Exposure blending tool in digikam

Exposure blending tool in digikam

Digikam now (since kipi 1.1.0) has an exposure blending plugin, which uses enfuse from enblend. Select the images in Digikam, use Tools->Blend bracketed images, it offers to add or remove images (but, if you selected the images you want from a Digikam album or search result, you can probably click Next), it will offer to align the images with align_image_stack, then gives you a window with a preview on the left, some sliders to adjust on the right, and preview and save buttons.

While you may be able to twiddle more knobs with qtpfsgui, Digikam's plugin is easier to use, just works with no fuss, and I can get the same results in 5 minutes or less as takes about 15 with qtpfsgui. Maybe it is possible to get better results with qtpfsgui ... but I haven't figured out how (maybe I need to read the papers).

Since Digikam 1.4.0 has good lens auto-correction (using lensfun) - with improved lens detection for some camera models in 1.5.0 with lensfun 0.2.5 - for both distortion and chromatic aberration, there is very little that you need to do outside Digikam (at least for me, someone just taking home photos with an entry-level DSLR).

I guess the biggest missing piece at present is "developing" RAW images, I guess ufraw is probably the best option for that at present. I would also like some multi-user and/or multi-machine features, but maybe those will come after non-destructive editing. For panoramas, nothing beats hugin at present ...