Poll: Do You Use F-Spot?

By , Published November 24, 2009

Last week at the Ubuntu Developer Summit, plans were hatched for what was to be included in Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx. header

GIMPs removal from the default applications line-up in Lucid was down to many of its features over-lapping with those of F-Spot. It was felt that the GIMP was, ultimately, a professional application and €œMr Casual User€ probably never touched it. Bang on the money, really.

However many of you seemed miffed that F-Spot had been left unscathed despite the fact, and I’m generalising here, most of you said you install something different to manage/edit your photos.

Now, decisions on application inclusion are based on a number of factors and the number one most important thing for the Ubuntu team is including usable, user-friendly applications that grandma and grandpa would use.

Does F-Spot really fit this bill? Are there better alternatives? Do you use it? Do you like using it?

Do you use F-Spot?








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  • http://www.book-hunter.blogspot.com/ rio2000

    sometime i am using f-spot – but i prefer use gimp :)

  • Igor

    Digikam, even using Gnome as main WM…

  • Anonymous

    Gthumb + Gimp. F-spot is not fast enough

  • http://stevelove.org Steve Love

    I’ve honestly never given F-Spot a try. I stick with Picasa because it’s really good and I got familiar with it on Windows.

    • bob

      Picasa for photo management and simple corrections. (95% of my needs)
      GIMP for photo editing (5%)

      • archiesteel

        Same here. Picasa is really good – too bad they don’t update their Linux client anymore, but since it used WINE anyway the Windows version works just fine.

        • Anonymous

          I use F-Spot to import, and Picasa for lots of basic editing.. One simple reason.. F-Spot will import my Video’s I record on my Canon Camera. Picasa doesnt’ seem to want to in linux (but does fine in windows)

          • Anonymous

            I thought f-spot couldn’t import video’s. I must be missing something

  • http://www.kilobitspersecond.com/ Jay

    I avoided using F-Spot for a long time, but it surprised me. I love being able to tag by people and places; I love the thumbnails it creates for people tags; I love that you can do basic photo editing tasks without launching the GIMP behemoth; I love that it has a plugin system; I love that it integrates into GNOME so well — I’ve really got my fingers crossed for F-Spot. There was a face recognition plugin in development some years ago (http://code.google.com/p/facedetect-f-spot/). I feel like if that became a reality, people would quickly change their minds about F-Spot.

    I haven’t used GThumb, Shotwell, or Digikam extensively, but in my opinion the first two are too simple, and Digikam has too many retouching features to really be called a Photo Browser — not to mention that it’s a KDE app. And Picasa’s not integrated seamlessly enough into the desktop to be made default (and is closed-source).

    Contrary to the premise of this post — and the poll results, it seems — I am really rooting for F-Spot. I think it fills its role perfectly, for the widest range of users. Some people might prefer the speed of GThumb, others might prefer the power of Digikam, but those people are always free to install whatever they want. F-Spot does what you need from a photo browser, nothing less, nothing more. With enough love from its developers — which could be discouraged by F-Spot’s removal from Ubuntu — it could very easily rival iPhoto and Picasa.

    In matters like these, people need to stop asking themselves what their favorite program is, and instead ask what the best program is for the greatest number of people.

    • http://omgubuntu.co.uk/ d0od

      I’m not sold either way on F-Spot. I’ve tried it and found it to be okay. If it had better editing tools i would probably really like it.

      I’m currently reviewing shotwell, fotoxx, f-spot, picasa and gthumb for a post laster this week and F-Spot’s editing is probably bottom of the rung out of these. I think it could certainly use some work.

      It is a great application, very well integrated and i’m looking forward to what the Lucid papercuts can do to improve it…. (whoops! spoilt my next post, now!)

      • http://www.kilobitspersecond.com/ Jay

        I’m sure we can all agree that at some point, a person’s photo retouching needs will outgrow those of anything that could properly be called a “photo browsing” app. When you cross that line you’ve just got to open up GIMP (or whatever). But I think a large majority of the photo retouching done by the average person is red-eye removal, brightness, and simple color correction. Anything more than that should not be expected of an application meant to catalog your photos. Remember the Linux philosophy: do one thing and do it well.

        • http://omgubuntu.co.uk/ d0od

          I agree that those are what the “average joe” uses F-Spot for in term of editing – in fact most users. I just feel theose tools, quite frankly, suck when compared to other applications which offer the same functions.I wasn’t implying that i’m looking for a magic scissor tool to be implemented or for F-Spot to get super charged colour levels – i just don’t think the “one thing & do it well” argument stands up for F-Spot because you’re either a manager or you’re more – and F-Spot is clearly designed to be “more” hence the plugin extensibility etc – it just needs to work on it’s current crop of editing tools to make them competitive with alternatives After all, which app doesn’t want to be the best? I’m really looking forward to how Shotwell develops. It is clearly, once it gets the features planned, the next default photo manager/editor for Ubuntu. No doubt.

          • http://www.kilobitspersecond.com/ Jay

            Wow — why so certain?

  • Anonymous

    I like F-spot, I like the feature for upload photos to Picasa, Flickr,… but he have many bugs ( https://bugs.launchpad.net/f-spot/+bugs ) to be the main photo manager of Ubuntu
    They have to improve it or change by another application like Shotwell or something like this.

  • http://orkutcidio.deliriocoletivo.org Peterson Espaçoporto

    I’d install Digikam even though I use gnome, but it says it needs to install konqueror as well. Then I gave up; I can live without a photo manager (all of my files are neatly organised in my folders)

  • http://scribu.net/ scribu

    I think the poll could have been structured like this:

    1) Yes, I use it for photo management & editing

    2) I use it for photo management

    3) I use it for photo editing

    4) I don’t use it at all

    My answer would then be 4).

  • Rico

    I always install Picasa for photo management and do all the editing in gimp/ufraw/rawtherapee

  • Mohan

    I have a lot of photos from my trips so I do use it, but I wish I can view my photos via albums as with this just all the photos are there.

  • sven

    on windows i loved “faststone image viewer”. a very quick and nice tool. i personaly don’t need any import or database functions…i simply have a good sortet folder structure!

    it seems that on linux there is no feature-rich image viewer without these damn “database and import-overhead”. :(

    • http://skalkainprogress.onsugar.com skalka

      gThumb as not database at all, it’s perfect if you have a good folder structure.

  • http://www.facebook.com/zachariah.a.thomas Zachariah Alexander Thomas

    Digikam myself also when I use a photo manager, KDE4/Qt4 integrates with GTK+ wonderfully. I mean I’m even using Kwin as my window manager.
    When I just want to import photo’s I’ll use GThumb for speed.

  • http://www.displayblock.com/ Matt

    I used F-Spot for awhile, but it always seemed to have issues losing access to some photos. I’d have to re-import the images, which sometimes caused duplicates and it was a big mess.
    I’ve since switched to Flickr to manage photos.

    As far as viewing and editing photos on the computer I use gThumb and EOG.

  • Anonymous

    I use F-Spot for photo management. I have more than 5k pictures and F-Spot works great as a basic retouching tool, tag and comment editor, and exporting tool for internet related services. I NEVER use Gimp for regular photo edition. Gimp is way too powerful and complex for basic photo work. I only use Gimp for more advanced jobs. I’ts just a pity that F-Spot still has bugs (and that is normal since it’s far from being a 1.0 app)

    About the convenience of removing Gimp from the default installation, I do certainly not agree since it is one of those applications that make a difference. However, if keeping The Gimp would mean removing F-Spot then remove Gimp. F-Spot is probably a better fit for the casual user.

  • http://buranen.info/ Derek Buranen

    Picasa and DigiKam both have directory monitoring! They don’t make multiple copies of imported photos and it just looks at your pictures folder. If you download from flickr or picasa or some other online web album to your pictures folder, it just shows up in Picasa and Digikam.

    F-Spot doesn’t… like iPhoto. Fail.

    • Anonymous

      Agreed. Thats my number 1 gripe with f-spot, my 2nd is that it can’t import video’s (but i think this has been added?). I have multiple users on my machine (me and my wife) and we cannot share the same photo album in f-spot, so gthumb and picasa always come to the rescue.

  • http://enakaidyo.blogspot.com Happy Pessimist

    I remove f-spot exactly after finishing every install. Quite useless. I install picasa or gthumb instead, depending on the mood. I believe they should ditch f-spot in lucid and keep Gimp, which may not be used often, but is undeniably a good tool, whereas f-spot is not. Most people remove it, the people behind ubuntu must have noticed that, or else we’re turning on the submission of used packages for nothing

  • Anonymous

    picasa does da job for me, i wish google makes it more debian friendly!

  • http://www.1916home.net/ 1916home

    Ive used Photoshop in Wine for the past three years, but am slowly teaching myself GIMP and Inkscape. There are some awesome video tutorial sites out there for both.

    For managing photos, I use Picasa becuase thats what I know, but have been starting to use F-spot more and more, becuase it can do many basic fixes like red eye, cropping, and uploading to Picasaweb or Flicker. I dont know why, but Fspot doesnt feel very user friendly like Picasa does, well… you can say the same about Photoshop VS. GIMP too.

  • Jeff Wooliscroft

    I use digiKam, even if it doesn’t integrate as nicely into Gnome as some other tools do. It comes with showFoto which lets me do quick and dirty edits (and some of its tools are quite stunning); when my needs go beyond what showFoto can deliver, then I load up GIMP.

    The point, though, is it’s not exactly a hardship to install digiKam and I wouldn’t expect Ubuntu to be shipped with Gnome *and* a non-native photo-management package. Dropping GIMP, on the other hand, does seem a backward move – it does a very different job and has to be one of the most popular pieces of desktop software available at the moment. In fact, doesn’t GIMP get touted all the time as a fine example of free software?

    • http://www.kilobitspersecond.com/ Jay

      I love GIMP, and use it almost daily, but I completely understand why it’s not necessary from a default install. It’s still there in the Software Center for you to grab if you need it. Although people who do perform intensive graphics editing wind up using something like Photoshop or GIMP, the average person doesn’t have much of a use for either of those programs.

      On the other hand, people do expect something like a simple “paint” program to be on their computer by default. I don’t know if there’s anything like that for GNOME, or if Canonical would even consider including it, but I think it would be a smart thing to do.

  • http://www.mackonkiemis.info/ Andrius

    Prefer Picasa – simple to use for managing and simple editing. Use Digikam when in need to find some video (picasa does not suport video in linux).
    Fspot s*cks: does not track changes in photo folders, creates multiple image copies, has limited effects, no video support…

  • Anonymous

    I used F-Spot to organize all my content and exported to external programs for editing unless the fix was simple enough that f-spot could do it. I found no real detriment to my workflow. However since, I’ve moved to Bibble 5 so I don’t utilize F-Spot anymore.

    I will say that F-Spot could benefit from more features and a speed increase. It’s not perfect, but not useless either.

  • http://Brachypelma.org Chi

    I use Picasa, unfortunately Google didn’t come out with a new version to Linux last time, but I hope they will change their minds soon…

  • http://www.jellykernel.org Jelly Kernel

    Picasa for importing and minor tweaks (60% of the job). Lightroom on virtualbox for editing.

  • Wouter

    I hop Shotwell or Solang can replace it soon.

  • florian

    I’m currenty using picasa. Main reason is, that it watches my Pictures folder for changes. I would consider switching to ANY better integrated (and free App), however F-Spot and shotwell don’t support folder watching atm

  • Anonymous

    OMG! PICASA!

  • Anonymous

    Seems like F-Spot really isn’t doing that awesome so far.

  • Kris H.

    For me the GIMP does entirely different things than F-Spot does. I only use F-Spot to transfer the pictures from my digicam to the computer. After that I don’t touch it again. I use GIMP constantly to view and modify my photos, and create digital art. I don’t think I’m in some elite group, either.

    • http://www.1916home.net/ 1916home

      I have been using f-spot for weeks now to transfer files to the computer and the other uses too like fixing red eye and so on. But, I’ll ask everyone this… why use a program to transfer photos and videos, when its really faster to just pop the SD card into the computer, go into nautilus and copy and paste the chip contents into a folder on your computer? Even while still in Windows years ago I would create a folder like “2009″ in my Photos folder, then a sub folder like “2009-11-24″ and maybe add a “-my_birthday” (2009-11-24-my_birthday) to clarify things. Copy the SD contents right in there. I started doing this with Picasa, and did it with fspot…. but again, why go through the hassle of all that when you can do it yourself without any program… just a file manager like nautilus or dolphin.

  • http://www.1916home.net/ 1916home

    I’m liking DigiKam, but dont see any simple edit features like redeye or cropping. Is there? Am I just missing the menu option someplace?

  • Fred
  • http://interesting.co.nz Benjamin Humphrey

    Tried F-Spot once, useless. I have around 25,000 photos, about half of which are RAW images and when F-Spot forced me import them all, havoc ensued. It was going to take a few days to import all my images, if it didn’t crash all the time!

    I now use digiKam, unfortunately it’s KDE and I use Gnome, but it does a good job. I don’t really use GIMP for image editing, the UI is too confusing for me after learning Photoshop for years through school.

  • Anonymous

    The reason why I like F-Spot is that it’s very easy for exporting photos to Picassa Web. Now I could just use Picassa to do the job, but it doesn’t blend with the gnome very well. Also, I learned that Picassa is no longer in development for linux users :(

  • pt

    They shouldn’t be using Mono on multimedia applications. F-Spot is so slow.
    Picasa which uses wine is so much faster and smoother.

    The best multimedia applications on Windows dont use .Net for this very reason.

  • Mantra

    No Mono on my machine.
    That means no Tomboy, no F-Spot and no Banshee (when that becomes the default)

  • rmotters

    I use F-spot, because it suits my needs. I have roughly 10000 images, and don’t find a problem.

    I used Picasa, but the updates are few and far between, and it didn’t upload properly to Gallery2. I have tried G-thumb, Digikam and others, but always seem to come back to F-spot. Don’t think I will switch again, cause it is just too much to re-import and tag all the images.

    Basically, I import, tag the photos into Albums and do basic editing on them and upload them to my website.

    I have tried to use GIMP to fix photos in the past, but I found it too complicated. I actually paid a professional service to fix a damaged photograph, after spending about 10 hours trying to get GIMP to work. All the menus are too confusing and it does not manage photos and upload photos to my website. So it is not much use to me.

  • zet

    no, i use gimp!!!

    I think it’s really stupid to remove gimp!

  • Mek

    I am using Gnome, but my photos feel much better in Digikam. One of the reasons is that f-spot enforces its own folder structure, once I got a few albums messed one with another, I decided I don’t like it.

    • rothchild

      Yeah, the impostition of a folder structure (and duplication of image files when it ‘imports’) are big issues for me. The tagging thing is quite good but sometimes it’s easier just to go to the folder you put it in!

  • http://ndrw.me AndrewNoNumbers

    I honestly don’t get the point of a photo manager. I manage my photos using plain old folders and edit them using a full-on editor like GIMP.

  • http://viaticus-rpg.co.cc/ Andrew

    I use the Gimp on a regular basis for everything from basic photo editing, to generating full artwork (not that im an artist or anything…just pretending to be one :p). I honestly don’t care for Fspot at all… I use gthumb for all my image viewing, image management is handled by standard folder arrangement. It’s kinda disappointing that the Gimp won’t be in the default install anymore all the same… I mean sure, anybody that actually wants/needs it can install it with a few clicks, but bye-bye goes the recognition of the Gimp project to new users who DON’T know that it’s there…and that’s the real loss in my opinion. I’ve found when introducing new people to Ubuntu, they’re always really impressed that they can have all this great software, including such a image-editing app right from the bat. Even if they never/rarely use it, they know that power is there, and it was free. IMHO, it takes some of the flash out of the first impression of Ubuntu. Thats all me though…

    I feel similarly about the decision to remove ekiga / pidgin and replace them with empathy…but thats not a discussion for this area

  • gimpy

    I actually really like f-spot, it can be a bit sluggish, especially navigating using the filmstrip, but the interface is much better than g-thumb, for the most part.
    I find f-spot’s editing options a bit basic, but they’d be fine for most casual users, those of us who use layers and curves for basic photo manipulation can always use the edit in gimp option anyway. If i could link together xcf, raw and ufraw settings versions under a single image entry, it would be even better.
    F-spot is certainly not perfect, but come on, picasa? Yes it’s much slicker when it comes to in-viewer editing, but the interface is just plain weird and it’s basically a windows app in wine.

  • Oppy

    I’ve never spent much time on F-Spot. I was using Gimp on Windows for image editing so continued with that. The hassle I ran into just to get my photos into F-Spot (despite the fact they were already on the computer) put me off immediately. If we’re losing GIMP to save space (which may be sensible, although it’s one of the premium examples of open source software) then why not F-Spot as well.

  • http://www.manishsinha.net Manish Sinha

    Every time I have to crop or resize an image, F-Spot always drop from my mind. Usually GIMP is the thing I open un-intentionally.

    I miss Paint.NET on Linux :(

  • http://skalkainprogress.onsugar.com skalka

    Actually f-spot is the first app that I remove when I do a fresh install of Ubuntu.

  • http://erland.yiid.com/ Erland

    DigiKam, even though I use Gnome not KDE. But I’m a professional photographer, so I wouldn’t expect that to reflect in the default applications. That said, I’ve always found F-Spot crap.

  • Anonymous

    As a photo-hobbyist I love GIMP and I use it every day.
    As a photo-hobbyist I hate f-spot and I uninstall it ASAP.

    As a “gnomic” pov, I think that gnome is a set of simple and clean applications.
    GIMP and f-spot are not simple and clean applications.

    • Anonymous

      I don’t understand the appeal of a photo manager like F-spot. Isn’t that what I have directories/Nautilus for?

      Moreover, I want my organizational structure to be cross-platform/flexible/etc.

      That means no database on the client. The simple solution for photo and music organization both is just to use directories and keep things organized. Simple, clean, no extra software required.

  • stoffe

    F-Spot is only in there due to a heavy lobby campaign. If crashes and usability entered into the overall judgement it would be out on its ears in seconds.

    • http://www.kilobitspersecond.com/ Jay

      Who is perpetrating this lobby campaign?

  • Quan

    Every time I launch F-Spot and import images, it gets no responding. I prefer gThumb because it’s fast (ugly, however)

    • http://omgubuntu.co.uk/ d0od

      gThumb has been rewritten from scratch and looks every bit as sublime as other applications now. For some reaosn they used to have icons baked into the “binary” so you couldn’t change them – i never understood the reason for that because they looked like BeOS icons…Anyway be sure to take a look at lots of shiny pics of the new gThumb @ http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2009/11/new-gthumb-linux-plugins-f-spot-killer.html