Shotwell

The Shotwell application imports photos when launched for the first time. It has the simplest interface of the lot and that’s probably down to the fact that it offers little functionality when compared with others in the Roundup. The manager is divided into two panes: the pane on the left helps you find images by separating them by date and tags and the thumbnails for the images that meet the criteria chosen in the left-panel are displayed on the right. All you need to do from this stage is doubleclick on an image to work on it.

When you are viewing a particular photo, the bottom panel lists all the tools you can use, eg red eye reduction and automatic enhancement etc. Other minor options, such as ratings are accessed from the Photos menu in the top menu bar and there’s a dedicated tags menu.