Photo Management / Image Viewers

A very good Photo Management software that i find to be great is digiKam. It has RAW Conversion capabilities but to be honest, i’m not impressed…..so we’ll stick to UFRaw for now and we will get more in depth in a series of tutorials.

Image viewers, uber known in the Linux comunity are F-Spot, Eye Of Gnome, ShowFoto(by the makers of digiKam) etc. but they all lack (or i didn’t find) the main characteristic of an image viewer….THE FILE BROWSER! They all import pictures in/from a folder and then yo can browse that folder, enhance the pictures, batch convert and so on.

But what if you already have like 20 folders of pictures and 50 subfolders, and you need to browse pictures, those programs are useless, and here it comes gthumb. IT HAS A FILE BROWSER!

WORKFLOW:

• If i have to browse/view multiple folders with pictures, i use gthumb.
• If i am working with only 1 folder (from a photo shoot maybe), i use digiKam.

This is what i use, all other programs are great too with pros and cons and i suggest you test them yourself. All the programs listed in this post can be installed on Ubuntu from the Ubuntu Software Center (you can install for other Linux distributions via the proprietary Install Application).

RAW Conversion

First thing, do you shoot in RAW ?!! No?! So you better start right now!!!

A RAW image is the uncompressed image that your camera can get as opposed to shooting in JPEG, this format being compressed and you automatically get some cut in quality.

PROS:

• you get an image with all the data your camera see at the moment of the shot, UNCOMPRESSED
• it’s the Heaven of computer editing ground because you get to touch all the “depths” of the image

CONS:

• Really big file size, you need to bring more memory cards with you
• Depending on your camera and memory card, writing/reading can be slow

To see what i mean, shoot a series of pictures on both JPEG and RAW (shoot jpeg, switch to raw, shoot raw or simply set your camera to record JPEG+RAW on the same shot) and compare the images on your favorite photo management software.

In some cases, there will be NO or almost no difference, some say that if you don’t make big prints or you don’t need heavy photo editing you don’t need to shoot RAW but trust me, do some editing/color correction on a RAW and then on a JPEG….huh?! see the difference?! It’s like getting your car tuned by a mechanic or by the ol’ granny crossing the street.

ISSUE: One issue that i found is that for example on my Nikon D80, the preview on the LCD had nothing to do with the RAW image opened on the computer. The problem is because cameras do something a little weird, what you see on the LCD of your camera is the JPEG preview of your RAW image. This is not a really big problem because when you want to edit your RAW image, remember, you have ALL the information in an unaltered and uncompressed state.

OPTIONAL: You can download your Camera Color Profile and input that in your RAW conversion utility, a quick search on Google can fix you in no time.

RAW Conversion software: there are many Raw Conversion software out there that run on Linux but from what i’ve tested i find the good ol’ UFRaw or anything that uses the ufraw/dcraw engine to the be the best.

The one i use is RAWTherapee (dcraw engine)

Conclusion:

• shoot in RAW….it’s fuuuuun! 🙂
• buy more memory cards if necessary
• get your camera profile on the internet
• experiment with different RAW conversion software and see which works for you best. (I recommend UFRaw)
• SCIENCE FACT: RAW has more information then JPEG
• test editing a JPEG and a RAW and try to understand and see for yourself the difference and the benefits of shooting RAW.
• have fun

What you can do?

As a photographer, you can do on Linux, almost anything you do on other Operating Systems, plus the advantage of using free and open source  software.

If you know programming or you have someone who knows how to program, you can modify, extend, upgrade, make new tools in the software of your choice and why not, make your own Photo editing software.

What you can do ?

• import photos from your camera directly, through a card reader, USB drive, a scanner and even from your Facebook account.
• organize, sort, rate photos
• process all type of RAW files
• edit/enhance photos (using GIMP, pretty much and in some parts, the same way like in the mighty Photoshop)
• batch edit
• export photos in every format known to men, plus Picasa, Flickr, Facebook, iPod, Flash and HTML Galleries etc.
• print photos
• and even play Mortal Kombat with a friend in Vietnam 🙂