Shotwell (software) explained

Shotwell is an image organizer designed to provide personal photo management for the GNOME desktop environment. In 2010, it replaced F-Spot as the standard image tool for several GNOME-based Linux distributions, including Fedora in version 13^[4] and Ubuntu in its 10.10 Maverick Meerkat release.^[5]

In 2019, Shotwell was the target of a predatory lawsuit by Rothschild Patent Imaging against the GNOME Foundation claiming a patent infringement related to the use of WiFi to transfer photographic images. The case was resolved through agreement in 2020 and the patent itself invalidated in 2022 following a legal challenge from the open source development community.^{[6] [7]}

Features

Shotwell can import photos and videos from a digital camera directly. Shotwell automatically groups photos and videos by date, and supports tagging. Its image editing features allow users to straighten, crop, eliminate red eye, and adjust levels and color balance. It also features an auto "enhance" option that will attempt to guess appropriate levels for the image.

Shotwell allows users to publish their images and videos to Flickr, Piwigo,^[8] and YouTube. Shotwell can also set the desktop wallpaper.

Technical information

The Yorba Foundation wrote Shotwell in the Vala programming language. It imports photos using the libgphoto2 library, similar to other image-organizers such as F-Spot and gThumb.

See also

• digiKam – digital photo manager by KDE
• gThumb
• Comparison of image viewers

Notes and References

1. Web site: Picking Up Shotwell Development . lists.launchpad.net . 2016-03-12.
2. Web site: Taking over . 2018-06-06 . 2016-04-15 . Georg . Jens.
3. Web site: New development preview - Shotwell ~0.31.6~ 0.31.7 . 7 December 2022 . 3 December 2022 . Georg . Jens.
4. Web site: 4. Changes in Fedora for Desktop Users. docs.fedoraproject.org. Fedora Project. 2016-03-12. 2016-03-04. https://web.archive.org/web/20160304215324/http://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/Fedora/13/html/Release_Notes/sect-Release_Notes-Changes_in_Fedora_for_Desktop_Users.html. dead.
5. Web site: See Ya F-Spot! Shotwell to be default Image App in Ubuntu 10.10. Sneddon. Joey-Elijah. 2010-05-13. OMG! Ubuntu!. en-US. 2016-03-12.
6. Book: Bain . Malcolm . Smith . P McCoy . Brock . Amanada . Open source law, policy and practice . 2nd . October 2022 . Chapter 10: Patents and the defensive response . 213–255 . Oxford University Press . Oxford, United Kingdom . 10.1093/oso/9780198862345.003.0010 . 978-0-19-886234-5 . 2023-01-01.
7. Web site: OSI Staff . GNOME patent troll stripped of patent rights . 28 April 2022 . Voices of Open Source . USA . 2022-12-25.
8. Web site: guillaumev/piwigoshotwell. GitHub. 2016-03-12.