Configurability

How customisable are they?

While all the managers can be used without tweaks, some adjustments will benefit your workflow. With DigiKam you can define the locations where the images are stored whether locally, removable or remotely. It also has detailed options to customise the look of the Album list and the Editor window. You can even select the information that’s displayed in the tooltip for a highlighted image. DigiKam also enables you to create your own custom metadata templates with extensive details. Advanced users can switch database engines and migrate it to a remote location.

While XnViewMP doesn’t offer as many options as DigiKam, it still enables you to customise the essential ones, eg you can define custom keyboard shortcuts for working with images and define mouse gestures for navigating through the library and the images. The application also enables you to customise certain aspects of the interface. XnViewMP goes to great lengths to help display the best thumbnail in the image browser window and allows you to customise the names of the predefined labels.

In contrast, Shotwell only offers minimal customisation: you can change the colour of the image browser’s background; define the location of the image library and ask the application to keep an eye out for new image files.

It also allows you to control how the imported images are organised and select external editors for editing normal images as well as RAW files.

KPhotoAlbum offers little in addition to the ability to customise how and when the application searches for new images, and various aspects of the interface can be tweaked, such as the default thumbnail size etc.