KDE's DigiKam 3.0 Still Working On Face Recognition

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.