Digikam is a free and open source photo management software package for KDE. Many KDE-based Linux distributions either come with Digikam installed or have it available in their repositories. With Digikam, you can import photos from your digital camera or flash memory, organize and tag them, rate them, edit them, and export them to various services or custom galleries. Three popular services that Digikam can handle are Flickr, PicasaWeb, and Facebook. The first two are social photo sites, and the last is a social networking site. All three support photo plugins used by Digikam. This makes uploading photos quick, easy, and painless. I am operating under the assumption that you already have accounts on the services you want to use. If not, you will need to register and activate whichever accounts you want before you proceed.

Preparing Digikam Photos

If you are preparing to use Digikam for the first time, you need to tell it where your photos are stored. When you first start it, it will pop up a window asking for your pictures directory. Once selected, it will remember that selection and always work within that directory until you change it.

Flickr

To export your photos to Flick, do the following:

  1. Select the album and images you wish to upload. 2. Click “Export” in the menu 3. Click “Export to Flickr” 4. It will open your web browser and ask you to login to Flickr. If you are already logged in, you can skip this step. 5. After you are logged in, go back to Digikam and click “Yes”. 6. Under “Upload Options” you can select a PhotoSet or create a new one. 7. Create tags or check “Use Host Application Tags” to use your Digikam/KDE tags. 8. Select any other options you want and then click “Start Uploading”.

PicasaWeb

Google offers a Linux download for their Picasa software, but it is not native Linux software and does not integrate well into the rest of KDE like Digikam. Fortunately, you can still upload pictures to your PicasaWeb account without using Picasa desktop software. To export your photos to PicasaWeb, do the following:

  1. Select the album and images you wish to upload. 2. Click “Export” in the menu 3. Click “Export to PicasaWeb” 4. It will open your web browser and ask for your Google login. If you are already logged in, go back to Digikam. 5. Click “Yes”. 6. Choose the album you want to use or create a new one. 7. Add tags for the images or click “Export Application Tags” to use Digikam’s. 8. Click “Start Uploading”

Facebook

People who use Facebook often want to share their photos, and Facebook has a complete photo album component with albums, tags, and other common features. By default it relies on a Java-based upload application that does run well on Linux from my experience. To use Digikam to upload Facebook photos, do the following:

  1. Select the album and images you wish to upload. 2. Click “Export” in the menu 3. Click “Export to Facebook” 4. It will open your web browser and ask for your Facebook login. If you are already logged in, Facebook will tell you that you can close the window and return to Digikam. 5. Back in Digikam, click “Yes” in the dialog box. 6. Choose an album, select “auto create”, or click “New Album” to make a new one. 7. Click “Start Upload”. There are other plugins for Gallery (free software that you can install on your own website), and SmugMug (which requires a paid account). You can also use Digikam to create a static HTML gallery for use online or offline. Regardless of the service you choose, once you have it setup in Digikam, you can easily upload new photos whenever you take them.  With KDE 4, tags and ratings carry over into other applications, integrating your user experience both locally and on the web.