Linux users and a new application for image processing

[Ronald M]

Why fight it all. Bite the bullet get a Mac and PS. A Mac mini will do for a start.

[tyrone.s]

Originally Posted by Ronald M

Why fight it all. Bite the bullet get a Mac and PS. A Mac mini will do for a start.

I smell a troll ...

Darktable looks OK. Certainly it aspires to be much more than either shotwell or what ever used to ship with ubuntu. Looks pretty excellent reallly (as in having lots of potential). Right now it does seem slow (Core 2 Duo 2.53 - 4 gig of ram) but it's an early release. Not sure if a Lightroom inspired UI is necessarily the way to go - but it seems to have a pretty OK sort of UI despite my opinion and a lot more power than Shotwell has.

Of late I've been happy enough using shotwell and doing all of my editing in Gimp (all scans, mostly fixing dust and neg scratches with clone and doing the odd bit of grain reduction using the G'MIC plugin). Shotwell is OK for a simple holder that allows me to simply upload my photos to picasaweb online etc and it does an OK job of that for me (i.e simple and I don't have to think too much about getting pics online). Honestly I'm not sure if I'd be better off dumping shotwell and just using folders to store my photos and edit in gimp from their as needed. But shotwell does offer the option of reverting to original if I stuff up - which can be handy.

To install darktable on my Ubuntu I typed this in the terminal:

# sudo add-apt-repository ppamjdebruijn/darktable-release^C

# sudo apt-get update

# sudo apt-get install darktable

(it's about 7 mb's to download).

At any rate I find Linux great for my photographic needs. Gimp does pretty much anything I want. Hugin is excellent for pano's when I want them (never seem to use my VC15 Heliar any more these days). Philosophically the freedom implicit to Linux is also valuable in itself.

An open source effort (evil slr: Pentax S1a with $16 Elicar 128 @ 5.6). Forgive the blown highlights - that's my scanning and use of sunny 16 and not Gimp's fault:



Cheers,

Tyrone

[Phil_F_NM]

Originally Posted by Ronald M

Why fight it all. Bite the bullet get a Mac and PS. A Mac mini will do for a start.

Why fight it all. Just go buy yourself an M9 or another M9 to compliment the one you already have.
Same issue here. Some of us prefer linux, that's why. I'm one. I definitely love the ability to have a fully working suite of programs and having paid only for the hardware and my time compiling.

As far as DT itself, it doesn't have any support for Kodak DCR files, which is kind of irksome but not that big of a deal. What I don't handle in DT, I still can work in UFRAW then export to GIMP.

Phil Forrest

[Mablo]

Originally Posted by Ronald M

Why fight it all. Bite the bullet get a Mac and PS. A Mac mini will do for a start.

I tried it. After two months I was ready to go back to Linux. I just couldn't stand OS X. I hated it so much. The Mac mini is now running Ubuntu and works nicely. I'm happy too.

[colyn]

Originally Posted by Ronald M

Why fight it all. Bite the bullet get a Mac and PS. A Mac mini will do for a start.

Been there...done that...I'm now back to Linux..

[ibcrewin]

I'm so glad I found this thread! I'm a long time windows user and started using ubuntu when it first came out. It ran waaay faster than windows on my pc, but it lacked some things I liked in windows. Looks like it's time for a revisit!

[colyn]

Originally Posted by ibcrewin

I'm so glad I found this thread! I'm a long time windows user and started using ubuntu when it first came out. It ran waaay faster than windows on my pc, but it lacked some things I liked in windows. Looks like it's time for a revisit!

Check out Linux Mint....streamlined version of Ubuntu...

[Proteus617]

I had been using Gimp for Widows but recently ditched it for PShop CS5 due to Gimps lack of 16bit support for greyscale. I found my B+W neg scans broke up pretty quickly at 8bit. What I like about Photoshop: The selection tools and content aware cloning and healing are miles ahead of Gimp. What I don't like: layer and mask management are byzantine in Pshop, intuitive in Gimp. As soon as Gimp gives me 16bit, I'm migrating back.

[RZetter]

How come nobody has mentioned Bibble 5(bibblelabs.com) yet? It may be propietary, but I'm also guessing it's the best RAW converter/DAM available for Linux. It has a great plugin and layers system, and is lightning fast due to high parallelism.

[pvdhaar]

Linux, isn't that some kind of penguin about which you can find a lot of information on the internet?

[Phil_F_NM]

There are not very many users of Bibble and it's a few hundred dollars. I think those factors feed themselves. Not too many people from whom to find some real user experience and the cost. At least that's kind of my take on it.
And the cost... It's not too much with regard to photography equipment or processing programs but in my mind if I'm going to spend a few hundred on one program, that's a bit of opportunity lost from spending that money on Lightroom or the whole Adobe suite and running in a VM.

Personally, I use Linux because it's stable, 100% virus free (at my lowly level) and doesn't cost anything. I was broke when I moved from WinXP to Linux but I needed a few applications that I couldn't afford in XP. Years later I'm just very comfortable with Linux and hope that user interest continues to spread.

What programs like Darktable do is enable folks to have a Lightroom type workflow with non-destructive editing and history but for free. That opens up a lot of potentialfor users and could photographic interest to folks that simply can't afford a suite of programs.

Phil Forrest

[HLing]

I'm just at the beginning with wet printing, but have been a linux user for about 5 years now and have pretty much every computer at home dual booting "Windoze" and Linux, or Mac & Linux. Having always used Windows for personal use and Mac for professional audio editing I've know both sides, slightly liking Mac more. Linux though, blew both away! So, thanks for the info about Darktable!

[Phil_F_NM]

Darktable 1.0 release candidate is out.

http://www.darktable.org/

I've been using 0.9.3 for quite some time on both my laptop and desktop and I've been quite happy with the vast improvement in workflow and tools. The tool suite is amazing now. Enough so that I have to use GIMP far less.

What I really need to get going is to network both computers and automatically archive my raw & .xml files between the two and permanently store them on my 4TB RAID.

I digress. DT has repos on on the major distros and there is even a build for Mac OS.
I'm really happy that we are about to have a real professional caliber alternative to Lightroom. If Adobe won't port it, that's ok, we make our own.

I've noticed that between 0.7 and 0.9.3 that the raw conversion has gotten much better. The UI is still a bit of a pain with the weird sykmbols representing tools but I'm starting to remember what is what. I'm hoping that we can get an alternative to cornerfix for the extreme wides like the 21mm SA, CV 15mm and 12mm, ZM 15mm and the others that cause the red edge problem. It's not far off though.

Phil Forrest

[Rico]

Interesting. DT has canned features, applied in fixed order, to polish your image. Meanwhile, Gimp has general processing flexibility, most importantly via Layers. I do like the 32 bits per channel of DT (the 8 bits of Gimp is just crippling ).

[johnamazement]

If you're having trouble finding scanner drivers under Linux, there's always VueScan.

[shadowfox]

Originally Posted by Phil_F_NM

Darktable 1.0 release candidate is out.

http://www.darktable.org/

I've been using 0.9.3 for quite some time on both my laptop and desktop and I've been quite happy with the vast improvement in workflow and tools. The tool suite is amazing now. Enough so that I have to use GIMP far less.

What I really need to get going is to network both computers and automatically archive my raw & .xml files between the two and permanently store them on my 4TB RAID.

I digress. DT has repos on on the major distros and there is even a build for Mac OS.
I'm really happy that we are about to have a real professional caliber alternative to Lightroom. If Adobe won't port it, that's ok, we make our own.

I've noticed that between 0.7 and 0.9.3 that the raw conversion has gotten much better. The UI is still a bit of a pain with the weird sykmbols representing tools but I'm starting to remember what is what. I'm hoping that we can get an alternative to cornerfix for the extreme wides like the 21mm SA, CV 15mm and 12mm, ZM 15mm and the others that cause the red edge problem. It's not far off though.

Phil Forrest

I have been using DarkTable for a while also.
I just learned the create preset functionality, which is pretty intuitive for a change, in a way it's easier to use than Lighroom in this regard.

I agree that the symbols are too similar and cryptic, they should have an option to display the name of the symbols for people who just started to use the program. Once you've learned what is what, the tools are quite powerful.

For high-quality RAW conversion, I use Photivo. I use Ubuntu, so installation is straightforward using the ppa sources and the apt-get system.

I think Linux has matured in every conceivable direction, including photo management and post-processing.

I don't miss Apple at all (used it for 3 years at work).

[jesterthejedi]

Don't forget about Imagemagick, its all command line, but its the fastest at doing batch jobs and you can write simple scripts that do complex jobs.

[jarski]

anyone care to comment how are noise reduction algorithms in DT ?

[DrTebi]

@jarski: From what I can tell, noise reduction is achieved through the "equalizer" module. I have only worked with DT for a shot while, and used it on film scans. The noise reduction seems to work quite well, try the presets first for a starting point.

Overall I have to say darktable is a really promising application. I myself, like many others in this thread, have converted to Linux after many years of Windows and a bit of Mac OSX. I feel free and safe on Linux, to sum it up in one sentence... but I don't intend to start a "which platform is better" debate--I have my reasons, you may have other preferences.

Anyway, darktable is still quite new, and not as solid as Rawtherapee, but there are a lot of very useful modules that makes it stand out.

I have used darktable for a short while on my scanned medium format negs, which I scan at 16bit with 3200dpi, resulting in files of about 300 MB. Of course it takes a few seconds to open such a large file, but once open, darktable handles these and image processing really fast and smooth--impressive (my computer is an Intel Core 2 Quad 2.66Ghz with 8GB RAM, great but not the latest anymore...).

Here are some of the features of darktable that are worth pointing out:

• free
• non-destructive image editing
• virutal image copies
• 39 image processing modules (stable version of 3/2012)
• most modules allow you to save your settings as presets
• most modules have a "blend" option, applicable with the usual "darken/lighten/multiply" etc. options including opacity
• zone system module
• highpass module
• histogram, which allows you to adjust the exposure interactively
• export module for file/flickr/picasa/email/web gallery with size and quality options bulit-in
• simple but useful metadata and tag editor
• global "styles" can be applied to images, similar to Rawtherapee's profiles

There are many more modules, but these are the most interesting for my purposes.

If you are running linux, you should really give this a try.

Below a "before" and "after" sample, edited with darktable:

before:


after:

[cabbiinc]

If you liked the thought of Bibble 5 but didn't like the price tag Corel has bought the company, reworked the program (not necessarily better, just more Corelish), renamed it AfterShot Pro and lowered the price tag quite a bit. And yes it works with Linux, Mac, and PC.

http://www.corel.com/corel/product/i...id=prod4670071
You can usually find Corel coupon codes as well.

There's even a forum. http://forum.corel.com/EN/viewforum.php?f=90

[Phil_F_NM]

Darktable 1.0.3 was released a few days ago.

http://www.darktable.org/2012/04/dar...-0-1-released/

This is fantastic because for anyone new to DT the interface has become a lot more friendly than the one prior to DT RC-1.0. The UI is better now but after using DT for a while now I have to re-learn the position of tools.
A lot of bugs have been wrung out and if your dependencies are all up to date then a few new cameras' RAW formats have been added, namely the X100.
The *only* issue I have with this latest build is that vertical images are letterboxed inside the single-image viewer instead of fully filling the viewing area. Upon zooming in the letterbox still remains so this is annoying. Aside from that, I'm having success with it and can't wait 'till my new (to me) X100 arrives in a few days.

Phil Forrest

[DrTebi]

Originally Posted by shadowfox

[...]

For high-quality RAW conversion, I use Photivo. I use Ubuntu, so installation is straightforward using the ppa sources and the apt-get system.

[...]

I have just played around with Photivo for a bit, and it's quite impressive. The amount of plugins (or filters, modules or whatever you want to call it) is just huge. However, using the favorites functionality one can quickly sort out the most useful ones.

The default raw conversion is quite nice, and the "Wiener" sharpening algorithm works also great.

There is also a "resize for web" plugin to render the image in smaller sizes, or one can just save the preview size of the image as is (as opposed to the 100% image).

And what's most likable is that it seems quite stable. It opened my Ricoh GXR DNG files with no problems, and also a 520 MB medium format slide scan. Nice

Here a little sample from the Ricoh GXR:

[ruby.monkey]

Originally Posted by Phil_F_NM

Darktable 1.0.3 was released a few days ago.

http://www.darktable.org/2012/04/dar...-0-1-released/

This is fantastic because for anyone new to DT the interface has become a lot more friendly than the one prior to DT RC-1.0. The UI is better now but after using DT for a while now I have to re-learn the position of tools.
A lot of bugs have been wrung out and if your dependencies are all up to date then a few new cameras' RAW formats have been added, namely the X100.
The *only* issue I have with this latest build is that vertical images are letterboxed inside the single-image viewer instead of fully filling the viewing area. Upon zooming in the letterbox still remains so this is annoying. Aside from that, I'm having success with it and can't wait 'till my new (to me) X100 arrives in a few days.

Phil Forrest

Don't even think of using darktable on a 32-bit OS for images larger than about 12Mpx. It'll export perhaps half-a-dozen images before dying silently.

[shadowfox]

Originally Posted by DrTebi

I have just played around with Photivo for a bit, and it's quite impressive. The amount of plugins (or filters, modules or whatever you want to call it) is just huge. However, using the favorites functionality one can quickly sort out the most useful ones.

The default raw conversion is quite nice, and the "Wiener" sharpening algorithm works also great.

There is also a "resize for web" plugin to render the image in smaller sizes, or one can just save the preview size of the image as is (as opposed to the 100% image).

And what's most likable is that it seems quite stable. It opened my Ricoh GXR DNG files with no problems, and also a 520 MB medium format slide scan. Nice

Here a little sample from the Ricoh GXR:

Nice, usually I can pick out some purple or stray hotpixel on a metallic grey surface like that.

Glad you get a good use out of Photivo.

[DrTebi]

Originally Posted by shadowfox

Nice, usually I can pick out some purple or stray hotpixel on a metallic grey surface like that.

Glad you get a good use out of Photivo.

I think I know what you mean... however, the watch is made from titanium, so it's not shiny like polished steel...

Nevertheless, I haven't noticed any stray or hot pixels from my Ricoh images yet...