digiKam team have announced availability of digiKam 1.0.0. The last stable release was 0.10.0 in 2009-03-18; 8 months ago. This version brings a long list of new features and bugs-fixes: 30 features have been added and 485 bugs have been closed since last version.

What's new?

- Add new Batch Queue Manager
Now with the new Batch Queue Manager you can add more than one action to batch queue of images.

the new Batch Queue Manager

-New first run assistant
The goal of the new first run assistant is to group lead questions to configure some important rules in digiKam setup.

New first run assistant

- New Liquid Rescale tool.
This feature allows, for example, rescaling 4:3 images into 16:9 images without distorting the image. see this example:

photo 1

photo 2

-Add OpenStreetMap support in Geolocation panels.
OpenStreetMap is a free editable map of the whole world. It is made by people like you. OpenStreetMap was inspired by sites such as Wikipedia.

OpenStreetMap of Cambridge, England

-Add support of wavelets image file format PGF.
PGF (Progressive Graphics File) is a wavelet-based bitmapped image format that employs lossless and lossy data compression. PGF was created to improve upon and replace the JPEG format. It was developed at the same time as JPEG 2000 but with a different focus: speed over compression ratio. PGF is one of the best algorithms available these days for compression of natural images.

PGF logo

-Added support of LightRoom keywords path for interoperability purpose.
-Added Multi-languages support to Caption and Tags right side-bar.
-digiKam use a new database to cache thumbnails instead ~./thumbnails. File format used to store image is PGF. PGF is a wavelets based image compression format and give space optimizations.
- Complete re-write of Color Management code. Add support of thumbs and preview CM.

To see all features and bug-fixes see this page. digiKam tarball can be downloaded from SourceForge.
digiKam will be also available for Windows. Pre-compiled packages can be downloaded with KDE-Windows installer. See KDE-Windows project for details.