digiKam is undoubtedly a powerful application for processing and managing your photos, but there are situations when you need something lighter. For example, I use my netbook when I'm on the move to off load photos from my camera and quickly go through them. For this, I use Geeqie, a lightweight image viewer that offers a slew of nifty features that make it an indispensable tool in my arsenal.

For starters, Geeqie is lightning fast, and its streamlined interface suits small screens perfectly. The application supports RAW files out of the box, courtesy of the UFRaw software. Better yet, Geeqie can batch convert RAW files to the JPEG format, which can come in rather handy if you want to share photos or upload them to photo sharing Web services like Flickr. To do this, select the RAW files you want and choose Edit | UFRaw Batch.

When viewing photos, you can enable the Image Overlay feature (Image | Image Overlay) which displays key info about the photo such as basic EXIF data and histogram. Using the View | Exif Window command (or the Ctrl+E keyboard shortcut), you can bring up the Metadata window which lets you view all EXIF data of the current photo.

Geeqie also sports a so-called Pan View (View | Pan View or Ctrl+J) which presents photos as a timeline, a calendar, or a folder hierarchy. As any image viewer worth its salt, Geeqie sports a slideshow feature and basic sorting capabilities. Besides that, Geeqie offers the nifty Marks feature designed to make it easier to sort and filter photos. Using this feature, you can assign up to six marks to each photo using appropriate commands from the Select menu. Alternatively, you can enable the Marks view (Select | Show Marks), and use the mouse to tick the appropriate check boxes next to each photo. You can then use the Select | Mark x | Filter mark command to display all photos containing a specific mark or marks.

Another useful feature is the extensive support for keyboard shortcuts. Using them you can control Geeqie without touching the mouse -- a boon when managing photos on a netbook or notebook.