Hi Just a quick review of this new photo / image tool(s) for Ubuntu.
Below is a link to an article on the new Software - quite aptly named - shotwell - and its quite a good shot at that. Meet Shotwell - The F-Spot Replacement For Ubuntu 10.10 "Maverick Meerkat" http://www.techdrivein.com/2010/06/meet-shotwell-f-spot-replacement-for.html Review Installation is quite simple just follow the two command and quite soon its up and running (the software itself is just 2.5 MB - cannot say how much the dependencies are) Once installed it appears as it should in Applications - Graphics Shotwell. Its starts up with a very clean and simple interface. To begin to see its perceivable awesomeness just point it to any folder and ask it to import the pictures (File - Import from Folder) It scans the folders and all the sub and sub sub folders, while importing there is a progress bar on the bottom right and it shows each image in full mode (not full screen ) and if the folder has non image files or non compatible images (like Tiff) i gives a message(s) And then wow it sorts the images by date (of when the image was taken) the dates (yea wise) appear on the side pain - very uncluttered Its easy to add tags , and one must - right click on a single image or bnch of images and give it a tag and instantly the tag appears on the side pane The side pane has 3 categories Photos (shows all the photos imported) events - shows year (and month and date ) wise pictures and Tags (with whatever tags you may have added Its quite quick to move between categories. When viewing multiple images there is zoom located at the right bottom corner to play with the thumbnail size - the biggest being 4 thumbnalls and the smallest being 60 thumbnails (this may vary with screen size and resolution). It has some quick buttons located at the bottom to rotate, publish (to web places) and enhance But there is no control over enhance - the result is whatever the default has been set by software folks. Double clicking on an image makes it full (as full as it can get within the size of the sofrware window) it also shows more some image edit options - rotate, crop red eye, color and brightness options and picture enhance There is more of the usual stff in the menus and none of these seem overloaded or bloated. Lacunae of this software No zoom (in individual image mode) Does not support all image formats (as of now tif i know don't know about others) Does not source the actual folder location Last thoughts - seem a very very good addition to the linux software stable and given its lightweight and clean approach will hopefully come as the default instead of the not so good F-spot, an its features make it a possible replacement for even gthumb (esp if they add a zoom option) so install and enjoy ram -- ubuntu-in mailing list ubuntu-in@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-in