Nifty Photo Helpers

When it comes to working with photos, digiKam, GIMP, et al. are not the only fish in the sea. Plenty of other applications can prove to be useful additions to your photographic toolbox.

Entangle

Tethering your camera to a computer opens a whole new world of possibilities. You can instantly view captured photos on a large screen, trigger the camera remotely, and do time-lapse photography. Although applications like Rawstudio and Darktable support tethered shooting functionality, Entangle [1] makes a better choice as a dedicated tool for the job.

This application lets you control the camera and its settings via a simple and user-friendly interface. Because Entangle is light on resources, it can run even on modest hardware, so you can, for example, transform an old netbook into a tethered shooting station. Based on gPhoto2, Entangle can handle a wide range of cameras, but it's worth keeping in mind that the application only provides access to features supported by your specific camera model (Figure 1). Although you can use Entangle with a smartphone camera, the application is better suited for use with a decent DSLR camera.

[...]