Linux Road

The announcement of beta version of Ubuntu 10.10 came with the news that Shotwell will be replacing the good old (and trusted) F-Spot as the default photo manager. This is when I first heard of Shotwell and since Ubuntu were showing so much trust in it, I thought it would be worth while to do a review on Shotwell. Even though most people are talking much about the F-Spot and Shotwell war, but I want to make a point that this is no Shotwell v/s F-Spot post. It is a simple review on Shotwell, talking about the strengths and weaknesses of it.

Shotwell can be found in the package repository of most of the distributions and can be installed directly from there. Just open your package manager search for "Shotwell" and install the package. But, if your distro doesn't have it in the package repository you can see the installation details on the official Shotwell install page (http://yorba.org/shotwell/install/) to install Shotwell.

Interface

First thing you will notice about Shotwell's interface will be that it is very simple (a bit too simple). The Shotwell windows contains two panes. A left pane showing photos and events, with photos containing all the pictures in the library and events having the photos arranged in according to the date on which they were taken. The right pane quite obviously shows the preview of images.

Below the right pane we have some very useful buttons and a small slider (to increase the size of the thumbnails). There are by default four buttons (I would prefer to have a few more) Rotate, Enhance, SlideShow, and Publish. Each doing exactly what it say. The image details are shown just below the left pane.

Editing

You can double click on an image to open it in the edit mode. The edit mode offers Red-eye Reduction, Cropping, Rotating, Image Enhance (corrects the image colors, brightness, and sharpness automatically), and Adjust button that allows the user to change attributes for exposure, saturation, tint, temperature, and shadows. Image editing is quite fair, not a lot of options and the ones that are present are quite handy according to my likings.

Publishing

This is a nice and handy mode that allows user to publish/upload photos to facebook, picasa, and flickr albums. There are just three options for now I hope to more will be added later on. just select an image and press the publish button to upload. You will have to put your login details before uploading.

Slideshow

When you click the Slideshow button under the right pane, you will see a full page preview of the image which will switch to the next one after a delay of 5 sec. (delay can be set manually too). Again the simplicity can be seen the Slideshow mode as well, with just five buttons visible: back, pause/play, next, setting, and exit mode. Setting button allow you to set the delay time before the next image is displayed.

Taging and Events

Tagging has become an important feature in any modern photo managing software and so did Shotwell included the feature of tagging the images. Simple select an image click on the tag option in the menu bar to add or modify a tag. Events that are by default present as dates can be renamed to represent an event for your own ease.

Final Words

Shotwell should get my full marks for its simplicity and ease of use. It might not be as attractive as F-Spot but that is a matter of choices. Some features need to be added and polished, I would like to have more places to publish images directly. Overall, it is a very handy tool and the project overall seem to be heading in a good direction. Most Ubuntu users will miss F-Spot but they can install it manually but I would certainly recommend giving Shorwell a try.

F-Spot is photo manager designed to work on GNOME desktop. If you have got many personal photos or you are just into photography, then you got to use F-Spot. People tend to store photos in folders and try to manage them manually now that is alright for a few hundred images but once the number increase this becomes hard. Photos become hard to search and adding more photos becomes tough as well. So, if you have got lot many pictures or you don't want the labor work of managing them or simple you are just too lazy (like me), don't worry F-Spot will save the day for you.

My first impression of F-Spot was that the interface was really sweet. Sweet in terms of simplicity and ease of use, not much buttons not much confusion. There are two panes, the one on the left shows tags (by default) and can be switched to either one of metadata, Edit, and Folders (each one explained later), and the right pane shows the thumbnails to images. In addition to the two panes there is a very cool timeline, a tool-bar, and a standard menu-bar.

F-Spot currently supports 16 different image formats, so one expects not to have any trouble opening any image that a digital camera takes. It is the default picture manager in Ubuntu and is also available on the package repository of nearly all the major Linux distributions making it easily available to install if not preloaded.

Installing F-Spot

As mentioned above nearly all major linux distributions have got F-Spot on their repositories, so you can use your package manager to install F-Spot on your machine. But, if your linux distribution does not have it in its repository then you will have to do the installation manually.

I will advice you to first look into your package manager and search for F-Spot, in case you can't find it go to F-Spot website. Once you are on the website click on the download option on top bar or visit the download page directly. Under the release section you will see the link to download the package, click it and download the package. Once the package is downloaded extract it in a desired folder. Once extracted, open that folder in terminal and type the following commands in order.

./configure

make

make install

Note: if you are still unable to install, check the readme file or drop in a comment or mail me personally.

How to import photos in F-Spot

When you will run F-Spot for the first time you will be prompted for photo import by F-Spot itself, but if you manually want to import more photos in F-Spot later, like from a camera or some other device, you can do it by pressing the big import button just below the menu bar in the top left corner.

When you will press the import button a screen will pop up in front of you, the same screen comes up when you start F-Spot for the first time.

Once the above screen comes up, click on the import source to either select a folder or some external media to import images from once you have selected the folder that has the images press import button and the images will start to load.

Once the images are loaded into the window you can press the import button to import them into F-Spot. But, here are a few options you should consider of before importing images:

• Detect Duplicates (Select this option if you don't want to include duplicate photos.)
• Copy files to the Photo folder (If files are being imported from an external media like camera this option must be selected so that the photos are automatically imported to the hard disk.)
• Include Subfolders (I prefer this option so that all of the folders are scanned.)

Photo Editing with F-Spot

While in the browser mode double click a photo to enter into the edit mode here in the edit mode you can do some basic (yet useful editing to your photos). F-Spot allows you to do following editing to your image (we will discuss some in detail):

• Crop
• Straighten
• Adjust Colors
• AutoColor
• Desaturate
• Sepia
• Remove Red-Eye
• Soft Focus
• Sharpen
• Describe
• Adjust Time

Croping Photos in F-Spot

Croping a photo is like cutting a piece of it, it is good if you want to use the part of the picture only. Like in this whole post images have been cut into pieces just to show you the main parts.

To crop a photo first double click a photo to go into edit mode, and then click on the crop button on in the left pane. Now just click on the photo and keep clicking to select an area that you want to crop. You may also select constraints from the left pane if you prefer.

Straighten Photos in F-Spot

If you took an image that is not straight dont worry F-Spot will correct it. Straighten effect is a tool to level a photo, quite helpful for landscapes taken without a tripod. This tool rotates an image by a specified angle and automagically crops the resulted image, so that you always see a perfect rectangle and a straight photo.

to Straighten a photo just select straighten from left pane (in edit mode). and move the bar to select the number of degrees to straighten the image.

Adjust Colors of Photos in F-Spot

It is another useful option, you can do color correction and even change the white balance. So, if you think the image colors are not good and need a but of adjustment go for this option. If you are creative enough you can make the image look artistic.

AutoColor, Desaturate, Sepia Tone in F-Spot

These are basic option not much selection to make just select them from the left pane in the edit mode and click on the button to apply them. Auto Color will adjust the color of the image. Desaturate will wash the colors away, Sepia Tone will add Sepia effect to it.

Sharpen a Photo in F-Spot

To sharpen a photo first open picture in edit mode. Then, click 'edit' in the menu bar and select sharpen

Now you will see a preview of the image and a small window through which you can adjust the values to modify the image.

Shortcuts in F-Spot

Global Shortcuts

Browse Mode Shortcuts

Tag Shortcuts

Edit Mode Shortcuts