Arch Linux

ben-arch

Member

Registered: 2005-12-17

Posts: 115

Digital Photography and Linux

Hi.

Since moving to Arch from Windows, I have c2 main problems remaining :

1.  Printing - my Oki C3200n is not supported under Linux. But we will leave that for now.

2.  Digital photography processing - my main problem.

     Under Windows I was using Silkypix as RAW converter and jpeg editor, and the free Faststone Viewr for picture management (downloading from the camera, basic viewing etc.)
     What are my (native Linux) option under Linux (and specificaly Arch64) ?
     2.1 Picture manager/downloader (Faststone replacement) ? (I have no idea here)
     2.2 Raw handling ? I'm aware of RawTherapee and used it a bit under Windows, but id does suffer from an awful/horrible interface.
     2.3 Jpeg editing ? I'm aware of the GIMP, but have no experience with it.

Any input will be appreciated.
Ben

adamlau

Member

Registered: 2009-01-30

Posts: 418

Re: Digital Photography and Linux

I use mtpaint and GIMP to manage my dig photo workflow.

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fukawi2

Ex-Administratorino

From: .vic.au

Registered: 2007-09-28

Posts: 6,224

Website

Re: Digital Photography and Linux

2.1 Picture manager/downloader (Faststone replacement) ? (I have no idea here)

Perhaps FSpot?

2.2 Raw handling ? I'm aware of RawTherapee and used it a bit under Windows, but id does suffer from an awful/horrible interface.

ufraw works for me with Canon CR2 files. There is support for a lot of other RAW formats too.

2.3 Jpeg editing ? I'm aware of the GIMP, but have no experience with it.

GIMP is an excellent editor. I never really used Photoshop, so I didn't have conversion problems of having to learn the differences, but I still had to learn to use it and I didn't find it that difficult.

Last edited by fukawi2 (2009-04-21 07:02:16)

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Wra!th

Member

Registered: 2009-03-31

Posts: 342

Re: Digital Photography and Linux

not sure about ufraw but both other suggestions should suit you quite well. I have astronomer friends that use Linux to process their high definition images. They use Gimp so there must be something there. I use it myself but not at an "expert" level. I use Photoshop too on OSX and some things might be a bit harder/slower/offhand with Gimp, but switching to Linux makes that worth the price.
Photoshop 7.0 runs really well under WINE..you could look into that also

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Damnshock

Member

From: Barcelona

Registered: 2006-09-13

Posts: 414

Re: Digital Photography and Linux

Give a try to digikam for managing a photo collection

About the other two questions... digikam comes with an editor too (not as powerrfull as gimp, but still an editor).

Don't really know about RAW handling: maybe ufraw?

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ben-arch

Member

Registered: 2005-12-17

Posts: 115

Re: Digital Photography and Linux

@Damnshock - seems you solved ALL my digital photography peobelms.

Took a look at a digikam, and it seems like it can handle ALL my current/immediate needs.  And yes .. it does include RAW capabilities.

Thanks
Ben

toad

Member

From: if only I knew

Registered: 2008-12-22

Posts: 1,775

Website

Re: Digital Photography and Linux

Is there anything as powerful as digikam elsewhere? My wife's got a mac and their photo suite stinks compared to digikam...

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hbekel

Member

Registered: 2008-10-04

Posts: 311

Re: Digital Photography and Linux

There are also some commandline tools you may want to take a look at:

- imagemagick -- powerful suite of tools for general image manipulation (conversion, composition, much more)
- jpegtran, cjpeg, djpeg -- basic tools for jpeg files, including lossless transformations (part of the libjpeg package)
- exiftool -- read/write/modify meta information for a wide range of file/metadata formats
- ufraw-batch -- batch processing of raw files (included in gimp-ufraw)

Also, Geeqie is an excellent general purpose image viewer that can easily be configured to run user defined commands on selections of images. You can use it in combination with the above tools to brew your own customized solutions rather than relying on a monolithic tool like digikam or fspot.

If you're using Gimp to edit files converted from RAW files, be aware that gimp currently does not support editing images with color depths greater than 8 bits per channel, which somewhat limits the usefulness of using RAW. Gimp will support this once it's GEGL integration is complete, along with non-destructive editing (e.g. "adjustment layers").

There's other editors around which support greater color depths, like Krita (from the kde office suite), or FilmGimp (a fork of an early version of gimp, very powerful but the interface is somewhat dated)

Damnshock

Member

From: Barcelona

Registered: 2006-09-13

Posts: 414

Re: Digital Photography and Linux

Is there anything as powerful as digikam elsewhere? My wife's got a mac and their photo suite stinks compared to digikam...

AFAIK digikam can run under OSX

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ben-arch

Member

Registered: 2005-12-17

Posts: 115

Re: Digital Photography and Linux

Thanks all.

Installed digiKam and tried Krita - seems to me that's all I need for now.

ben

broch

Banned

From: L.A. California

Registered: 2006-11-13

Posts: 975

Re: Digital Photography and Linux

maybe too late, maybe no..

1) gimp (include RAW processing) with a lot of useful plugins (tone mapping, adaptive contrast, if you want HDR (fake), LOMO, chromatic aberration correction and more)
2) digikam (include RAW viewing)
3) lightzone (similar to Adobe's LR) - commercial though
4) rawstudio