Hello everyone. I'm working on creating a comprehensive list of open source projects for, or related to, Sony alpha cameras. I was recommended this place as well by a user on r/photography and even though this isn't general software, I hope this discussion will fit.

Anyways, I'm creating this list because I see a lot of potential in the black box that Sony Cameras are and how sometimes Sony really drops the ball for some of them with either bad apps or removing compatibility for a camera in apps when it should be working just fine. Plus throwing in some other projects that add some more info with opening up the black box of Sony Alpha cameras.

So far, I only have these:

Alpha remote by Staacks (a Bluetooth controller app for Sony Alpha cameras who posted here about a day or two ago that sparked my interest in making a list like this):

• https://github.com/Staacks/alpharemote

Sony Multi-port controller by epietrowicz (a Sony Multi-port guide for creating accessories that is slightly depreciated due to the listed vendors in the repo either removing the item or have taken down their page, but other vendors are still available if you look online a bit)

• https://github.com/epietrowicz/Sony-Multiport-Controller

Sitina1 by Wenting Zeng (a full frame Sony E mount compatible camera)

• https://gitlab.com/zephray/sitina1

Sony Remote Tool Kit SDK by Sony (not exactly open source, since you would have to get in contact with Sony in order to obtain it, but it is worth mentioning to help others with developing stuff for Sony Alpha cameras)

• https://pro.sony/ue_US/digital-imaging/camera-remote-toolkit

Probably missing a few, but adding any that are for, or work with, Sony alpha cameras. I've only been working on this for the last few days, but open to add any projects that people mention for this list. I plan on compiling it all into an "awesome-Sony-alpha" styled GitHub list. Also going to work on creating a compatibility list for these projects so people know what ones work for their camera.

I do not own any of these projects. I am simply just showing what I have catalogued for others.

For a week or two I'm using DigiKam on my Windows computer. I excluded some directories from being scanned in the settings, but it looks that don't work as I expected. In face recognition for example, I can see photos from excluded directories. What can be wrong?

I've got some RAW images, I used some software to process them, and I make an exported JPG in the same directory. Then for some reason they get bright green borders around them in the thumbnails view and it's not clear to me what causes it.

Anyone know? Digikam docs don't seem to mention anything.

Green border here: https://i.imgur.com/4YJmIyo.png

EDIT: Solution is to turn off the color label by right clicking and going to Labels.

Annoyed by the lack of a reasonable alternative (all the available ones don't do what I wanted, are overloaded with features or inefficient) I made a screensaver that randomly selects all rated images (at least one star) from the SQLite database of DigiKam.

Version is 0.1, so not everything is perfect yet, but the most important features work. You can build your own *.scr (I described how in README.md) or download a ready binary file (in the right column - "Releases").

By the way, did you know that *.scr are regular *.exe files ...just with a different extension? (And specific commandline API).

Hi everyone,

I'm in search of a Linux command line tool that can quickly convert RAW photos (support for Sony, Nikon and Canon cameras would be great) to JPEG images. The primary goal is to generate preview images, so speed is more important than maintaining perfect image quality.

Do you have any recommendations for tools that are optimized for fast conversions? Any tips on how to streamline the process would also be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

I really like how Nomacs render my raws (Olympus) be default. I can't really replicate it with RawTherapee. Does anybody know which postprocessing/color profile it's using?

I’ve been enjoying tagging photos from my personal collection this past year. (Between jpgs and unprocessed RAW files, the collection is ~280,000.) I run a face detect scan, recognize scan, correct and/or approve. Rinse and repeat. It’s been slow going, but fun to see familiar faces pop up and it’s mindless clicking that makes me feel productive.

Well, all that joy came to a screeching halt when I realized not all my face tags were being applied in the metadata all the time. I have no idea why they mostly apply correctly but occasionally they don’t. Here are the details…

• Running digiKam 8.3 on Windows 10 on my computer
• All photos are stored on a networked Windows 11 computer using Stablebit for drive pooling
• In Settings > Metadata, for things to be written to metadata I have everything selected, including “Face Tags (including face areas)”. (I’ve excluded GPS)
• I don’t have “Use lazy synchronization” or “Update file modification timestamp when files are modified” checked.

I used Adobe Bridge for most of my actual photo browsing and work. That’s where I noticed that most files will have the face/name tags show up, but inexplicably a few files will sometimes be empty. Nothing is different about those files as far as I can tell; they’re from the same series, same camera, they’re not in special folders or grouped up in anyway, same jpg format.

I found a guilty file, applied keywords and face tags in digiKam. Nothing showed up in Bridge or viewing the details in File Explorer. (So I know it wasn’t just a cache issue with Bridge.) I also selected the file in digiKam, clicked Item > Write Metadate to File and nothing worked.

Any ideas what might be going on?

Bit of a longshot here. I use Geeqie to view photos, and RawTherapee to edit them. I am trying to use Geeqie to group the .pp3 sidecar files with their JPG and RAW counterparts.

I have tried a few different strings under the grouping to no avail.

I'm running Fedora 40 with KDE/PLasma 6.1.4. Digikam 8.4.0 natively installed and libheif v1.17.6 (latest version) is installed. I cannot view any HEIC/HEIF images with GIMP, Darktable, Gwenview, or Digikam. Eror is "usupported image format" or "unknown filetype". Digikam shows the files, but no thumbnail and cannot view or edit. Digikam Library and Components Information tells me I have HEIF reading support...

Ideas?

I have my photos 'Sort Item by Creation Date' and 'Separate item by month' but not all the photos are grouping together in a unified month For example I will have the majority the picture in the proper month (ie Aug 2024) but there might be a couple photos in one or more additional Aug 2024 grouping. Odder is that they may all be part of a series. IE picture 001, 002, 003, 005, 006, and 007 would be in one group; 004 would be in another group; and 008 would be in a third group.

This is not consistent across all months.

I have a subfolder in my Picture folder (that I can't move elsewhere). Is there a way to make it its own collection so it doesn't affect the filtering/search/tag/etc in the main collection?

Hello. I'm trying to setup a way to view digiKam photos on my android phone. I have a server I'll be running a MySQL and NFS server on my LAN, and my desktop & laptop would connect to it. Right now I'm testing digiKam with local SQLite db and remote NFS photos, and it's working flawlessly.

I can technically view the photos from my phone by opening the photo directory with something like FTP, but I'd like to see tags. I don't need features to manipulate tags or add new photos as I'll be doing that from my desktop though. Is there any tool that fits this purpose? I'd prefer not to modify the original photos by adding exif datas or such into them.

I thought piwigo would fit this task best, but I'm not too sure now. It runs its own database and I'm not able to properly keep it in sync with my directory. I'm having to click the sync button on admin panel everytime I add new photos or something, and it keeps failing to do so showing timeouts and 503 service unavailable. I also wasn't able to use digiKam's tags there, as for some reason I can't export all existing tags as sidecar files.

Thansk!

I'd like to use digikam mostly for it's DAM functionality in a research project : tag and categorize images, videos and pdf files. Unfortunately, digikam doesn't recognize the pdf files in my folder structure.

I tried searching if there is a solution, but the term pdf is so generic, that I am flooded with "results" that lead nowhere useful.

Anybody knows ?

I'm using Digikam for file management, but I really like Darktable's editing workflow.

Is there a way to more seamlessly switch between them on Windows? I'd like digikam open darktable with --library :memory: but that doesn't seem possible.

So I currently use Digital Photo Professional (canon) but I don't think it matters which Raw Editor one would use. My question is when you use a Photo Organizer such as DigiKam when you are looking at your photos it does not show the raw file as it was edited.

What do others do about this?

I have been shooting JPG and RAW and maybe I just keep the JPG and organize those and just store the RAW with same filename in other folders?

Usually my JPG are good enough and rarely need to modify them much in DPP anyway.

I am trying to apply digital watermarks to images before I publish them on the web, but I simply cannot figure out how to do it in DigiKam. To be clear, digital watermark are these invisible watermarks that encode encrypted metadata into the image itself, not the typical visible watermarks like you would see on a stock image.

The feature/process is mentioned in the documentation twice. Just that it exist or that it can be a part of the DAM workflow, but never how or which tool to use. Anybody who can help me with some pointers? Or if all else fail, suggest an alternative software to do this in.

I am using DigiKam 8.3.0 on Ubuntu 23.04

Documented here: https://docs.digikam.org/en/asset_management/authorship_copyright.html

and also here: https://docs.digikam.org/en/asset_management/dam_workflow.html

Thanks in advance

I prefer using Raw Therapee for editing but prior viewing of the raw/jpg image out of the camera is limited. I'd like something that can call up the image, perhaps with the histogram, for review. I could then decide if it's keeper or not. I know ART has a viewer but I like the RT modules better.

I use and like Rapid Photo Downloader to move images from the SD card but it doesn't have a viewer.

I could use DarkTable but I'm not a fan of the Lightable module.

I have a Canon Pixma Pro 9000 which lacks networking. I was looking at options to get this accessible from my network for photo printing and was considering a Raspberry Pi just running a simple CUPS server. But I was wondering if there are any software packages, either accessed via web or vnc, that is similar to Silverfast's Printao or Qimage in its ability to store all of your color management profiles and handle layout and sharpening and all of that from the print interface. Is anyone else dealing with a similar setup?

I'm trying to decide which of the photos I've taken to edit by rating them with 5 stars, but when I check on them in File Explorer they just don't have the stars applied to them in the metadata. I've enabled writing the rating to metadata but it's still not helping.

Anyone got any fixes or suggestions?

Hi all, I'm trying to migrate my gigantic photo library to DigiKam on Linux and have encountered a small problem.

I have all the codecs installed for H.264/265 .MOV files and can open them no problem in various video viewers on my machine. 4k60 vids play plenty smooth as expected.

DigiKam however can't handle them, plays extremely laggy, and often crashes.

Haven't found much info online other than unchecking the "Disable Hardware OpenCL" box, but that didn't help.

Any suggestions?

Digikam 8.3.0 running on Fedora 39 KDE. RX580 GPU.

Thanks in advance.

Raw Therapee creates .pp3 sidecar files. Does Darktable also create .pp3 files or does Darktable create only .xmp files?

Is that why if I edit in Raw Therapee I don't see the edits in Darktable?

Just trying to get my head around it and trying to decide which to use. So far I think I'm liking Raw Therapee.

My favorite full screen viewer in Digicam is the OpenGL viewer but it has been crashing lately. I have one BIG problem with it (besides crashing). If I find an interesting pic I want to interact with (edit, copy, etc.) I have no idea how to find it in the thumbnails since the viewer gives me no info about the pic. There is another full screen viewer that lets me zoon and pan but I have to enter full screen mode first, then select the image but the mouse doesn't work to cycle through the pictures.

I think the slideshow should be able to do everything and be configurable (like Irfanview in Windows. It irritates me that the slideshow viewer won't let me zoom unless I zoom everything, including the mouse cursor using Plasma's zoon function.

Serif, the company that develops Affinity suite of apps, has been acquired by Canva. It is possible that Affinity Photo will be offered under subscription with the new company in the future. As such, I am feeling a need to gauge the field for Affinity Photo's FOSS alternatives.

There is DarkTable, and Rawtherapee for raw development. Gimp is FOSS Photoshop. These are the tools I have come across upon Googling. However, I wonder what would eb the collective recommendation of this community to replace full functionalities of Affinity photo with a FOSS product? It is worth it to note that I would be permanently moving to Linux soon, leaving Windows and proprietary apps.