This Sunday I went to OLPC Pune meet to give a talk on activity development. The students seem be very enthusiastic. The talk lasted for around 2 hours. Photos can be found here.

On the other side, I was looking for a photo catalogue software which can catalogue my photos on DVD or any other removable media, it should  also allow me to search them based on EXIF data and tags and should show thumbnail(s) in the result. I generally use digikam and gthumb too manage and view the photos. In digikam I never being properly able to catalogue photos on DVD (never tried on the last few updates) and gthumb is too slow in showing the thumbnail or full screen views for the large size photos I take. I prefer gthumb over over digikam to view the photos due to the simpler UI.

Finally decided to write my own app for this, which will not have any editing features, Gimp is the tool I use for editing. Watch this video (3.2MB) and please comment if the  thumbnail creation / viewing is fast or not ?

So, finally managed to upload most of the shots taken at foss.in 2008. View them here. Few more may come later. Mostly edited in Gimp and managed in digikam. Enjoy :)

You can find my event report here (11MB). This is my first try to make something like this. Nicu helped a lot with my poor spelling mistakes. Comments are welcome.

I followed this. We need video tutorials on digikam like these.

Can we change exposure of raw photos in showfoto ? Ufraw gimp-plugins allows me to do this very easily.I.t is called "Exposure compensation in EV" there

In one day of usage this is something I am really missing.

Update: Found the solution , goto settings, there goto image editor and select "Use Raw import tool for Raw images"

I use gimp as the main post process tool for my photographs. Which is anyway a very powerful tool. But most of the options available there are not required for me. Looked for another application which  is lighter and powerful at the same time. I tried showfoto long back, never liked the UI that time. Thought of giving another try tonight.

I have a 0.10.0-beta5 installed in my F-9 system (the package came from rawhide though). After starting the application default options(buttons to click) look much lesser, cooler for eyes :)

I opened my raw image in it, took some time but came finally(Is there any chance to make it a bit faster ?). The first thing I tried was to adjust the level, found the desired dialogue after two clicks. All other basic required options are there in the color menu entry including brightness/saturation/channel mixer. Btw, F10 and F11 buttons will help you to see under and over exposed places in the shot.

Here is a snap edited in showfoto.

You can find my other shots here.

It seems I can now use it for post processing, which also means I am back to digikam once agian :)