory layout or by custom collections. Additionally images can be tagged and these tagged images can be viewed in virtual albums.

An easy to use interface is provided that enables you to connect to your camera and preview, download and/or delete your images. digiKam includes a fast Image Editor with a few advanced image editing too ls. You can use the Image Editor to view your photographs and to make corrections and alterations. A stand alone version of image editor named ShowFoto is also available.

<<< About DigikamImagePlugins >>>

DigikamImagePlugins are a collection of plugins for digiKam's Image Editor and ShowFoto. These plugins add new image treatment options like color management, filters, or special effects:

1) AdjustLevels : A plugin for to adjust the image histogram levels manually.
2) SolarizeImage : A plugin for to solarize an image.
3) NoiseReduction : A noise reduction filter (based on Despeckle Gimp 2.x algorithm).
4) OilPaint : An oil painting effect filter.
5) Emboss : An embossed image effect filter.
6) Charcoal : A charcoal drawing image effect filter.
7) Unsharp : An unsharp mask image filter (based on Gimp 2.x algorithm).
8) RainDrop : Adding Raindrops randomly in an image.
9) FilmGrain : Adding film grain in an image.
10) FreeRotation : Perform an image rotation with a free angle in degrees.
11) AdjustCurves : A plugin for to adjust the image histogram curves.
12) ShearTool : A tool for shearing an image.
13) AntiVignetting : A tool for to reduce image vignetting.
14) LensDistortion : A tool for to reduce optical lens distortions.
15) SuperImpose : A tool for to superimposed a template to an image.
16) Perpective : A tool for adjusting image perpective.
17) Border : A tool for add a border around an image.
18) InsertText : A tool for add text in image.
19) Infrared : Simulate infrared film.
20) ChannelMixer : Color channels mixer tool.
21) BlurFX : Blurring special effects package.
22) DistortionFX : Distortion special effects package.
23) Texture : A tool to apply a decorative texture to an image.
24) WhiteBalance : A tool to correct image white color balance.
25) Restoration : An advanced filter to restore photograph using CImg library.
26) Inpainting : An advanced filter to inpaint photograph area using CImg library.
27) Blowup : An advanced filter to blowup photograph using CImg library.
28) Refocus : An advanced sharpness editor based on deconvolution filter to refocus a photograph.
29) HotPixels : A tool to remove Stuff/Hot Pixels on pictures taken with deficient camera CCD.

<<< Download >>>

You can download the source tarballs from this page :
https://sourceforge.net/projects/digikam/

<< Packaging >>>

Notes to packagers :

- The tarballs of digiKam 0.7.x series became pretty big due to the detaile
d documentation digiKam has. That is why we splitted the tarball into the mai
n application and a seperate tarball for the documentation. 0.8.0 documentati
on tarballs are not yet done and will be done later.

- ShowFoto program is independant of digiKam core. digiKam is only require during ShowFoto compilation, but ShowFoto program has no dependency on digiKam.

<< More Information >>>

Further information about digiKam and digiKamImagePlugins is available from the following websites:

http://www.digikam.org
http://extragear.kde.org/apps/digikamimageplugins