Sign in / up

back to article Pictures of Ubuntu: Linux's best photo shots at Windows and Mac

When it comes to photo applications it seems Windows and Mac have things nailed down, with plenty of individual applications and several packages packed with tons of features. In this second look at how media and storage applications for Linux, and particularly Ubuntu, compare, I found the Gnome camp has plenty of options too …

COMMENTS

House rules Send corrections
This topic is closed for new posts.

Page:

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      May I suggest...

      May I suggest that you seriously look at VMware, rather than the hassle of dual booting? I run linux on my Vista workstation under VMware workstation, without problem. While my server runs centos and vmware server with win 2003 server (and various other VMs) on top. General performance is a little degraded, but graphics performance is fine these days (although not for CAD or games!) Also, most vmware software is free these days.

      0 0
    2. JEDIDIAH
      Reply Icon
      Linux

      Not everything is freebies on Linux.

      > Why? Because there really is no substitute for Lightroom

      No. You've just not looked very hard.

      The subject of commercial software on Linux is something that El Reg should take up sometime.

      2 2
      1. Paul Docherty
        Reply Icon
        Stop

        So what is it then?

        Rather than just insulting the commenter, why not tell us what the alternative/substitutes are?

        I very much agree with McBread - Lightroom is lightyears ahead of any Linux-based solution I've tried so far. The killer feature isn't the RAW converter (which is pretty good), or the speed exporting (which is very good), but the workflow / UI combination. I frequently deal with thousands of RAW files per batch, so speed/quality of processing is key. The negotiable factor is price. I'd pay £££ to get a quality linux-based solution.

        0 0
      2. Martin Owens
        Reply Icon

        Commercial

        Most software on Ubuntu is commercial, nothing about it is a charity you know. It's just so far investment has been made with time instead of money.

        God I hate it when people conflate commercial with proprietary. It makes my job as a _paid_ foss developer harder.

        2 1
      3. Anonymous Coward
        Reply Icon
        Stop

        Uh, no.

        If you haven't looked very hard, or don't actually know what you're doing, then it seems like there are replacements to run on Linux.

        Sadly, there's nothing anywhere close to Aperture or Lightroom running natively on Linux. There's Bibble, which is bugged to fuck, and less well-supported than most free software, and there's UFRaw/Raw Therapee which are very basic (but pretty decent at what they do, since they use dcraw, which does a good job demosaicing- certainly compared to Bibble).

        Once you've tried to get a working ArgyllCMS running too, and drivers for your colour probe of choice, and got your monitor set up, you're lumbered either with having not enough features (ufraw/RT 2.xx) or having all the cool wavelet sharpening/NR/LCE, but being mostly lumbered with bits per channel* in GIMP.

        Even if you adjust curves and dynamic range, and sort out your shadow/highlight detail and import from UFRaw into GIMP, the results will never be nearly as good as a skilled Lightroom/Aperture could get in a much shorter time.

        As someone who has been using Linux since before there were distros, who has supported it for a living, and who makes a little on the side from photography, or training people in digital photography- it pains me that the above is true, but it is. You can only think that the Linux alternatives are viable if you haven't really learned enough to understand the limitations yet.

        * Yes, I know that there's GEGL, but that's not ready for prime time yet.

        1 1
  2. Indian-Art
    Pint

    Google Picasa works very well on Ubuntu

    Although I find Picasa simple, easy and fun, I'm still looking forward to Shotwell.

    Its good to have Options.

    0 0
  3. Dazed and Confused

    I hate to say but

    for XP M$ had some useful tools, the slide show option, the view a folder as filmstrip option and you could download some phototools from their website to do things like resize sets of images or all the ones in a folder.

    W7 is a massive step backwards for photos.

    Just to look at pictures on Linux I still like gqview.

    (PS 24bit colour is also known as 8bit colour depth, 8 for red, 8 for green and 8 for blue. 24bits for each would be nice for things that vary gently, like the sky or black stream trains)

    0 0
  4. John Sanders

    Irfanview works like a charm

    In Linux using current wine. Irfanview is an image viewer with some extra abilities like quality resizing, little painting, optimized saves for the web etc.

    It is simple, fast and quite complete.

    I know it is a bit weird to run irfanview on Linux, but I find it to be a much more competent image viewer than what it is provided on Ubuntu.

    1 0
  5. Jethro Q. Bunn Whackett Buzzard Stubble and Boot Walrustitty
    Linux

    Just accept

    that Digikam is the dog's nuts regardless that it is built on kde.

    Surely, with all the interoperability that these two desktops have they should put the best app out there....and the best app is Digikam.

    Just accept :)

    3 2
    1. Old Marcus
      Reply Icon

      Yeah, but...

      Digikam requires KDE and the kitchen sink to be installed in a GNOME environment. I don't want all the extra software that I don't need. If it only required Qt, then I'd go for it.

      0 1
    2. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      FAIL

      Sure

      If you like slow, badly-written software, and you're a happy snapper who puts platform above decent pictures.

      0 2
      1. Old Marcus
        Reply Icon

        Um...

        The pictures should come out the same regardless of the software they go through.

        0 0
  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    And yet another vote for...

    Digikam! I did a brief look on You Tube here - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWd2Vl9OLwM

    0 0
  7. Cunningly Linguistic
    Thumb Down

    Sorry

    but I don't see anything here that would come close to enticing me away from the Adobe stable on either Win7x64 or OS/X.

    @Grifter - 24 bit is actually only 8 bit x 3, i.e. RGB, whereas 16 per colour equates to 48 bit in marketing speak and let's not forget that latest variants of PS will handle 32bit per colour.

    0 1
    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Who needs it?

      8 bit is still fine for what I'm doing. Once the image has been tuned through RAW conversion or used for HDR, I'm happy to work in 8 bit. I've yet to come across a web site that sells posters or wall art that takes other than Jpeg, or a magazine/book submission house that wanted other than 8 bit Tiff.

      If you still want 16 bit, I've read it is coming in the next full release of Gimp soon, so that's a non-argument really.

      With free support tutorial series like, "Meet the Gimp," who needs PS? The one thing that drove me away from PS was that every time I updated my camera body over the last few years, I needed to upgrade my PS version 'cause my camera RAW format wasn't supported, and wouldn't be supported.

      That is one of the main problems with software and MS; whenever there is a major version change, all the other software had to be (realistically) upgraded as well and that means more money. Now that Microsoft are sounding the death knell of XP and are returning to a new OS version every couple of years, people are going to find their wallets emptied again by the cost of all the upgrades.

      I was in a group of magazine readers picked for a challenge a while ago and the editor was with us. I asked why the magazine didn't run any tutorials for Gimp, or even acknowledge its existence. I never really got an answer; but it didn't take much working out. If they ran articles on free systems, Adobe would likely pull their advertising. So the reader never gets to know about the great stuff that's out there.

      No thank you; I'll happily stick with, and support, open source because it keeps me running and I can spend my money on better lenses and get a better image right in the camera when I push the shutter button ... something that doesn't need as much PS as it used to :-)

      I'm doing a talk in my camera club in September; part of it is to show people what is out there, for free.

      2 2
      1. Chemist
        Reply Icon

        Re : Who needs it?

        Agree. I upgraded my Canon 300D to a very new 18 megapixel 550D in early May and within a couple of days I had gathered enough updated software to process RAW images.

        I have in the past processed RAW images to 16 bit/channel tiff but generally if the exposure is good then there is just a lot of empty 'space' round the histogram.

        1 1
      2. viet 1
        Reply Icon
        Flame

        It's all about the future.

        "8 bit is still fine for what I'm doing. Once the image has been tuned through RAW conversion or used for HDR, I'm happy to work in 8 bit. I've yet to come across a web site that sells posters or wall art that takes other than Jpeg, or a magazine/book submission house that wanted other than 8 bit Tiff."

        Absolutely true for current technologies and resolutions, but consider the evolutions of the display medium. Until recently, we had paper with a contrast of 1:50 at best and inks covering maybe 25% of the srgb gamut. The contrast on paper is almost a given, but already ink makers are making incredible progress in colours rendition. The situation of displays is even wilder. 1st lcds had poor gamut and poor contrast, and 6bits/channel colours. Today, high end lcds cover AdobeRGB gamut with contrast of 1:5000. Technology previews exist with contrast in excess of 1:30.000. Real life contrast (outside the basement ;-) ) is over 1:150.000, so there's room to improve toward 'real life' imaging.

        How the pictures we carefully edit today are going to perform tomorrow ? What technologies not currently available will we have to re-edit them in the future ? I can't answer that, but I'm not axing now my files of informations captured by my sensor just to archive in today's good enough containers.

        "If you still want 16 bit, I've read it is coming in the next full release of Gimp soon, so that's a non-argument really."

        It is because I'm taking my pictures today, and 16 bits Gimp is supposed to come "real soon now" since an awfully long time. They're still building the foundations, and they better be solid, because they've been stuck at this point for *YEARS*.

        1 2
        1. Chemist
          Reply Icon

          Re : It's all about the future.

          That's why I archive the RAW files - that's as future-proof as you can get.

          1 0
          1. viet 1
            Reply Icon
            Boffin

            Future proof...

            More than 90% of the burden to have a working gpl raw decoder is weighting solely on the shoulders of a single man, Dave Coffin.

            That's not future-proof in my books.

            2 2
            1. Chemist
              Reply Icon

              Re : Future proof

              Open source - I know I've got a copy. That's as future-proof as I want.

              Great guy

              1 0
      3. Anonymous Coward
        Reply Icon
        FAIL

        Sigh.

        You may as well throw away spatial resolution as colour resolution. You simply don't know what you're doing.

        Digital lacks the latitude and dynamic range that film has. To get equally good results, you need to expand certain parts of the colourspace to get decent dynamic range sometimes. If you do that with a fraction of the colour resolution, then you get banding.

        That's before we even consider stuff like black body calculations, and hell the fun of highlight/shadow detail recovery.

        1 1
  8. Curmudgeonly Old Fool
    Pint

    @Derek Bradshaw - Another vote for Digikam

    There isn't a specific version of Digikam for Gnome but if you are using Ubuntu you can install it to the Gnome environment from the standard repositories. The necessary KDE libraries that it needs to run are installed along with Digikam.

    I add my vote for Digikam and, yes, I do use it under Gnome.

    1 0
  9. Anonymous Coward
    Flame

    Linux versus Mac/Windows...

    Sorry, but I fail to understand why this article totally ignores anything KDE. Sorry Ubuntu/Gnome fanboys, but ignoring KDE and KDE applications like DigiKam is really silly. Glad to see a few responses trying to put that right. Use the best (Linux) tool for the job! Although I use Mandriva/KDE as my desktop, I also install the Gnome libraries. who cares, it is still Linux based and all my applications just works! Best of both worlds!

    ps. So now I have donned my flame proof undies ;-)

    4 1
  10. zenkaon
    Flame

    KDE Vs Gnome flame war

    sigh - any excuse to relight the tinder box that is the KDE Vs gnome flame war.

    My opinion is that KDE3 Digikam rocks, anything KDE4 is tainted, and that's why the momentum is now solidly with gnome until they fsck it all up with gnome shell. I tried Digikam (KDE4) on the latest ubuntu and it was so so so slow and full of bloat. KDE4 Digikam reminds me of the disaster that happened to amarok.

    I've never liked f-spot and am personally happy using gthumb for my photos. I don't need anything to manage them for me, I'll design my own directory schema thank you very much

    2 1
  11. Mark Greenwood
    Pirate

    Digikam...

    DIgikam is light years ahead of everything else on Linux, but it's still light years behind Lightroom in terms of useability. Lightroom opens my RAW images and gets the colours more or less spot on. Changes to settings are reflected in the image in a flash. Digikam opens my RAW images in about 2 minutes per image, gets the colours completely wrong, and then many settings have to be applied using a 'Try' button which takes a very long time. And that's without enabling colour management, which slows everything down even more. And where's the non-destructive editing?

    That's not to say I'd rather use any of the other apps on Linux. In terms of speed Picasa is way out in front, but that laughs at my RAW files. I like Digikam - it's certainly the best photo manager for Linux. But to regard it as an alternative to Lightroom is to demonstrate that you prefer sitting in front of a computer watching progress bars to actually taking photos.

    1 0
    1. viet 1
      Reply Icon

      Comparison is not reason.

      "DIgikam is light years ahead of everything else on Linux, but it's still light years behind Lightroom in terms of useability."

      Agreed.

      "Lightroom opens my RAW images and gets the colours more or less spot on." ... "Digikam opens my RAW images in about 2 minutes per image, gets the colours completely wrong, and then many settings have to be applied using a 'Try' button which takes a very long time."

      As of colours, LR comes packaged with many cameras ICM by default. Digikam expects you supply your own camera ICM. Either you're lucky to find a good one floating on internet, either you need to build one yourself with Argyll. Don't blame on Digikam what results from commercial bonds between Apple and camera manufacturers. It's a sad state of affairs cameras are not provided with accurate ICM like they used to be.

      Speed : agreed, digikam is slow, and the preview button is annoying. Hope this will be addressed soon.

      "And that's without enabling colour management, which slows everything down even more"

      C'mon, is your computer still steam powered ? I've got a 2007 AMD X2-64 3800+, and there's no measurable difference induced by colour management.

      "And where's the non-destructive editing?"

      In next release along with face detection for auto-tagging of persons. Or so says the roadmap. No excuse, I know. I hope they really make it work.

      "to regard it as an alternative to Lightroom is to demonstrate that you prefer sitting in front of a computer watching progress bars to actually taking photos."

      Allow at least some of us to have principles we stand for. All my personal used softwares are GPL or free licensed. Until Apple changes a couple of policies, I won't have any at home. But then again, I'm not a professional, just a conscious amateur. I take around 10 - 20 pics a day, and I work on 1 or 2 at best, which I consider 'good enough'. Others are archived as is.

      For a pro, LR is certainly the way to go. For others, it depends on the load.

      1 0
      1. vincent himpe
        Reply Icon

        My principles

        say that lightroom is Adobe... not Apple ...

        And as far as principles go mine is:: use the best tool for the job at hand.

        0 0
      2. Mark Greenwood
        Reply Icon

        It's not about principles

        For the record, I agree with your principle of using GPL wherever possible. It's something I try to adhere to myself. But the creative process involved in this kind of photo editing requires small adjustments, made incrementally - at least for me it does - adjust,look,adjust,look, repeat until happy. If every adjustment takes 60 seconds or more I lose the flow. I need the preview to keep up with my slider adjustments - that way I can see what it's doing and more importantly judge exactly when it's done enough. It's not that I think Lightroom is "the only way to go", it's just that I find the GPL alternatives simply don't allow me to do the job I need to do.

        All that said, following this article I looked at RawTherapee last night. The new version looks very good, very good indeed. And it's blisteringly fast. I think I'll start using that.

        0 0
  12. Rob Dobs

    Do Your HOMEWORK!!

    F-Spot, Picasa, DigiKam, and maybe future releases of Spotwell seem to fit the bill of intended for mass use. GIMP does not really belong in this discussion, other than a mention. Most people just want to have a digital photo album and maybe remove some red eye. FSpot seems GREAT at this job.

    Really this 2nd Ubuntu article seems MUCH weaker than the first. I know its summer and all but where is the journalistic inquiry?

    Missing are:

    inclusion of Digikam (any discussion on this topic would result in that keyword showing up and to omit it is an oversight).

    comparison of how the programs actually manage your photo files. For a article on photo managers for Ubuntu, I am still left not know how any of these programs actually manage my photos. Some of them like F-Spot, import them all into a new chronological directory. FSpot also seems to make two copies of a photo when you you remove red-eye, one changed, one original. Where are these files stored? If I import my photos into all of these programs, where on the drive will I find them? What directory should be backed up?

    Photo management: how do you view and browse through the photo album?

    F-Spot has a time-slider, used for browsing through the photos. For a typical family that gets out the camera on vacations or birthdays and holidays, this makes it pretty easy to browse through your photos.

    More Screen shots of the various menus, photo album managers, picture editing pages etc, would be useful no?

    Complaints aside, I am really glad you are doing these articles, and look forward to the next. Good Work!

    1 0
  13. Bob Gateaux
    Stop

    Why have to be Linux?

    Article misleads us as if customer must have Linux to do pictures.

    We can use the free software on Windows without our needs of Linux.

    On most Windows we will already have installed the folder called "Accessories". If not then it can be got on the CD as custom option to tick checkbox on in installers.

    Once we have Accessories we can use applicaiton called "mspaint.exe" which can be found on the hard disks and also on the Start Menu in Accessories (All Programs). Here we then have the free software for editing our files.

    If we have no need for edit then many won't realise simple way of dragging picture to Internet Explorer 8 (which also has come free of charges) in order to examine it closely.

    My camera comes with installer for Windows to let it transfer the images and use option tool for the viewing but I don't need it as I have the aboves.

    0 5
    1. heyrick Silver badge
      Reply Icon
      WTF?

      @ Bob Gateaux

      "If we have no need for edit then many won't realise simple way of dragging picture to Internet Explorer 8 (which also has come free of charges) in order to examine it closely."

      WTF are you doing using IE8 to look at a picture? Can't you just right-click it and choose "Preview"?

      0 0
  14. Damon Lynch
    Linux

    Why Lightroom?

    Bibble Pro works very well indeed, and for some years now has had features built-in (like one click lens correction) that Adobe is beginning to catch up on. Furthermore, Bibble is much faster, and it's much cheaper to use year in year out (no need to send money to Adobe every 1.5 years).

    0 0
  15. James Hughes 1

    8 vs 16 bit/channel and other stuff

    Many many years ago I was one of the engineers working on a Windows package called Satori - we were taking on Adobe in the Paint area. Although (we thought) we had better UI, better memory requirements (it was resolution independent and used way less memory that Photoshop), better paint features, 16 bit processing (took a week to modify the code to work in 16 bit...how long for the GIMP? C++ and colours implemented as classes, so just needed to add a 16 bit colour class and some file handling for the 16 bit formats). I even wrote an article for some broadcast magazine on the benefits of 16 bit processing before it was a twinkle in Adobe's eyes.

    We failed because we couldn't persuade Adobe users to change, although the package itself was used on various Hollywood movies for matte painting, was faster, had better paint and vectors tools, better layer management. It was missing some features that Photoshop had, but the ones it did have were way better. Linux apps have the same problem - an entrenched user base with attitudes that are very difficult to change.

    Which reminds me - must try Satori under Wine -should work...and I still have all the source code - I wonder if I could port it to Linux.....

    1 0
    1. Chemist
      Reply Icon

      Re : 8 vs 16 bit/channel and other stuff →

      It's not difficult to generate 16 bit/channel using dcraw or ufraw, alter the exposure if necessary and then set levels and save as 8 bit/channel. For most purposes it seems overkill

      1 0
      1. Anonymous Coward
        Reply Icon
        Anonymous Coward

        It isn't if you have decent tools

        ..as it often becomes apparent that as you start adjusting things, that you could get more range, or more detail. Using the convert and edit workflow means going back to the start. Also, editing 8 bit colour gives horrid bandy skies.

        1 1
  16. Jamie Kitson

    Lightzone for Linux Isn't Free

    It's £73.47.

    https://www.lightcrafts.com/store/lightzone-store/

    0 0
  17. Anonymous Coward
    Flame

    Avoid Bibble

    It is buggy and support is horrible.

    Since the (two years late) 5.0, it has become less and less reliable. The 5.1 series segfaults and bombs out on a lot of machines trying to open requesters (had it happen on 32 and 64 bit linux).

    The highlight clipping on Canon waws is dreadful (Raw Therapee produces better images), the heal/clone stuff is totally screwed (you get random image corruption).

    The lens correction feature rarely manages to select the right lens from a list- even when it is supported. This is amazingly basic, but has been broken since 5.xx. That's before we even get on to the catalogue management- one of the most important things about professional grade digital workflow. Bibble's tendency to fall over while importing, corrupt its own database, lose edits and whatever else isn't something that I would accept from free software, much less something that I paid this much for.

    It's horrible. It has been unworkable and broken for months- you have to go back to before they added cloning and healing (which are really basic features to be missing) to find a version that's stable on linux.

    Personally, I got fed up. Most things are possible on Bibble, if you're prepared to use a tonne of workoutrounds and cludges, and package up some skanky old plugin to compensate for basic features that are missing (e.g. local contrast enhancement). When 5.1x came out, and it started crashing like a mofo on my Linux boxes, I gave up and bought Lightroom 3.

    Yeah, so I can no longer process in Linux. However, it's a damn sight quicker to boot into windows, and get good results in a few minutes with no crashes with lightroom, than wrestle for ages will the buggy and unreliable mess that is Bibble 5.

    It's a shame, Bibble 4 was a lot more reliable- but obviously don't support modern cameras.

    1 0
  18. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Why?

    Why is it that Linux developers seem to give the strangest names for their software. Yeah, I'm looking for image software for Linux so the name Gimp makes all the sense in the world.

    And it's all like that!

    0 0
    1. Peter Gathercole Silver badge
      Reply Icon

      GIMP makes perfect sense.

      It is an acronym, and stands for Gnu Image Manipulation Program. I agree it's not very intuitive, but I'm not sure that I would immediately identify Lightbox as an image manipulation program. I associate lightboxes with tracing and copying, and also viewing X-rays, although I do know that you can use them with positive image (slide) photographic film.

      The reason why they go for strange names is mainly because most of the good and obvious names have already been trademarked. If you are a FOSS developer, especially if you are doing it in your own time, the last thing you need is a CEASE AND DESIST notice from a lawyer. It is also popular to either put an acronym in, especially if it is self-referential (like GNU itself), or a G or K to illustrate whether it is built primarily for a GNU or KDE environment. X used to be popular to indicate an X-Windows program. Sorry for that. I guess it's a geek thing.

      The ones I cannot really get my head around are things like AmaroK, or Brasero, Audacity (OK this one is probably some form of pun), or even Evolution which look rather random, but I suspect that you will see instances of this in free/shareware on any platform.

      0 0
  19. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    Fanboi alert!

    While trying to find a cure for the repeated catalogue-related crashes that I am getting from Bibble, I just visited their horrid fanboi-infested forum.

    Brace yourselves for tonnes of fanboi drivel that makes Jobs fans look well-informed and grounded in reality. Someone posted a url for this story comments page there.

    "Cheers"

    1 0

Page:

This topic is closed for new posts.

Other stories you might like