Digikam enhancement

Brainstorm
1

Title: Feature Request: Improve Similarity Search Workflow for Organizing Edited Photos

Hello digiKam Development Team,

First, thank you for developing digiKam. I am evaluating digiKam 9.1.0 on Windows and have been impressed with the Similarity Search capabilities. The image matching works very well.

While using it to organize restored family photographs, I discovered a workflow that I believe could be improved with a relatively small enhancement.

My Workflow

I maintain a large photo library containing approximately 1,200 albums (folders).

I also have temporary folders containing edited versions of photographs, including images that have been:

  • Restored
  • Cropped
  • AI upscaled
  • Sharpened
  • Dust and scratch removed
  • Color corrected

Using Find Similar Items, digiKam successfully locates the matching original photograph in my main collection.

At that point, digiKam already knows exactly which album contains the original image and displays that information.

Suggested Enhancement #1

Please consider adding a command that allows an edited image to be copied or moved directly into the album containing the matching original image.

For example:

  • Copy Selected Image to This Album
  • Move Selected Image to This Album
  • Copy Here
  • Move Here

A possible workflow would be:

  1. Select an edited image.
  2. Choose Find Similar Items.
  3. Review the matching images.
  4. Right-click the matching original.
  5. Choose Copy Selected Image to This Album.

Currently, the user must manually browse a very large album tree to find the destination folder, even though digiKam already knows where the matching image resides.

For large photo libraries this becomes repetitive and time-consuming.

Suggested Enhancement #2

Please consider displaying additional image information directly beneath each thumbnail in the Find Similar Items and Duplicates views.

Useful information would include:

  • Pixel dimensions (for example, 6000 × 4000)
  • Megapixels
  • File size
  • Optional: image format (JPEG, TIFF, PNG, etc.)

When comparing restored or AI-upscaled photographs, this information is extremely helpful when deciding which version to keep. Currently, this information requires additional steps even though it is one of the most important criteria when comparing versions of the same photograph.

Why this would help

These two enhancements together would greatly simplify workflows involving:

  • Historical photograph restoration
  • Family history projects
  • AI upscaling
  • Photo scanning
  • Dust and scratch removal
  • Color restoration
  • Large photo libraries

The Similarity Search feature already performs the difficult task of locating matching images. These enhancements would make it much easier to organize the edited results back into the existing photo library.

Thank you for considering these suggestions and for continuing to develop such a powerful application.

Sincerely,

A digiKam user

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