[ubuntu-in] Shotwell Photo Manager for Ubuntu

Ramnarayan.K ramnarayan.k at gmail.com
Mon Jun 14 20:55:43 BST 2010


Hi

Just a quick review of this new photo / image tool(s) for Ubuntu.

Below is a link to an article on the new Software - quite aptly named
- shotwell - and its quite a good shot at that.

Meet Shotwell - The F-Spot Replacement For Ubuntu 10.10 "Maverick Meerkat"

http://www.techdrivein.com/2010/06/meet-shotwell-f-spot-replacement-for.html

Review

Installation is quite simple just follow the two command and quite
soon its up and running (the software itself is just 2.5 MB - cannot
say how much the dependencies are)

Once installed it appears as it should in Applications - Graphics Shotwell.

Its starts up with a very clean and simple interface.

To begin to see its perceivable awesomeness just point it to any
folder and ask it to import the pictures (File - Import from Folder)

It scans the folders and all the sub and sub sub folders, while
importing there is a progress bar on the bottom right and it shows
each image in full mode (not full screen )

and if the folder has non image files or non compatible images (like
Tiff) i gives a message(s)

And then wow it sorts the images by date (of when the image was taken)
the dates (yea wise) appear on the side pain - very uncluttered

Its easy to add tags , and one must - right click on a single image or
bnch of images and give it a tag and instantly the tag appears on the
side pane

The side pane has 3 categories Photos (shows all the photos imported)
events - shows year (and month and date ) wise pictures and Tags (with
whatever tags you may have added

Its quite quick to move between categories.

When viewing multiple images there is zoom located at the right bottom
corner to play with the thumbnail size - the biggest being   4
thumbnalls and the smallest being 60 thumbnails (this may vary with
screen size and resolution).  It has some quick buttons located at the
bottom to rotate,  publish (to web places) and enhance But there is no
control over enhance - the result is whatever the default has been set
by software folks.

Double clicking on an image makes it full (as full as it can get
within the size of the sofrware window)  it also shows more some image
edit options - rotate, crop red eye, color and brightness options and
picture enhance

There is more of the usual stff in the menus and none of these seem
overloaded or bloated.

Lacunae of this software
No zoom (in individual image mode)
Does not support all image formats (as of now tif i know don't know
about others)
Does not source the actual folder location

Last thoughts - seem a very very good addition to the linux software
stable and given its lightweight and clean approach will hopefully
come as the default instead of the not so good F-spot, an its features
make it a possible replacement for even gthumb (esp if they add a zoom
option)

so install and enjoy

ram



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