GTKRawGallery: a workflow oriented photo retouching software and camera raw image developer.
                                  Version 0.9.61
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It is a workflow oriented photo retouching software with all necessary tools
to quickly process camera raw images. For this purpose GTKRawGallery brings
together the most powerfull open source software we have to work with 16 bit color depth images:
Dcraw, Imagemagick and Exiftool.

Some important features:
  + Image browser and manager;  
  + Full featured Dcraw GUI for a fine-tuned raw image pre-processing;
  + Image modification tools for 16 bit/channel post-processing;
  + Batch conversion with single workflow applicable;
  + Batch Processor to speed up the workflow;
  + Fast tagging;
  + Advanced Metadata Editor with EXIF, IPTC and XMP write support;
  + Color Management;
  + Print support;


Features
--------
Here is a list of the main features of GTKRawGallery:
  + Non destructive image workflow with a color depth >=16 bit/channel; 
  + Most known image formats supported: jpg, tiff, png, xpm, xbm, gif, ico, cur, ppm , pbm, pgm, pnm, pcx, bmp, svg, ras, tga, targa, wmf, apm, wbmp;
  + Camera raw files supported: cr2, nef, crw, raf, kdc, dcr, mrw, orf, ptx, pef, arw, srf, x3f, erf, dng, bay, bmq, cs1, dc2, fff, k25, mos, rdc, rw2. 
    For the updated list of supported cameras, visit Dcraw home page please;
  + 16 bit/channel color depth images recognized;
  + Advanced Metadata Editor with custom templates: a really powerfull and flexible tool adding write support to a huge list of metadata information;
  + EXIF, IPTC, XMP and read and write support;
  + Makernotes read support;
  + Print support;
  + Color Manager based on ICC profiles (requires LittleCMS);
  + Basic ICC profile inspector;
  + Possibility to send photos by mail;
  + Possibility to store photos on CD/DVD (requires cdrtools);
  + Possibility to rename multiple files with pattern;
  + Gettext support;
  + full featured browser to copy, move, rename and delete images; 
  + Detail and thumbnail view for images;
  + Thumbnails zooming;
  + Thumbnails autorotation;
  + Thumbnails cache;
  + Full featured Dcraw GUI with fine controls and automatic preview;
  + White balance presets editor;
  + Image histogram: a very important tool on digital photography;
  + Color enhance tools (white balance, temperature, levels, curves, shadows, highlights, gamma, normalize, color balance,
    exposure, saturation, hue, contrast, sigmoidal-contrast, channel mixer);
  + Image transform tools (scale, rotate, flip, flop, fine rotation, border, crop, lens distortion, red eye removal);
  + Image effects (sharpen, unsharp mask, blur, reduce noise, add noise, median filter, grayscale, sepia tone, despeckle, 
    oil paint, spread, tint, charcoal, sketch, posterize, negate);
  + Full-screen view;
  + Zooming and rotation;
  + Slideshow with fading transition and background player (requires Sox);
  + Album manager;
  + Fast link to open images with Gimp or other editing tools;
  + "Save as" and "Conversion" features with exif data preserved;
  + Batch conversion with applicable workflow;
  + Batch Processor;
  + Direct metadata tagging for portability (see exiftool manual for supported file types)
    and database support to quickly search by keywords;
  + Synchronize Database tool to scan the filesystem for tagged images;
  + Possibility to open files and folders dropped from the window manager;
  + Command line access;
  + Error Log dialog and error.log file to display and save debugging information;
  + Customizable GUI colors;
  + Two different gallery layouts;
  + User friendly graphic interface compatible with several screen resolutions (minimum 800x600);


Hardware
--------
Ram >= 1Gb


Requirements
------------
Python >= 2.6
Gtk+ >= 2.12
Pygtk  >= 2.12 (requires pygobject, pycairo)
Imaging Python (PIL) >= 1.1.6 (Deprecated. Use Pygtk compiled with numpy support instead. See Tips and tricks section!)
Numpy >= 1.0.4
Imagemagick-Q16 >= 6.4.8
Exiftool >= 7.41
Dcraw >= 8.93

Sox (optional)
Cdrtools (optional)
LittleCMS (optional)


Imagemagick notes
-----------------
It's a powerfull library for image processing usually coming with most known Linux distributiones. 
It is compiled with a default color depth of 16 bit (Q16), but it can be compiled as Q32 to preserve more color informations 
during image processing or if you prefer, as HDRI (floating point quality) for  a totally reversible and non destructive workflow.
See Imagemagick documentation for more information!. Default Q16 version is recommended!
This GTKRawGallery version was tested with imagemagick <= 6.10.0 to assure the wrapper compatibility. Newer versions might not work!
Just try! If "Undefined Simbol" or any error from Pythonmagickwand is raised, send a report to the project page's bug traker please!


Packages
--------
A Slackware package can be found at the www.slacky.eu repository;
An Debian package can be found at the www.getdeb.net repository;
Anyway Google is your friend ;-)

*For any trouble with packages, contact the mantainer please!


Installation from source
------------------------                                            
Unpack the tarball, then
$ cd /home/.../gtkrawgallery-version  at your shell's prompt,
and finally as root:
# python setup.py install


Uninstall
---------
type as root at your shell's prompt:
# uninstall-gtkrawgallery



Usage:
------
type
$ gtkrawgallery  at your shell's prompt or
$ gtkrawgallery filename | dirname

or simply use the window manager's start men ;-)
If something go wrong, start from a shell to see any error.


Tips and tricks:
---------------
o Disable the thumbnails caching on single processor machines since it may slow down software usability;
o After every image modification, just right click on it to compare with unchanged image;
o Disable "Thumbnail autorotation" and "Thumbnail border" to speed up the gallery loading;
o Don't check the "Full image workflow" option if you don't need image zooming at high resolution,
  but when you deal with raw images, to get max resolution, it is advisable to keep this option checked at cost of a little overhead,
  while processing compressed image formats with "Full image workflow" option checked could be very slow (see Imagemagick notes) ;  
o Keep always checked the "Fast Loading" options on Dcraw settings page to speed up raw images' workflow (This option has not effect on saved images!);
o Batch conversion and Batch Processor do not overwrite;
o With the 0.9.4 version was added also the "Canc" keyboard shortcut,
  that's very useful to quickly delete wrong photos;
o Always synchronize tags database if you want GTKRawGallery to recognize keywords tags written with other software.
  That's very useful to migrate from other O.S. ;-)
o The "write metadata" button on details window's tag panel works overwriting metadata with checked tags,
  so if nothing is checked, it will write a void string deleting all keywords!;
o The "Auto WB Presets" looks for presets stored on makernotes (only Canon, Pentax and what other cameras?)
o The 0.9.6 version introduced a check for Numpy support on Pygtk. It permits to replace PIL on Magickwand to GDKPixbuf
  transformation and histogram computation with increased performance and a more responsive workflow.
  When Pygtk is not compiled with Numpy support, a message dialog will alert you that PIL is required (if not installed)!
  At this point, you can decide to install PIL or recompiling Pygtk (Numpy is handled by default);

*When you process or save images, the workflow is applied to the full sized images!

                                                

Bugs and Issues
---------------
+ The transition could be very slow for images with alpha channel like png files (specially on old hardware and old X server).
  Try reducing the number of frames or else disable it.
 
+ GIO File Monitor support requires at least pygobject 2.15;

+ I premise that on my Slackware Curves are stable, but sometimes the "button release event" is not handled. In that case just click again!
  The problem seems more serious on Fedora 12 where curves are not usable. At the moment I have not possibility to test other distributiones
  so your reports are welcome.
  Curves was written through the Gtk.Curve high level API. This widget has few known bugs probably due to design issues,
  but the Gtk team is not interested on its maintenance. So we hope on volunteer's patches. 

Other bugs are always probable. Open the Error Log dialog to see possible errors, also saved in the ~/.GTKRawGallery/error.log file.
Some errors like Pythonmagickwand and X11's could be handled only from a shell's prompt.
If you like the program and find anyone , it would be nice if you reported it! 


License
-------
GNU GPL v.2 (see COPYING)


To do
-----

Porting to Windows;
Internationalization;
Possibility to delete images on fullscreen mode;
Files monitoring;
Implementing MagickSetImageProgressMonitor for a fine grained progressbar and ReadStream for lower memory usage during batch processing.
Does anyone know how to set up those ImageMagick functions?



Feedback
--------
Always very welcome :-) You can reach me at bit123@users.sourceforge.net

Greatings
---------
Thanks to Ian Stevens for permission to include his Pythonmagickwand package;













... to my wife.

