digiKam

digiKam is a free photo manager with built-in controls for in-depth sorting and organization, managing, enhancing, tagging, and sharing photos. It has full support for separating photos into distinct albums, and a wide array of sorting tools that can especially satisfy users who have amassed large libraries of photo and image content on their local drives.

In addition to the management suite of tools, digiKam also has basic support for image editing, enabling users to perform lightweight customization of their pictures. Built from the ground in an open-source environment to satisfy the needs of professional photographers, digiKam represents one of the best photo management apps on the market. And best yet, it’s 100% FREE!

The app is a long-term project of the digiKam Team and the open-source community, which has made sure that almost any feature imaginable has eventually found its way into this impressive app. Users have the ability to easily import the pictures from their local PC storage or a digital device and easily organize them into collections. The amount of tagging and sorting tools is incredible.

For example, pictures can be even labeled using three distinct tools – “Rating” (with zero to five stars), “Pick label” (no pick, rejected, pending, and accepted), and “Color” (10 different colors). Pictures can be previewed in several ways (end even opened with popular external image viewers and editors), and even sorted and viewed depending on their geolocation tags. In fact, digiKam has built-in support for previewing the location the pictures have been taken using the built-in map viewer that is powered by the cloud OpenStreetMap service.

digiKam user interface is crowded, with almost every corner of the dashboard being filled to the brim with tools, dropdown menus, and diagnostic readings. At the first glance, it may seem daunting to novices in the world of photography management, but seasoned professionals praise it for its versatility, customizability, and easy access to an incredible variety of tools. The app can easily handle photo collections of all sizes, has an efficient editing workflow, and can successfully manage all types of metadata.

Features and Highlights

• Over 1,200 digital camera devices supported
• Serial connection
• USB connection
• USB/IEEE Mass storage connection
• Connecting autodetection of camera using HAL/KDE service
• Deleting images
• Uploading images
• Lock images
• Auto-rename pictures during import
• Auto-rotate pictures during import
• Auto-creation of albums during import
• LossLess conversion during import
• Advanced camera information
• Export to HTML, Export to Flash, 23, Flickr, PicasaWeb, SmugMug, Piwigo
• Import From/Export to FaceBook, Shwup
• Export to Zooomr, Gallery powered websites, KML, local directory, or remote computer using KIO protocols (ftp, ssh, smb, fish, svn, tar)
• Send pictures by email
• 16 bits image color depth support.
• RAW camera image support.
• Histogram viewer
• Color Management support.
• ICC profiles tool to perform advanced color corrections into images
• ICC profile viewer
• Exporting to another image format
• Removing images from the current Album
• Image comments editing
• Image file properties
• EXIF/MakerNote/IPTC/GPS viewer
• Zooming
• Printing images
• Red eyes correction
• Brightness / Contrast / Gamma correction
• Hue / Saturation / Luminosity correction
• Color balance
• Invert colors
• Color auto-correction tools: Normalize / Equalize / Auto levels / Stretch Contrast
• Blur / Sharpen
• Ratio-cropping with proportion aids and composing tools based on Fibonacci rules
• Free cropping
• Black and White and tonality converter using curves adjustments
• Rotation
• Adjust levels: a tool to adjust the photograph histogram levels manually
• Adjust curves: a tool to adjust the photograph colors using curves
• Noise Reduction: noise filter based on wavelet algorithm
• Liquid Rescale: content-aware resizing to change the ratio of a picture while keeping the content intact
• Local Contrast: a pseudo-HDR-tone mapping tool to recover highlights and shadows while keeping local contrast
• Unsharp Mask: a photograph unsharp mask filter to unblur picture without increasing noise
• Lens Distortion: a tool for correct lens spherical aberration on a photograph
• Add Border: a tool to add a decorative frame around a photograph
• Hot Pixels Correction: a tool to remove photograph hot pixels generated by a deficient camera
• Channel Mixer: a tool to mix the photograph color channels
• White Balance: a tool to adjust the white color temperature balance of a photograph
• Photograph Inpainting: a tool to remove unwanted photograph areas using the CImg library
• Photograph Refocus: a sharpness editor to refocus a photograph
• Distortion FX: apply distortion special effects to photograph
• Free Rotation: a plugin to rotate a photograph with a free angle in degrees
• Shear Tool: a plugin to shear a photograph horizontally and vertically
• Perspective Tool: a plugin to adjust the photograph perspective
• Blowup Photograph: a plugin to blow up a photograph without less image quality using the CImg library
• Photograph Restoration: a tool to reduce photograph artifacts using the CImg library
• Template Superimpose: a tool to superimpose a template on a photograph
• Insert Text: a tool to insert text under a photograph
• Apply Texture: a tool to apply a decorative texture to a photograph
• Solarize: a tool to solarize a photograph
• Oil Paint: simulate oil painting on a photograph
• Vignetting: a tool for removing or adding vignetting on a photograph
• Emboss: an effect filter to emboss photograph
• Charcoal: simulate charcoal drawing on a photograph
• Film Grain: simulate film grain on a photograph
• Infrared: simulate infrared film effect on a photograph
• Blur FX: apply to blur special effects on a photograph
• Rain Drops: adding the visual effect of raindrops on a photograph

digiKam is 100% FREE and can be used on all modern versions of Windows OS.