Rotate, crop and adjust

These are the only edits that change pixels, and only when you ask.

Rotate and flip

The rotate button in the viewer, [ and ], or Rotate in the selection bar for many photos.

• JPEG: turned without loss, in the compressed data, as digiKam's lossless rotation does. Nothing is decoded or re-encoded.
• Other formats (PNG, TIFF, WebP, HEIC, RAW): the orientation flag is changed instead, in digiKam's database, the sidecar and, where possible, the file.

Face boxes turn with the picture.

Crop

Viewer › rotate button › Crop…: drag a rectangle, adjust its corners, and Crop.

• JPEG: cropped without loss. The edges snap to the 8 or 16 pixel blocks JPEG is made of, so the result can be a few pixels larger than drawn.
• PNG and TIFF: without loss. WebP: re-saved at high quality. HEIC: re-encoded at high quality, and the message says so.
• RAW files and videos are never rewritten.

Face boxes move with the crop; a face cropped out is removed, but the person's tag stays.

Adjust as a new version

Viewer › rotate button › Adjust: exposure, contrast, saturation, warmth, straighten and auto levels, previewed on screen. Saving renders a new file beside the original (name_v1.jpg), with the original's metadata, and links the two the way digiKam links versions. The original file is never changed.

Undo

Before each rotate or crop the file is backed up (the true original once, plus a copy from just before this edit). The message and the edit log offer Undo, which puts the file and its records back exactly.