Workflow and photographic packages

I've just started using a new package on the Linux box - DigiKam, which was bundled with open SuSE 11.3. Seems versatile but very slow handling after Irfanview's nimble simplicity and familiar interface - I cannot recommend Irfanview highly enough for those without complex image manipulation needs, and it's still my benchmark for easy high-throughput preparation.

While I've only spent a couple of evenings using it, I like the interface over GIMP for relative clarity and simplicity. However it is also quite complex under the skin, offering quite a lot of options and advanced tools for sophisticated image manipulation.

The biggest downside is that it does seem terribly slow, taking 20sec+ to process some 8MPix images and even to acquire the images from the camera. The other issue is that workflow seems a bit lumpy, despite all the care that's gone in to providing thumbnails etc to help. We'll see if things become easier as familiarity increases - I do hope so, as it seems to do almost everything I could want (though I've not tried using layers with it yet).

It's also free and open source, and apparently available for the Mac. I shall have to try it here soon (when I've worked out how to install it!).