r/digiKam

Most of us work with images every day, but choosing the right format is not always obvious. Each format has strengths depending on what you are trying to do.

HEIC

Best for:

• Modern smartphones, especially iPhones
• High-quality photos with smaller file sizes

Pros:

• Excellent image quality
• Smaller files than JPG
• Supports features such as Live Photos

Cons:

• Compatibility can still be limited on some platforms
• Often needs conversion before sharing or editing

JPG

Best for:

• Photos
• Websites
• Social media
• General sharing

Pros:

• Supported almost everywhere
• Small file sizes
• Good for everyday use

Cons:

• Uses lossy compression
• Quality decreases with repeated editing and saving
• No transparency support

PNG

Best for:

• Logos
• Screenshots
• Graphics
• Transparent backgrounds

Pros:

• Lossless quality
• Transparency support
• Sharp text and graphics

Cons:

• Larger files than JPG
• Less efficient for photographs

JPEG XL — JXL

Best for:

• High-quality photography
• Archiving images
• Modern web delivery
• Replacing older JPG workflows

Pros:

• Excellent compression efficiency
• Supports both lossy and lossless compression
• Supports HDR, transparency, animation, and wide color
• Can preserve high image quality at smaller file sizes

Cons:

• Limited support in some browsers, apps, and operating systems
• Often requires conversion for wider compatibility

Quick recommendations

Camera photos → HEIC, JPG, or JXL
Website photos → JPG, WebP, AVIF, or JXL where supported
Logos and graphics → PNG
Long-term image archiving → JXL or lossless PNG
Maximum compatibility → JPG
iPhone storage → HEIC

Discussion

Which image format do you use most?

Have you tried JPEG XL yet?

Have you experienced compatibility problems with HEIC or JXL?

Which image format has caused you the biggest headache?

NB I’ve never used digiKam before, and all my photos and videos are just sitting in normal folders on my drives, no photo management software, no cataloguing, nothing.

Hi everyone,

I have a huge, messy photo and video library built from manual backups made at different times, in a very fragmented way. Now I’m drowning in duplicates with completely different filenames scattered across countless folders. I want to use digiKam to deduplicate everything, but I’m genuinely paranoid about accidentally deleting irreplaceable memories.

How good is digiKam at spotting both exact duplicates (identical files) and near‑duplicates (resized, recompressed, slightly edited versions) of images and videos?
I’d really appreciate hearing about your real‑world experiences, especially regarding:

• False positives (flagging two different photos as the same scene)
• False negatives (missing duplicates a human would easily catch)
• How reliably it handles video files, different formats, short clips, etc.

What workflow and settings do you recommend to stay safe? For instance, using the “Find Duplicate Items” tool with a specific similarity threshold, combining it with fingerprint/hash searches, or anything else. Should I plan to manually review every suggested duplicate, or can the tool be trusted to mark them confidently enough for a semi‑automated cleanup?

I’ll definitely make a full backup before touching anything, but I’d still love to know how much I can lean on digiKam before I start this daunting cleanup. I couldn’t bear losing original files over an overzealous duplicate deletion.

Thanks a ton for any insights, tips, or cautionary tales!

Howdy,

Running Digikam 9.0 (Flatpak install) on Ubuntu 24.04. I created a new collection of a directory full of Apple device image files, both HEIC and HEIF. Digikam can only create/display thumbnails of the HEIF files. All of the HEIC files are just green placeholder icons.

I checked the Digikam modules and the HEIF/HEIC module is present and at v9.0. I checked all of the heif and x265 related libs and plugins on the system and it seems like I have what I need and the versions are fairly current. (see below)

Does anyone have any ideas why the HEIF files display and thumbnail just fine but the HEIC files cannot be read? There are no file permissions issues. I can see basic file attributes like file size, date but the actual image data cannot be read or processed on the HEIC files.

Any help or suggestions are appreciated.

Ubuntu 24.04.4 LTS
Digikam 9.0 (Flatpak install)
libheif-dev/noble,now 1.19.5-3build1~noble
libheif-plugin-aomdec/noble,now 1.19.5-3build1~noble
libheif-plugin-aomenc/noble,now 1.19.5-3build1~noble
libheif-plugin-dav1d/noble,now 1.19.5-3build1~noble
libheif-plugin-ffmpegdec/noble,now 1.19.5-3build1~noble
libheif-plugin-j2kdec/noble,now 1.19.5-3build1~noble
libheif-plugin-j2kenc/noble,now 1.19.5-3build1~noble
libheif-plugin-jpegdec/noble,now 1.19.5-3build1~noble
libheif-plugin-jpegenc/noble,now 1.19.5-3build1~noble
libheif-plugin-kvazaar/noble,now 1.19.5-3build1~noble
libheif-plugin-libde265/noble,now 1.19.5-3build1~noble
libheif-plugin-rav1e/noble,now 1.19.5-3build1~noble
libheif-plugin-svtenc/noble,now 1.19.5-3build1~noble
libheif-plugin-x265/noble,now 1.19.5-3build1~noble
libheif-plugins-all/noble,now 1.19.5-3build1~noble
libheif1/noble,now 1.19.5-3build1~noble
libx265-199/noble,now 3.5-2build1
libx265-dev/noble,now 3.5-2build1

I have a rather large (65,000+) collection of photos. Many are older family photos of my kids and grandparents/cousins as I’ve been scanning all family photos when I visit relatives for several years now. I’ve used many DK features to clean up the meta data, added tags, locations, date taken, and FR for every extended family member.

I’d like to share what I have with mostly elderly cousins who are not the most technologically savvy people. Many are very confused/hesitant to click a link (a behavior I helped drill into their brains), which I can work past.

Anyway, I have OneDrive and all my photos are automatically synced between my desktop and the cloud. I know within DK I can sort and export to a newly created OneDrive folder, but that process is slow and doesn’t always seem to work. It would be easier to manage if there were links rather than copies / duplicates in folders if that’s possible.

I am not a Google or Apple fan. I actually use the OneDrive as it came with a MS Office license 1TB free. I’ve looked at NAS for other reasons but maybe that simplifies things.

I’m wondering what people do to allow others to see their collections. I’d love to be able to tell my cousin, “here’s all the photos of you and your sister that I have”. Let me know what you do/think, even if it’s rather unique. Maybe there’s a better way to do this that I’m not considering.

The student project advance well. See the blog post for details...

Hey,

I just realized that the face recognition is getting worse the more images I add to one person.
It also starts to recommend my wife for my "face".

Anyone else had this issue before?