The KDE way

There are many image-processing applications that integrate speci cally into the KDE Plasma desktop environment and are worth mentioning. The KIPI-Plugins is a modular system that powers di erent KDE-related applications, such as the Gwenview image viewer and Digikam, and enables the impressive list of destinations where you can upload your photos. The Dolphin le manager can be extended using extra services that reside at kde-look.org. Go to ‘Con gure Dolphin > Services’ to upload new stu right from within Dolphin — such as KDE Services, a Swiss Army knife-style tool that includes a graphics converter and resize/rotate tool which work in Dolphin’s right-click menu.

There’s a great standalone application called Converseen that has a rich set of converting and resizing options for images. Converseen is based on Magick++ libraries and supports more than 100 image formats. It’s a perfect tool for bulk actions with advanced features. Photo retouching is rarely done in KDEcentric applications, but you can happily do it in Krita. Even though Krita is focused on digital art, there are both Clone Brush and Healing Brush engines in brush settings, which enable you to remove objects and x undesired e ects. Go to ‘Filter > Adjust’ and select the proper tool for xing colour levels, hue, colour balance and other things that potentially can improve your photos. The Filter menu has many more options, not as many as there are in Gimp (see over the page), but still enough for high-quality photo retouching.