For a long time now we have been planning to extend the amount of information we store in the database for the next version, 0.10, which will run on KDE4. As the database is the central storage and digikam is built around it, such a move involves deep structural changes. We have done preparations, discussed on the mailing list what we want and what we need, made up documentation, and then sat down to code.
So during the last weeks I have been working on implementing the new database schema, and tonight I have merged my commits.As this is the first time that our ideas have found their way into real code that you can build and use from SVN (although you should not use digikam trunk SVN for production currently) it is time to give some insight.
I will give a short overview on digikam's history, what we have reached now and what we intend to do with all the information that we find now at hand.

Dear all digiKam fans and users!The digiKam development team is happy to release 0.9.3-beta1. The digiKam tarball can be downloaded from SourceForge as well.
(0.9.3 will probably be the last release before we will switch over to KDE4 which will see a totally revamped digiKam.)New features of the camera interface:

• The camera interface is now used to import new images into collections.
• There are
  

This week end, the team have voted to choose the splashscreens used with next release. You can seen the pictures below:

digiKam 0.9.3 (KDE3) : Laurenz Gamper



Showfoto 0.7.0 (KDE3) : Joel Koop

Recently, i redesigned the camera interface to be more homogenous with the rest of digiKam (album view, light table and image editor)



The old implementation used a simple dialog to host camera interface contents. This way been an huge limitation to add new options for the future. Also, the dialog layout been not optimum.

Now, we use a status bar, a tool bar and a standard menu. On status bar, a widget provide a speed way to change thumbs size. Also, this version is able to show XMP metadata.

If you read this web site regulary, you will have seen a poll to survey user wishes.

The last one is this entry. As you can see, XMP metadata support is on the top of the list...

Andreas Huggel (Exiv2 library author) has work recently to support XMP and provided a first alpha version to test. I have patched libkexiv2 and digiKam for KDE4 to support it.

Well now, digiKam and Showfoto are able to display XMP contents on Metadata sidebar !

With the next releases of the digiKam, the time has come to find the ideal splash-screens to go with it. Now is your chance to join the ranks of the precious few who have had their artwork associated with a release of digiKam!

SplashScreen is a simple way for users to contribute to digiKam project. The pictures must be correctly exposed and composed, and the subject must be choosen using a real photographer inspiration.

The next stable release 0.9.3 of digiKam is planed to september. This version will includes few bug fix for KDE3 envirronement. For this release, we need 2 new splash-screens dedicaced to digiKam and Showfoto startup.

Today, Marcel has polished libkipi to KDE4 port implementation to be able to load kipi-plugins from kipi host applications. digiKam for KDE4 is now fully capable to load kipi-plugins. It's the first kipi host which can do it...



Two kipi-plugins are already fully ported : TimeAdjust and JPEGLossLess.It will be time now to port all othe

Today, after 5 weeks of intensive work to port source code (and one million of commits on svn), digiKam compile fine now under QT4/KDE4.



Of course, port still uncomplete. Duing indeep changes in new KDE4 and QT4 API, few crash must be fixed in new implementation. It still unstable and not suitable as well.But it's just a question of time...

Today, Vardhman Jain has added a new kipi-plugin into svn to export picture collections to PicasaWeb internet service.



This is a first beta release of this plugin which compile with KDE3. Features include are Uploading photos, Creating Albums, support Tags, and resize images.Some more GUI improvements would be done soon. All

The computer magazine c't compares different photo management suites for Linux in issue 14/2007. The focus is on organizing photos and the most important image editing features, like color correction, sharpening, noise reduction or effect filters. Compared to KPhotoalbum, f-spot, picasa and GThumb, digiKam was the only program that recieved the highest rating (++) for searching and image editing. Moreover, import/export, photo management and presentation were rated as (+). It is worth pointing out, that digikam could win this review just with its basic features, while the professional aspects of digikam 0.9.2 like 16bit/color, advanced raw handling, color management, geo-data handling or the new light table comparison tool were not taken into account.
This review is stimulation for the whole team which is in the process of porting the program to KDE4.