Let’s face it: we all have too large photo libraries that we don’t do a good job of keeping track of them. It was easy to do back in the days when we had to develop film, but now we have better cameras than DSLRs in our pockets? Those days are gone. Over the years I have collected thousands of photographs and although Lightroom is a fantastic editing toolrequires too many resources to sort through massive photo libraries.
Enter Digikam. This open source photo management tool It’s lightweight, intuitive, and most importantly, it’s fast. I can browse through hundreds of photos in no time. This app has finally helped me start transforming my extensive photo collection into something more manageable.
My library doesn’t have to be in one place
Digikam allows me to treat various folders as a single collection
One of the first details that caught my attention about Digikam is the fact that I can select multiple folders and locations, not just on my PC, but across my entire network, and the app treats them all as one for browsing purposes. That means I can browse external drives full of folders, as well as my own local storage and shared network drives.
The downside? Does not work with cloud storage. If I could connect Digikam to my iCloud photo repository, it would possibly be the best app I’ve ever used. After combining all of these locations into a single destination, the existing hierarchy serves as the album structure in Digikam.
I’ve used this to browse through literally thousands of photos from various trips, as well as many, many photos of my cats. It also served as a useful way to sort through (and delete) images I took for work, including a ridiculous number of photos from past CES events.
Digikam makes it easy to search large libraries
I can find photos without remembering where I saved them.
When you have tens of thousands of photographs, you probably don’t remember most of them. I know not. I remember (sometimes) details about it, like where it was taken or who might be in the photo, but that’s rarely enough to search for. Digikam offers a variety of ways to search your library, including by file name, date, GPS data, dimensions, and more. Facial recognition is a particularly powerful feature and makes it easy to build collections around family and friends.
I’ve noticed that facial recognition is useful with old photos that I never bothered to label, especially those that I imported from other machines or digitized from older physical shots.
His photo editing is nothing to scoff at either.
The built-in editor is impressive in the best of ways.
Digikam makes it easy to modify images while browsing my collection. I don’t always take the time to mess with photos; When I’m organizing my library, who wants to bother with that? But when I come across one that I want to modify and share, Digikam’s features allow me to make the edits I need on the fly.
Don’t get me wrong; It’s not a replacement for Photoshop, but it’s a respectable alternative for moderate edits, such as adding filters, effects, and more.
The initial setup of Digikam can be a bit overwhelming
There are many settings to modify
Once Digikam indexes all your photos, browsing them is quick. The downside? In fact, it has to index them, and that can take time, especially if you have a large number of images. This is especially true with initial scans, thumbnail generation, and metadata indexing. The first time it happens it requires a bit of resources, but afterward everything is much simpler.
Beyond the time it takes Digikam to index everything, there is quite a bit of manual configuration involved the first time. While you can ignore it, I don’t recommend it; It will result in more work later. That said, deciding how Digikam stored tags and such sent me down a rabbit hole of decision paralysis that I never encountered when using Lightroom.
But the initial work is worth it for large libraries.
You really only have to do the hard part once.
When you have a ridiculously large library of photos that you really want to sift through later, the initial work is worth it. You’ll be able to find photos more easily later instead of searching through your collection. While you may need to do more work on the first day, it requires far fewer resources and is completely free.
Digikam isn’t the best editing tool in the world, but it might be the best library management tool
Since having a child, the number of photographs I take has skyrocketed. My phone is just picture after picture of my son doing things that I think are adorable and I want to keep for years to come. That’s where Digikam comes into play. It makes it easy to sort, manage, and find images without putting a lot of strain on my machine.
