Digikam is a powerful and complete photo management tool for KDE. Among its many features is the ability to run batch processes, thanks to the Kipi plugin set, which is also used in other KDE software like Gwenview. With a few simple clicks, users can manipulate multiple photos simultaneously, without having to remember long command line strings or taking countless hours to edit each file.

Using digiKam's Kipi plugins, you can upload your photos to a variety of popular photo services, including Flickr, Picasaweb, and SmugMug. But what if you want to host your own photo album and still be able to populate it with photos directly from within digiKam?

digiKam offers several features that can improve photos containing under- or overexposed areas. For example, the Exposure Blending tool lets you merge multiple shots with different exposures into one perfectly exposed photo. But what if you have just a single image?

This version of free and open source photo management suite features long awaited face detection and recognition, image versioning support, XMP metadata sidecar files support, big improvements in tagging and marking photos, reversed geo-tagging and many other improvements, including a total of 236 fixed bugs. Close companion Kipi-plugins is released along with digiKam 2.0.0.

Virtually any photo manager lets you perform mundane tasks like adjusting contrast, adding a watermark, and applying effects to your photos. But even powerful applications like digiKam and F-Spot can't really help you when you need to perform the same action (or a sequence of actions) on dozens or hundreds of photos. For that you need a batch processing utility like Phatch.

Reviewer's verdict: I think digiKam is the best open source photo management tool out there. It's robust, powerful and best of all, it has API interface (which I have yet to try!). There also exists a more user-friendly interface, Showfoto - which most users will find very attractive.

If you end up in a situation when you need to quickly generate an HTML gallery using photos stored in digiKam, you will be pleased to learn that you can easily do this using the Export to HTML Kipi plugin available via the Export » Export to HTML command.

Shutterbugs have found big power in understanding and manipulating digital photos in RAW formats. Linux lovers have the perfect tool for harnessing the RAW power in Digikam, via the built-in LibRaw. Want to claim the power for your own photo efforts? Read on and I'll show you how to tame RAW photos on Linux with Digikam.

Giving your photos meaningful names makes it significantly easier to keep tabs on them. Of course, renaming each and every photo by hand is not particularly practical, especially if you take dozens or even hundreds of photos each day. This is when digiKam’s Rename feature can come in rather handy.