When it comes open-source image organizers and photo tag editors open source app digiKam is the most well regarded — and the app just got its first big update in 2 years.

DigiKam devs the digiKam 8.0.x release massively improves image support thanks to an updated version of the libjasper codec for handling “exotic formats based on JPEG-2000”; plus baked-in support for TIFF 16 bits float (half-float) images used in HDR workflows.

An updated snapshot of RAW image library libraw means digiKam 8.0 can handle RAW files from more cameras, including the DJI Mavic 3, Leica M11, and Canon EOS R3, R7 and R10. It’s also able to cope with Canon CR3 filmrolls/RawBurst, Canon CRM movie files, and DNG files.

The Batch Queue Manager now supports JPEG-XL, WEBP, and AVIF for conversion; there’s an OCR tool powered by the open source Tesseract engine; and all text input throughout the app supports spell check (with options to choose alt/different language backends for this).

Other changes include a new version of ExifTool to read and write metadata to image files (plus new configuration options related to that); an updated metadata editor that fits on on smaller screens; and a new hamburger menu for accessing menu options in full-screen.

The database search engine allows you to search for items by the number of faces, and there is an interesting AI-based quality sorting feature for those willing to delegate that (often tedious) task to digital eyes.

Finally, there’s a trove of updated documentation accessible from a new documentation webpage (and all of this information is available to download in an ePub file for offline reading, which is great).

For more details, and to download digiKam 8.0 for Windows, macOS, and Linux machines, visit the official digiKam download page.