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0001 .. meta:: 0002 :description: How to quickly start digiKam photo management program 0003 :keywords: digiKam, documentation, user manual, photo management, open source, free, learn, easy, first-run, scan, setup 0004 0005 .. metadata-placeholder 0006 0007 :authors: - digiKam Team 0008 0009 :license: see Credits and License page for details (https://docs.digikam.org/en/credits_license.html) 0010 0011 .. _quick_start: 0012 0013 Quick Start 0014 =========== 0015 0016 .. figure:: images/firstrun_step1.webp 0017 :alt: 0018 :align: center 0019 0020 digiKam First Run Assistant Welcome Page 0021 0022 When you start digiKam for the very first time it will ask you where you store your photographs. You can choose any local, remote or removable folder. Just type in the path name of a folder or click on the **Browse...** icon to select a folder from the dialog. 0023 0024 Later on you can add as many locations as you like - digiKam will add them to the album library. Look menu entry :menuselection:`Settings --> Configure digiKam --> Collections` 0025 0026 .. figure:: images/firstrun_step2.webp 0027 :alt: 0028 :align: center 0029 0030 digiKam First Run Assistant Collection Path 0031 0032 Then you have to specify a local folder that resides on your computer, in which the database will be stored. This path will be the same for all image folders. For details about the database type selection have a look at :ref:`the digiKam Database <database_intro>`. If you have a local installation and a collection of less than 100.000 photographs you may well keep the default setting (SQLite). 0033 0034 .. figure:: images/firstrun_step3.webp 0035 :alt: 0036 :align: center 0037 0038 digiKam First Run Assistant Database Setup 0039 0040 Next, you will have to choose the way you would like to open RAW files : either with automatic adjustments or with the digiKam RAW import tool to adjust corrections manually. 0041 If you don't know what is a RAW file or if your camera doesn't support RAW files, you should keep the default setting and skip this step. 0042 0043 .. figure:: images/firstrun_step4.webp 0044 :alt: 0045 :align: center 0046 0047 digiKam First Run Assistant Raw File Behavior 0048 0049 Metadata information storage may be important if you plan to work with another photo management program and you should choose **Add information to files**. But if you don't want to alter your pictures, keep the default setting: **Do nothing**. 0050 0051 .. figure:: images/firstrun_step5.webp 0052 :alt: 0053 :align: center 0054 0055 digiKam First Run Assistant Metadata Behavior 0056 0057 Then choose how digiKam will load images in preview mode and light table. Reduced version will load faster but at the cost of quality. 0058 0059 .. figure:: images/firstrun_step6.webp 0060 :alt: 0061 :align: center 0062 0063 digiKam First Run Assistant Preview Behavior 0064 0065 Now decide how digiKam will open images with a click of the right mouse button. Previews will load faster but you won't be able to make any corrections. 0066 0067 .. figure:: images/firstrun_step7.webp 0068 :alt: 0069 :align: center 0070 0071 digiKam First Run Assistant Open-File Behavior 0072 0073 Tooltips are a fast and easy way to display important information about a photograph, they popup as the mouse hovers over a thumbnail. Select **Use tooltip** if you want to display them. 0074 0075 .. figure:: images/firstrun_step8.webp 0076 :alt: 0077 :align: center 0078 0079 digiKam First Run Assistant Tooltips Behavior 0080 0081 Click on **Finish**, digiKam will now start to scan for photographs... 0082 0083 .. figure:: images/firstrun_step9.webp 0084 :alt: 0085 :align: center 0086 0087 digiKam First Run Assistant Last Page 0088 0089 Nothing really to select here. You can cancel or start the scan with **Finish**. None of the photographs will be altered. During folders parsing you can see a progress bar in the lower right corner like this: 0090 0091 .. figure:: images/scan_progress.webp 0092 :alt: 0093 :align: center 0094 0095 digiKam First Start Scan Process to Populate The Database 0096 0097 .. note:: 0098 0099 digiKam will recurse the library path to its full depth. You cannot exclude (prune) any sub-path unless you make that sub-path hidden. You have to do that from outside of digiKam by putting a dot in front of the sub-path. Later in digiKam configuration panel, you can list folders to exclude with the :ref:`Ignored Directories <ignored_directories>` settings. 0100 0101 As digiKam uses your folders on your hard disk directly, other applications like file managers can remove any albums outside a digiKam session. In this case digiKam will ask you at the next session whether all albums that have been removed from the digiKam photographs root path shall be deleted from albums database. If you want to move folders around and don't want to do that in digiKam, we suggest you do that while digiKam is running, so the database will be kept in sync and you do not lose any metadata. 0102 0103 When you use an existing folder of photographs as the Album Library folder, you will notice that the Albums in the Album list do not have photographs as their icons. You can change that by dragging any photograph in the Album onto the folder icon in the left sidebar and use this as the Album icon. See :ref:`the Album section <albums_view>` for details of how to change the Album icon. 0104 0105 digiKam uses a dedicated database to store thumbnails with an optimized wavelets compression algorithm (PGF). There is no way of hiding non-standard thumbnail folders from the **Albums** list. If you want to keep them you could create an Album Category that just contains all the thumbnail Folders and then view your Albums in :menuselection:`View --> Sort Albums --> By Category` order. See :ref:`the Album section <albums_view>` for more about Album Categories. 0106 0107 Once you have configured the Album Library Folder you can set up digiKam to work with your digital camera and then learn how to use :ref:`the Album section <albums_view>` and :ref:`the Tags section <tags_view>` to arrange your photograph Albums. 0108 0109 .. _firstrun_downloads: 0110 0111 .. important:: 0112 0113 At first run, digiKam will ask to download large files from Internet. These files are the deep-learning models used for the face management, red eyes removal, and the image quality sorting features. If you pass this stage without downloading files, these features will not work properly, but you can reload this file later using option from the :ref:`Setup/Miscs/System <system_settings>` dialog page. 0114 0115 .. figure:: images/models_downloader.webp 0116 :alt: 0117 :align: center 0118 0119 digiKam First Run Dialog to Download Deep-learning Model Files