KDE's photo management software, DigiKam, is preparing for the final release of version 3.0. DigiKam 3.0 introduces many changes and released this weekend was the 3.0 release candidate as a preview version.
DigiKam 2.0 was released in July of 2011 while DigiKam 3.0 is set to surface in the coming weeks. DigiKam 3.0 incorporates many improvements to the open-source KDE photo management software as a result of the 2012 Google Summer of Code projects.
Among the GSoC 2012 projects for DigiKam were a video slide-show generator, camera user-interface revamp, facial recognition support, improved integration of Photivo, a UPnP / DLNA plug-in, video meta-data support, and porting Libkipi and KIPI-Plugins to KDE XML-GUI. While the student-developed projects for the most part were a success, DigiKam's face recognition support continues to be described as "under progress" and the Photivo support was not fully completed.
Completed seprately from the Google Summer of Code 2012 was a wallpaper plug-in, auto noise reduction, extending the presentation view using Kipi plug-ins, and parallelization of code into the batch queue manager.
More details on DigiKam 3.0 can be found from
the 3.0.0-RC announcement. DigiKam 3.0 was originally expected for release on the 23rd of December but that obviously passed and the final release should now be just around the corner.