Digikam by Renchi Raju is a KDE program for downloading photographs from digital cameras. On start-up, Digikam presents a window with three sections: your home directory is displayed to the left, the photographs available in the camera are displayed to the right, and a list of cameras is displayed below.

To set up a camera in Digikam, select ‘Configure’ -> ‘Setup’. A window displaying a list of supported cameras opens. First, try to autodetect the camera with Auto-Detect. If this fails, browse the list for your model. If your camera model is not included in the list, try an older model. Normally, this should work.

The path to your image folders (the location where your photographs are saved) can be specified in the same dialog under the General Settings tab. You can also determine the size of the thumbnails, the way file names are displayed, and some other settings.

After your camera has been detected correctly and you have configured the program as desired, confirm with OK. The name of your camera is then displayed at the bottom left in the main window. Double-click it or select ‘Camera’ -> ‘Connect’ to connect Digikam to your camera. The thumbnails are displayed to the right. Right-click the image to open a pop-up menu with which to view, save, or delete the image or view its properties.

Select all photographs to download from the camera by pressing the left mouse button or click individual photographs with Shift pressed. Selected photographs appear with inverted colors. Drag the selected photographs to the desired directory. Digikam will download the photographs and save them in the selected directory.

More information about Digikam is available in theDigikam help (‘Help’ -> ‘Digikam Handbook’). Information is also available on the Internet at http://digikam.sourceforge.net/.