Photo management software?

**pekka2** · December 3rd, 2014

Hi,
I know there's probably a lot of discussion about this topic, but a lot of it seems to be outdated.
I use shotwell to manage (download from camera, sort, tag and upload to piwigo) my photos and rawtherapee/gimp to edit them. I've been mostly happy with this setup, but it seems that shotwell is freezing a lot these days. I was wondering if there's something better out there?

I'm mostly fine with the editing part, but would ultimately want a single tool that could handle all of this, like I guess Lightroom can. I booted to windows and installed a trial version of it, and it really seems like the ticket. Nevertheless, I'm unwilling to maintain a windows just for photography stuff.

Shotwell basically has a lot of the management features I'm looking for, but it seems a bit unstable. I have only 4 GB of memory, maybe that can affect it as well.

So, what's out there?

**slickymaster** · December 3rd, 2014

Take a look at digiKam. It can be a little dense, taking a little time to work your way around the interface. However, it’s worth the effort.

**Sasha_Aderolop** · December 11th, 2014

I use Google Picasa. Picasa is a free software download from Google that helps you to locate and organize all the photos on your computer, edit and add effects to your photos with a few simple clicks and share your photos with others through email and print. It’s fast, easy and free.

**Tabish_Khan** · December 12th, 2014

Yes Google Picasa is the bets option i also use Google Picasa as a photo management software.Apart from this you can use DigiBookShelf,Cam2pc,Faststone Image Viewer.

**ofnuts** · December 12th, 2014

The problem with Picasa is that Google has decided that "All you data are beloing to Google". It has nice functions to identify people on pictures, but when you identify Aunt Emma it also wants to the address and phone number of Aunt Emma, and this is a bit too much.

On Linux you have Darktable, Digikam, gPhoto... (being a KDE person I use Digikam and Gwenview).

**perspectoff** · December 30th, 2014

The trouble for me was printing my digital photos on glossy photo paper easily.

I generally use Gimp if I need powerful editing (similar to what's available in Photoshop) but for routine usage I stick with Gwenview for both photos and regular pictures and graphics. Since I'm a Kubuntu user, Kipi plugins (which are exclusively for KDE, i.e. Kubuntu) for Gwenview, digiKam, and other KDE-oriented graphics programs, allow the needed printer functions.

This year I created, edited, and printed all my Holiday cards using Gwenview to manage, edit, and print photo cards on photo-paper. Details are here:

http://ubuntuguide.org/wiki/PhotoPrinting

(I have no idea how to do something similar in Ubuntu. Kubuntu has always been a superior incarnation of Ubuntu for me because KDE is so powerful).

**mcduck** · January 1st, 2015

You could also give darktable a try...

It's pretty nice both for managing the photos, and for dealing with the RAW workflow. The easiest way to install is to use it's official Ubuntu PPA for 14.04 & 14.10

**kurja** · January 2nd, 2015

Originally Posted by mcduck

You could also give darktable a try...

It's pretty nice both for managing the photos, and for dealing with the RAW workflow. The easiest way to install is to use it's official Ubuntu PPA for 14.04 & 14.10

Darktable is excellent at what it does but it's not a photo management software.

Originally Posted by ofnuts

The problem with Picasa is that Google has decided that "All you data are beloing to Google". It has nice functions to identify people on pictures, but when you identify Aunt Emma it also wants to the address and phone number of Aunt Emma, and this is a bit too much.

On Linux you have Darktable, Digikam, gPhoto... (being a KDE person I use Digikam and Gwenview).

You can just use Picasa offline. Ofc that's not for everyone these days, but if you don't need to put a lot of pictures online it doesn't really matter.