Posts Tagged ‘digikam’
Soft Proofing in digiKam
Soft proofing is a technique which allows you to see what the photo will look like when printed using a specific printer and photo media (paper, canvas, etc.) without actually printing the photo. Many professional photo processing applications support soft proofing, and digiKam is no exception.
To make this feature work in digiKam, you need to specify color profiles for your display and the output device (e.g., printer). But before you do that, you need to obtain the ICC color profile for your specific printer and print media. Say, you are using an Epson 9880 printer to print photos on the IJMF professional glossy photo paper from Diamond Jet. Grab the appropriate ICC profile from the company’s Resources page. Create the ~/icc directory and move the obtained .icc file into it. In digiKam, choose Settings → Configure digiKam, switch to the Color Management section, and click on the Profiles tab. Select the desired color profile from the Monitor Profile drop-down list (the default sRGB IEC61966-2.1 color profile is a good choice in most cases). Next, in the Color Profiles Repository section, specify the path to the ~/icc directory. Press OK to save the changes and close the dialog window, then restart digiKam.
To enable soft proofing, open the photo you want for editing and choose View → Soft Proofing Options. Select the downloaded .icc color profile from the Profile of the output device to simulate drop-down list, then select the desired item from the Rendering intent drop-down list. This should generally be Relative Colorimetric, but if your printer supports only a limited gamut you may want to try the Perceptual rendering intent instead. Enable then the Highlight the out-of-gamut colors option and select the highlighting color you want. Finally, enable soft proofing by pressing the Soft Proofing On button, and you should see the photo exactly as it would appear in print.
Simulate a Faded Effect in digiKam
Sometimes the best way to spice up a photo is to make it look faded, and digiKam makes it supremely easy to achieve this effect.
Open the photo for editing and choose Color → White Balance. Adjust exposure compensation to slightly overexpose the photo and set the color temperature to 12000 to add a strong golden tint to the photo. Press OK to apply the modifications. Choose then Color → Hues/Saturation/Lightness and set Saturation to -50. Press OK, and you are done. The described technique works particularly well with skin tones, so it’s suitable for use with portrait photos.
Simple Toning in digiKam
Adding a dash of color tint to a black and white photo can often produce a dramatic effect, and digiKam does have a handful of toning filters for you to try.
But you are not limited to the built-in filters: using digiKam’s editing tools, you can easily tint photos using whatever color you like. To do this, open a photo for editing, choose Color → Hue/Saturation/Lightness and set Saturation to -100. This effectively turns the image into a black and white photo. Press OK to save the changes, then choose Color → Color Balance. Usen then the sliders to create the toning color you want. Press OK, and you are done.
Tethered Shooting with digiKam
While digiKam won’t rival dedicated software for tethered shooting, you can use the application’s Import interface to trigger the connected camera and instantly fetch photos from it. This functionality can come in handy when you want to have an instant preview of photos you take on a large screen.
To make use of this feature, connect your camera to the machine running digiKam, and turn the camera on. In digiKam, choose Import → Cameras and select your camera model. You can then trigger the camera using the Capture button. There are a couple of things you need to keep in mind, though. digiKam can’t control camera settings (shooting mode, aperture, shutter speed, etc.) remotely, so you should set them beforehand. The images captured from within the Import interface are not stored on the camera’s storage card, so make sure you import them into digiKam before you disconnect or turn off the camera.
digiKam Recipes 3.9.31 Released
Besides a handful of minor tweaks, the new version of the digiKam Recipes ebook includes the following new material:
- Prevent Photos in digiKam from Disappearing
- Simple Color Toning
- Simulate a Washed Out Effect
Readers who already purchased the book will receive the new version free of charge. If you haven’t received your copy, please send your order confirmation as proof of purchase to dmpop@linux.com, and I’ll email you the latest version of the book.
Happy reading!
Prevent Photos in digiKam from Disappearing
Versioning in digiKam provides an excellent mechanism for non-destructive editing, but it does have a tiny quirk that can be a bit confusing if you are not aware of it. With the Versioning feature enabled, digiKam automatically displays only the most recent version of a photo and hides all the previous revisions, including the original file. This functionality helps to avoid clutter in the main thumbnail view, but this creature comfort can also cause panic when you all of a sudden can’t find the original photos. Fortunately, digiKam provides several ways of solving this conundrum.
Select the latest version of the photo, expand the Versioning right sidebar, and you should see all revisions of the selected image along with its original. If you want to make the original file visible in the thumbnail view, hover the mouse over the original’s thumbnail in the Versioning sidebar and click on the Show item permanently icon.
Alternatively, you can disable the hiding functionality altogether. To do this, choose Settings → Configure digiKam → Editing Images and untick the Always show original images and Always show intermediate snapshots check boxes.
Add a Vintage Effect in digiKam
Want to add a vintage effect to your photos? digiKam has all the tools you need to turn your digital snapshots into vintage masterpieces. Open the photo you want for editing, adjust exposure, white balance, and tweak other settings as you would usually do. The first step in the “aging” process is to add film grain to the photo. To do this, choose Effects → Add Film Grain. There are a lot of parameters you can configure, but you don’t have to enable and tweak them all. You can start with adjusting the Grain Size parameter as well as trying different values for parameters in the Luminance Noise section. You can preview the result at any time using the Try button. Next step is to tweak the color balance to make the photo look aged. One way to do this is to tweak the color balance settings, so the photo looks washed out with a slightly yellow cast imitating aged photo paper. Choose Color → Color Balance and adjust the Cyan, Magenta, and Yellow parameters to achieve the desired result.
The exact values for each parameter depend on the given photo and your personal taste, but you can start with the following values:
Cyan: 37
Magenta: 25
Yellow: -25
To make the vintage effect even more realistic, add vignetting to the photo. Choose Enhance → Lens → Vignetting Correction, tick the Add Vignetting check box and adjust the available parameters to your liking. Finally, sharpen the photo using Enhance → Sharpen to make the film grain more pronounced, and you are done.
digiKam Recipes 3.9.19 Released
This release features the new Add a Vintage Effect in digiKam recipe along with a raft of minor improvements, tweaks, and fixes.
digiKam Recipes in FBReader
Readers who already purchased the ebook will receive the new version free of charge. If you bought the ebook via Amazon, please send your order confirmation as proof of purchase to dmpop@linux.com.
Happy reading!
Check and Optimize digiKam’s Databases
By default, digiKam uses two SQLite databases for storing essential data: digikam4.db and thumbnails-digikam.db. And to make the application run fast and smoothly, it’s a good idea to check and optimize the databases every now and then. To do this on Ubuntu or its derivatives, you need to install the sqlite3 package using the sudo apt-get install sqlite3 command. Once you’ve done that, back up the digikam4.db and thumbnails-digikam.db databases. Open then the terminal and switch to the directory where the databases are stored. First off, you should check the integrity of both databases using the following commands:
sqlite3 -line digikam4.db 'pragma integrity_check;'
sqlite3 -line thumbnails-digikam.db 'pragma integrity_check;'
If both databases are in order, you should see the integrity_check = ok message. To optimize the databases, run the two commands below:
sqlite3 -line digikam4.db 'vacuum;'
sqlite3 -line thumbnails-digikam.db 'vacuum;'
Run then the integrity check once again to make sure that everything works properly, and you are done.
digiKam Recipes 3.9.15 Released
First off, the digiKam Tricks book has got a new title: digiKam Recipes. Why? Because I like the word “recipe” better. To celebrate this momentous event, a new version of the digiKam Recipes book is available for your reading pleasure. The new version features the Check and Optimize digiKam’s Databases recipe as well as a few minor tweaks and corrections.
digiKam Recipes in FBReader
Readers who already purchased the book will receive the new version free of charge. If you haven’t received your copy, please send your order confirmation as proof of purchase to dmpop@linux.com, and I’ll email you the latest version of the book.
Happy reading!
