KDE Gets Digital Camera Support

theKompany.com has just released a patch to the well known digital camera application gPhoto2, which allows it to integrate seemlessly with KDE 2. This means you can now access the wide range of supported cameras (over 100 models) from any KDE 2 application. Now I may finally be ready to buy a digital camera! Update: 12/14 10:46 AM. TheKompany.com has posted a screenshot of the KControl module and of Konqueror browsing pictures.

The patch makes gphoto available as a kio_slave, which means that any KDE 2 application which makes use of the kio architecture can (without any modification) access the images stored on a supported camera. For example, you can preview browse the images in Konqueror and even see thumbnails. The patch also adds a new KControl module allowing you to configure the camera.

According to theKompany.com's website, if you have a supported camera, you can start using it with most KDE applications in two easy steps: simply configure your camera model and port type from a list in the KControl module, then start accessing the camera contents with a gphoto:/ URL. It's a bit hard to set up right now -- you need to download the CVS version of gphoto -- but this should be sorted out Real Soon Now(tm). More information on the patch is available at theKompany's website, and you can find a list of supported cameras on the gphoto website.

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Comments

by Wickyd (not verified)

This is an excellent example of how the architecture of KDE will accelerate the inclusion of new and diverse technologies, without having to recompile or patch existing applications to take advantage of it.

KDE, showing the rest of the programming world how it can be done.

by Anonymous (not verified)

Without having to patch?
"theKompany has just released a PATCH to the well known digital camera application gPhoto2"

by Greg Smethells (not verified)

Without having to patch *KDE 2* apps which use kio_slave.

by Shawn Gordon (not verified)

Patch is the wrong word. We didn't do anything to the libraries, we added the front end to the libraries. Thanks to the fine work of the gPhoto folks, the new gPhoto2 makes this very easy. Keep in mind that gPhoto2 is still not production release and we have no control over that, but at least it's available and we have been having good luck with it internally.

by Jason Katz-Brown (not verified)

Wowo!

theKompany.com is super :) kivio also looks very nice, I compiled it...

Can anyone recommend a good digital camera that is cheap? Thanks.

Jason

PS: Go to borgtheme.katzbrown.com for a new KDE2 theme I made!

by Shawn Gordon (not verified)

For a great site on unbiased reviews take a look at http://www.steves-digicams.com/. Also check http://computers.cnet.com/hardware/0-1078.html?tag=st.ce.1629008.more.1078 for reviews and good comparitive pricing. I really like http://www.compdirect.com/ for good bargains on cameras. Probably one of the best for the money is the Olympus D-360L.

by Lee Wee Tiong (not verified)

for a start, go browse the ng rec.photo.digital.

by Murray (not verified)

<disclaimer>I have no connection with this company, other than being a customer</disclaimer>
 
For those in the UK, you might like to try:

 
scan.co.uk
 

I recently bought the e-Studio camera for about 40 quid. You aren't going to be using it to take wedding pictures or anything, but it is a great little toy and doubles as a web cam too.
 
scan.co.uk/today.htm
 
lists daily "specials"...
 
Enjoy,
Murray.
 
ps. rock on KDE, gphoto, theKompany, et al

by raj (not verified)

scan e studio digital camera
i bought the following model however i have miss laid the drivers if anyone out there has them please sent them to me thank you

can someone pls let me know where I can get the drivers as well - pls email me with the info

by Diedrich Vorberg (not verified)

Good Job!

I think it is about time to forget the animosities between GNOME and KDE and start working together, each project in its own unique style, to gain from one another's work!

by Anonymous (not verified)

Now wait for the Gnome guys to send a patch to gPhoto for use with gnome-vfs and the ring is complete :)

by steve (not verified)

Gnome will lose this game.... not enough manpower to do the same in 5 days from now.

wait for gnome 2... than they will have a small chance to get closer to kde... it seems europe's kde-desktop is winning the contest over gnomes usa-team

europe goes on top

by Anonymous Coward (not verified)

.

by Anonymous (not verified)

Looks like the trolls have found dot.kde.org...

by TrollKiller (not verified)

It has already been done a month ago!
Now what did you say about "not enough manpower"?

by t0m_dR (not verified)

Great!, now just only if someone made a patch, which makes Gimp 100% intergrated with Koffice and KDE2...KDE would seriously ROCK!

by Shawn Gordon (not verified)

You should look at the work that John Califf is doing with Krayon, it is really looking good and is much more user friendly than GIMP IMHO.

For those of you who aren't aware, Krayon was formerly KImageShop and is part of KOffice.

by Xiang (not verified)

Krayon sounds good, but where can I get it?

by Karl-Heinz Zimmer (not verified)

Krayon (the former KImageShop) is documented and may be downloaded here:

 http://www.koffice.org/kimageshop/

Perhaps you also might want to read this interview (October 2000):

 http://www.linux.org/people/gordon.html

And as allways:

Just in case you happen to consider starting a nice little flame war, please be a good (boy|girl) and look at this text first.

http://home.snafu.de/khz/Sonne/A_contra_B.html ;-)

Karl-Heinz

by Xiang (not verified)

On that page is no download, there only are documentation and screenshots. And in my last KOffice-download, there was no Krayon.
So, how exactly is it done?

by Per (not verified)

Check one of the links under "Installing KOffice"

by Karl-Heinz Zimmer (not verified)

Krayon (the former KImageShop) is part of KOffice.

It is contained e.g. in [...]/kde/snapshots/current/koffice-20001211.tar.bz2 but the name of the directory is still kimageshop so that might be the reason why you did not find it.

by kidcat (not verified)

Since it is still alpha-alpha-alpha, and tons of code still need to be produced to make it official you will have to get it from CVS./kidcat

by chris (not verified)

Why hasn't anyone thanked the gPhoto crew for doing the work of splitting the frontend and backend software for use in other projects such as KDE?

Thank you gPhoto.

by SteveH (not verified)

Yes, someone from gphoto was actively
encouraging a KDE port over the summer on
the kde-devel list. It generated a lot
of interest but then things got quiet.

Does anyone know if there was another effort
to do this?

Anyway, your point is a good one. Thanks
to both the Kompany and gPhoto for another
big piece of the Unix desktop!

by Shawn Gordon (not verified)

We picked up on it from that thread and had some very positive conversation with the gPhoto crew at the time. They have really done a great job on these libraries. What was a bit disappointing was when we decided to start on this about a month ago we tried talking to them again and every single email to every single person has gone unanswered in all that time. It's a testament to the quality of their code that we were able to find everything and pull this off as quickly as we did.

by Carlos Miguel (not verified)

Hi Shawn
Congratulations and Thanks for yet another piece of the desktop puzzle.

I was wondering, when will Aethera hit the street?

Bye

by Shawn Gordon (not verified)

Well I just saw some of the latest screenshots from our engineers yesterday and Aethera is looking very good. I would say 2 weeks is a safe bet at this point. We have some UI things to resolve, but overall I'm very happy with how it's coming along.

by Scott Fritzinger (not verified)

Wow, this is cool!

One of the main things we wanted to do in designing gPhoto2 was to allow people to use it in different environments are architectures. It is great to see that people are taking advantage of it, especially under KDE2 since that is what I'm running ;)

Many thanks to Shawn Gordon and the Kompany for putting the time and effort into making it work. This is something else exciting to celebrate at the local Reno LUG christmas party!

-=Scott
the gPhoto project

by BigNick (not verified)

Guys, get Krayon working well, and I'll have my Dad converted to Linux + KDE2 in no time !!!

He needs tools to create HTML-Files =>Quantato get images from his digital camera => gphoto2and to edit these images. Well, he sure could do the latter with GIMP, but, seriously, the GIMP UI isn't the most intuitive one, at least for longtime WIN-Users.

Keep up the good work !!!

by Vivek Khera (not verified)

I just installed this on a kde-2.0.1 FreeBSD desktop. It went in smoothly and I can get a basic file view of the files on the camera. However, downloading any of the images doesn't work. The downloading dialog box just sits at 0%. If I kill it and then try another, I get one of those "the process implementing the protocol died" messages pop up.

The command line gphoto2 utility reads the images quite well from my PowerShot S100 usb camera...

Any ideas on how to track down this thing?

by Shawn Gordon (not verified)

The proper place to ask is [email protected]. The Engineer is gone for a few days right now. We will be releasing the code to KDE CVS as soon as everything is set up. The project will be renamed kio_kamera at that time.

by Vivek Khera (not verified)

Thanks. I didn't find any kind of bug reporting address on the kio_kamera site. All I could find were the info@ and jobs@ addresses, which didn't seem appropriate.

by Alex (not verified)

Good!!

Now, I wait for a support of video4linux as a kio_slave.
So, as photocameras, we can access to webcams, tv-cards...

by David (not verified)

I've played with this a bit tonight with a Canon digital ixus and it needs more polish yet. On the other hand it could be gphoto, as I can download files with the gphoto command line but nothing can read the jpgs produced.

The kamera page mentions that gphoto needs a patch applied but its not in the sources as, the latest CVS of Gphoto2 has the lib update applied.

by Starbuck Zero (not verified)

I got one of my friends that Mandrake Linux for Windows(You know the Red Box)for X-mas and he have a digital camera too. I guess if he figure out how to work with GIMP he'll be good to go.

by Scott (not verified)

Where can I get Kamera? According to TheKompany.com, it _should_ be a part of KDE 2.2.2. I have KDE 2.2.2-1 on RedHat 7.2. Maybe I'm not looking in the right place? Again, according to TheKompany.com, it should be in Control Center -> Peripherals. I only have mouse and keyboard. Am I missing a step?

thanks