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Have you looked at Bibble 5? It was just released in december, and the new interface and featureset is a drastic improvement over version 4. It's now pretty comparable to Lightroom and Aperture, and it runs natively on Linux as well as OSX and Windows. The developers focused heavily on workflow and speed issues, with an eye towards sensible keyboard shortcuts.

I'm not an employee, just a happy customer, even if I do get the evil eye from fellow nerds whenever I fire up a $200 closed-source app on my Slackware machine. :)

I use whatever works. For me, the nVidia closed source driver works better than any open source driver.

I struggled for months with ATI and cursed it every few minutes when it would screw up the text in my editor (closed source driver). By the time the open source driver came out I had already dumped the computer for one with an nVidia card because the drivers just work, out of the box. Intel wouldn't recognize the monitor, ATI would constantly screw up, if I could even configure it for the monitor, but the nVidia one just worked. They provide better features than any other driver I've seen, both open and closed source, and their performance has always been better.

Similarly with photo software. I use the Linux version of Bibble Pro because I have yet to find an open source equivalent that is anywhere close. Gimp doesn't come close in its RAW handling or ease of use for workflow processing.

I've tried to use ATI but I had way too many problems and terrible performance. Similarly with the open source Intel drivers which did not work at all.

Open Source has many benefits, but when it doesn't do what I need, I'll pay for something that does.

I write software, both open and closed source and am currently hacking on the Linux kernel. I think both have their place and neither side is perfect.

Picasa is Free. Free!=production ready in most cases. Yes, I know linux is free, air is free and so are many other things. However, most FREE software is not made with the professional, full time user in mind. Get over it and get a job. Photoshop isn't THAT expensive. Besides, there's apps like Bibble that are VERY reasonable

Damnit I took the troll bait. I'm done for.

Switching from Picasa to iPhoto was PAINFUL. So painful in fact, that I ditched it all together. I started using Bibble on the mac. It's much more powerful and way less limited. It's mostly designed for processing RAW photos, but works well with jpegs too. It does crash every six or seven seconds though.

I really miss the watch feature and the time-line feature. That was by far one of the coolest photo organization tools I've ever seen. I wish google would get on it and release Picasa for the mac too.

> Adobe isn't at fault for "not making a better encryption". It's not possible.

Because it's impossible - and Adobe should know that - then they're wasting money tilting at windmills. Adobe being a crap company for this reason - as well as other reasons, such as bloating their PDF reader into a huge intrusive monstrosity which bugs the user with pointless repeated requests for upgrades which offer nothing (except an even larger footprint), buying up great third party software and neutering it and the whole Sklyarov affair (which they only backed down on because it was making them look ridiculous) - is why I never consider their software. Bibble makes a perfect, cheap and superior replacement to their ever expanding (both footprint and price) Photoshop suite.

http://bibblelabs.com/

and EXIF.

If you're looking for a database-of-images that are tagged-in-the-database, then that's different.

http://www.bibblelabs.com/

PS: Bibble Pro is $130, the Bibble Lite, without batch processing etc, is, oh, Less(tm)... :)

Best -- many pieces of proprietary software are technically superior to free software. If you value your freedom, you will say no to these too.

the few bits of proprietary software I run (after buying them) on my Linux box, notably BibblePro and Antidote are there because :
- I find them superior to the open/free equivalent and
- They don't lock me into anything since they don't create any proprietary format (except maybe the settings for the Bibble conversions, but that doesn't matter much since I have the original and the end results)

I wouldn't use software that lock my data into a proprietary format (like MS Office, especially when I don't have a need for its integrated features), but for some utilities and games I really don't have the slightest problem with it.

This kind of extremism reminds me of those people who wouldn't run X11 because it was for weenies and real users would make do with a VT100 and screen.

I'm all for freedom, have been running Linux and BSD for close to 15 years now and in my opinion there's room enough for everybody in the ecosystem.

If you're looking for a Color-managed photo editing program (especially RAW processing) on Linux then you might want to give Bibble a try. While it doesn't offer all the features of Photoshop it is an excellent photo processing application. And best of all it is Color-managed on Linux.

Full disclosure: I work for Bibble Labs.

I'm an amateur photographer as well and have always given up in frustration when using the Gimp and could never see processing dozens or hundreds of photos at a time with it. I have not played with Photoshop but will definitely look into it when it runs well under Wine, since I won't invest money in something that doesn't run well. Currently I use Bibble Professional for my workflow processing since it supports Linux natively and has good workflow support. I would also love to try Photoshop as well.

For me, Gimp isn't even useful for basic stuff since it can't handle the 12 or 14 bits per color my camera spits out for things like shadow recovery and whatnot. I also shudder at using it to process a batch of 1500 photos.

I've played with Picasa, but it's too limited for what I want and it currently does not support Nikon's updated raw format my camera uses.

While I have not used Photoshop I use a package available on Linux called Bibble to do my photo editing. I have tried Gimp and quickly gave up in frustration and found it far too limited for me to use. I need something that handles 12 and 14 bits per color properly for one, and I want something where I can quickly process dozens or hundreds of photos. The UI in Bibble makes photo processing a breeze, where I can make adjustments to multiple photos with only a few clicks to do things like adjusting "vibrance", contrast, curves, shadow recovery, white balance or fixing things like lens distortion or other things. I also love the fact that it never modifies the original raw or jpeg file and stores a corresponding file indicating all the changes that need to be made to the photo before exporting it.

Each time I've fired up Gimp I gave up in frustration over the UI and other limitations. I won't touch it for photos until some basic things are fixed (i.e. more than 8 bits per color).

I would love to use Photoshop and look forward to the result of Google's investment. I also would love it if Wine ran with Nikon Capture as well (it can't get past the installation phase).

While I love free software, I'm not so stuck up on it that I don't use commercial products instead if they are better or other closed source products. I also use Picasa, though mostly for organizing since it does not yet handle the new raw format my camera uses.

2. The GIMP only supports 8 bits per channel
...
Only item 2 above is a real showstopper

I agree with everything you said, but especially this. I can't consider GIMP seriously for editing my photos until it supports 16 bpc. Not that I'm all that great of a photographer, but that makes it even more important for me to not lose any detail in my prints.

Cinepaint supports 32 bpc, but it lacks most of the features that make GIMP 2 worth using; for the moment, Bibble is meeting my needs 90% of the time; noise ninja takes care of the most common editing that I'd normally use GIMP for. Still, I'm looking forward to the day when GIMP mainline supports 32 bpc; I still feel crippled by not having a decent photo editor on Linux.

--- SER

I've been using photoshop for about 10 years now and have become very proficient. I recently made the switch to linux. The only real application i havn't found a replacement for is photoshop. I have tried using GIMP but their are just too many problems with it.

Have you tried CinePaint aka FilmGIMP? I'll be getting into photography, well professionally I'm hoping, and because it would be a real stretch for me to afford Photoshop right now I'm been looking for a FOOS photo editor. Also as some have offered there are other editors available such as Bibble, Xara Xtreme, and Light Crafts. I'll start with CinePaint and work my way down 'til I find one that works for me, if I don't find one I guess I'll be stuck getting Photoshop. If I do what I'll do is buy an older version of PS from eBay and upgrade it. You can get PS pretty cheaply on eBay but you have to make sure what you get is eligible for upgrades and there's a Transfer of Ownership form filled out.

I own this book and I enjoyed it very much. Not only is the book well structured, a high quality printing process is used. In other words, the paper is nice, the pictures are in color and well done (not the case with all books). I own a few books on Gimp and this is one of my favorites. Perhaps I should note that Gimp is my only option because I use Linux. I also use Bibble to handle conversion from RAW. It has numerous features to handle the conversions in an efficient work flow for multiple photos. For many items, this is sufficient and I must only use Gimp for those rare items not easily supported in Bibble, like whitening teeth. http://www.bibblelabs.com/ The book targets photo manipulation, so it is not the best book if you want to create things such as icons. This is the first time that I have seen perspective correction demonstrated in a book. I also have a comment on the people that choose to comment. Why must mention of Gimp turn into rants and arguments related to Photoshop versus Gimp? This is silly and non-productive for reasons that are not worth stating.

It can't handle more than 8 bits per color, which is a serious limitation for me. Most, if not all, D-SLRs can save in a RAW format which typically stores more than 8 bits per color, often 12 to 14 bits. This preserves more detail in the shadows which can be brought out with the proper software. Similarly, it is best if at least some of the image processing can be done in the raw data before converting it to RGB. On a digital camera, a pixel is not RGB*, but red, green, or blue (or sometimes even a different color) and must be processed to find out the actual color of a pixel location. Photoshop and other professional packages are able to handle this just fine. I think Krita can also deal with this, though I haven't played with it much. The last time I used it it was too slow to be usable.

In the past I found Gimp's user interface rather awkward to use. I have not used Photoshop, but I do use Bibble Pro on Linux, which has excellent raw photo processing support and is great for workflow processing.

* Foveon makes a sensor where each pixel is RGB, but its light sensitivity is not very good and hence is not widely used in cameras.

http://www.bibblelabs.com/
and if you need to fix-up photos,
and are fed-up with the process-sabotage ( for this kind of work ) that The GIMP is,
then TRY the free demo
( which stops working after a few days,
so only install it when you're serious about trying it ).

It is DRASTICALLY quicker than The GIMP for working-with,
it includes a cut-down version of Noise Ninja
( at-least the demo I tried a couple of years ago included a cut-down version. . .
maybe the full-version is in it now. . .
but irregardless, I'm buying the full Pro version in a couple of weeks
to get-at my Canon G9 images camera-RAW ( .CR2 ) images. . . :)

Bibble rocks.

  : )

I'm running Bibble Pro and Antidote. Both commercial and proprietary, but certainly commercial (even available as boxed sets I think).

What is needed is a single, de-facto GUI widget kit that is ubiquitous across all distributions of Linux.

I found myself spending way too much time in VMware, so I ended up replacing my Thinkpad with a new Macbook. I still run Linux as my workstation at home and work, but I have my Powerbook wherever I go. Bottom Line, if your semi-serious about Photography, Linux is not there yet.

Bibble (runs on Win/Linux/Mac) includes Noise Ninja and has a host of other features. Lightning quick on raw formats too... One of the few bits of software that's actually worth paying for!

RAW's problem is it's a PITA to process. gphoto, etc for Linux sometimes deal with RAW, but others, like my model of the Pentax aren't even accomodated by Photoshop yet

Check out Bibble and Bibblepro from Bibble Labs. They're neither free nor Free, but they're reasonably-priced, excellent tools and they run on Windows, Mac and Linux (x86). I just looked and they support your camera. You should get the 15-day trial and see what you think.

BTW, I have no affiliation with Bibble Labs, other than being a very satisfied customer.

RAW's problem is it's a PITA to process. gphoto, etc for Linux sometimes deal with RAW, but others, like my model of the Pentax aren't even accomodated by Photoshop yet

Check out Bibble and Bibblepro from Bibble Labs. They're neither free nor Free, but they're reasonably-priced, excellent tools and they run on Windows, Mac and Linux (x86). I just looked and they support your camera. You should get the 15-day trial and see what you think.

BTW, I have no affiliation with Bibble Labs, other than being a very satisfied customer.

Theres actually a few options around.

The gimp has a few raw plugins - ufraw being my favourite... You get to make adjustments before it becomes 8bit per channel image

The current Version of Digikam (0.82) will convert Raw to 8 bits per pixel for editing. The soon to be released version (0.90) will convert raw files to 16bits per channel.
Digikam is an image management tool for linux along the lines of iPhoto or Picassa... It has basic editing features but if anything is a bit slow. also will do batch conversions

Speaking of which Picassa is a available for linux (beta) - I am only guessing that it also supports raw images.

On the commercial side there is support from Bibble labs http://www.bibblelabs.com/press/pr20060224-46.html (they make noise ninja - I don't know much else)

Thats just what I know about off the top of my head - most of the solutions I know of appart from Bibble labs use DCRaw a command line application to do the dirty work... and as such you are converting the Raw file to something else to work with. I believe that upsampling raw to 16 bits per channel will preserve quality (at the cost of some disk space) - generally I archive the originals in their raw format anyways... Even the workflow with the gimp is not to bad - (You get to do all the important adjustments before you downsample to 8 bits)

I used to use the GIMP with UFRaw and was pretty happy with it.

I recently bought a copy of Bibble though and I must say I was amazed. It's not that Bibble does anything you can't achieve with the GIMP + UFRaw + other Linux/UNIX tools. But I never realised quite how clunky my workflow before, and how much more streamlined it could have been.

Developing RAW files, removing dust spots, cropping and rotating and fixing the colour balance is now almost enjoyable, rather than just a job that needs doing.

bibble and bibblepro (my favorite)

Seconded. I use Bibble Pro on OSX and Linux (Fedora Core formerly 4 and 5, now on 6, and it runs on Windows, but i don't use it there). This is a product isn't worth the money that BibbleLabs asks for it; it's worth three times as much at least. Correction to the parent post: It's $130; if they raised the price to $500, I would pay it without blinking; it's that good at what it does. The licensing allows you to install the software on more than one OS so long as only the original purchaser uses the software and only on one machine at a time, which works fine by me. There isn't anything comparable on Linux. On OS X, there are many competitors; I've tried most of them, including Photoshop CS2 with Camera Raw, Aperture, iPhoto (yuck), each beta of Lightroom, and many others. Bibble is equal to or better than every alternative.

It's fast. It's multi-processor aware. It's extremely customizable. It's rock-steady stable (never crashed on me, ever).It's RAW processing engine is of very high quality, and it's highly tunable, though there are plenty of one-click default optimizers that are surprisingly accurate (decent auto-leveling, integrated NoiseNinja, Perfectly Clear). The batch queuing as referenced in the parent is extremely flexible to help you find the workflow that works best for you. Like to work within one window? Bibble does that. Do you want separate windows? Bibble does that; it's a highly customizable interface. The fact that you can run it on every major OS is gravy (it's a universal binary on OSX, unlike Photoshop).

One caveat: it does not work with DNG, due to some very well argued philosophical reasons.

I've processed thousands of images with it (Pentax PEF is mostly what I work with, and some NEFs). Along with VMWare Workstation, it's the finest commercial software I have used on Linux, though I use it principally on a PowerBook with OSX. I'm glad to hear there is progress being made on the open-source front for working with RAW on Linux, but for right now and likely a long time to come, Bibble me, baby.

There's rawstudio or cinepaint. Ufraw I guess too which can act as a stand-alone editor and also has a gimp plugin. If you don't mind closed-source then there is Bibble too.

Rawstudio is looking quite promising for such an early bit of software.

http://www.bibblelabs.com/products/bibble/specs.ht ml

Bibble is better, and was started by one guy in his garage that wanted some decent SW for the raw files coming off of his digital camera. At least four developers have touched it over the years...i.e. small, smart and agile development team. I think they're pretty cool. The principal developer/entrepreneur Eric Hyman gladly does the support, and he's a very nice guy besides. The SW is QT based and they do extensive testing on Mac (their professional customer base), Linux (where they get many helpful comments) and Windows. They have a freeware version. The whole series of changes you make to an image are stored as an .XML file, which lets you edit it and script a systematic image-processing stream to apply to whole shoots once you pointy-clicky on a representative image to see what works. Reputed to have the best white-balance algorithm in the business. They're usually the first to decode a new obfuscated raw file format for new cameras, too.

For doing batch processing of photos I have been using Bibble Pro for Linux lately. I like it since it has good support for the raw format of my SLR and has a lot of batch processing features. For example, it's easy to select a group of 50 photos and adjust the white balance, or use the one click lens distortion fix on all my photos. Best of all, it runs under Linux. It gives me the best of both worlds. It gives me batch processing as well as the ability to individually make changes to each picture. I.e. I can bring out the shadows in a group of pictures, then straighten a couple of them if the camera was crooked and crop them as needed. It also does everything at 16 bits per color.

Now, granted, it does not run on the command line, but it easily lets me select a source and target directory to batch process as well as letting me select individual pictures. I can't really compare it with ImageMagick since I haven't used it directly.

-Aaron

Uh, no. If you have a real digital camera and you want REAL control over your images, you use RAW. That TIFF file has been processed by the camera already. The RAW file is unprocessed -- working with RAW is the digital equivalent of working in a darkroom with a negative -- you have lots of choices in how to process the image. Though I do agree with you that there needs to be a RAW standard. Check out OpenRAW. I should point out that one piece of software that's incredibly similar to the Aperture is Bibble, which is also a non-distructive RAW workflow application. I find the interface to be kind of clunky, but Bibble works well. MUCH cheaper than Aperture, and also available for Windows and Linux in addition to Mac. (Full disclosure: the creator of Bibble is my girlfriend's brother-in-law.)

This has nothing to do with adobe and photoshop.

This has everything to do with companies like Bibble Labs, Phase One, iView Multimedia who all make 'raw workflow' software.

For those of you who are new, or don't care, or don't use RAW workflow it's about the post processing that most enthusiast, semi-pro, and pros doin once the pictures are taken and before they're edited in Photoshop (if needed).

Photoshop has something included that has been showing up in the last few versions, they call it adobe camera raw but it is rasterized out of camera RAW and then you edit it like you would any other image.

What Aperture, and the others let you do is 'pre-process' your image to do lossless corrections to things such as white balance, color cast, cropping, etc. If you make any of these types of changes inside photoshop once you import in the RAW file you are doing it with data loss.

This is a step before photoshop, not a slap in the face and replacement.

This is condiments to the burger. The burger is much more filling than just the condiments, but the condiments aren't all that by itself

Dave Coffin's open source dcraw RAW converter has been mentioned here a couple of times, but it's worth pointing out that the latest version already supports decryption of Nikon D2X white balance data. There's a brief discussion of the decryption algorithm here, and Photoshop developer Thomas Knoll points to the relevant section of code here.

As far as I know, Nikon has not threatened to invoke the DMCA over decryption of the data - this looks more like a rather lame attempt to obfuscate one of the key image parameters to make life difficult for 3rd party developers (who Nikon can then claim have 'incomplete' support for the NEF format if the camera's white balance settings can't be extracted). Of course this doesn't rule out the possibility that Nikon is deliberately playing games with Adobe, since the Photoshop developers have to choose between implementing decryption that might be actionable under the DMCA, and leaving out support for 'as shot' white balance (it seems like they've gone for the latter, for now). Smaller fish like Bibble are already including white balance decryption, which could leave Adobe at a disadvantage if they continue to believe that this is a legal risk (and who knows the details of the DMCA better than Adobe?!). Meanwhile, Nikon presumably hopes to sell more copies of Nikon Capture (though to be fair, Nikon View, which even comes with a rudimentary Photoshop plugin, can also handle these files and is a free download for Nikon users).

I think your last option is probably more likely. Some stupid patent or licensing requirement that forces a third party to be blessed by Nikon before their precious format, or something else (colour model?) can be used. The DMCA is probably largely irrelevant.

Or, here's a thought. Maybe Adobe's lawyers say that if Nikon tried to apply the DMCA to foil Adobe's use of Nikon RAW format, they probably could win the case for the reasons you state; but Adobe's lawyers really don't want to do that, because it would set a precident that they could not do the same thing to anyone else they wanted to knock about with the same threats?

Regardless, if Nikon is doing something so stupid, then I'll be looking elsewhere when the time comes to replace my Nikon D100 with a newer model. I'll pick a vendor who isn't so idiotic as to hinder the use of a consumer's own photographic data. Closed file format? Fine. I'll stick a negative in the Nikon feature column when comparing to competitors.

Oh yeah. And if they force me to use Nikon Capture to get full performance (which I bought, and which is slow and FAR less capable than Photoshop, or the wonderful ), that'll be another negative. Nikon's software just isn't that good.

you can find it here It has native linux support. If you want a free product you can look at CinePaint

I don't know what this particular person does, but from my observations, a "professional" photographer can be many different things. Some do weddings, some do studio portraits, some take photos for Arizona Highways or National Geographic, etc. As long as you're getting paid for your work, and it's a significant portion of your income, I would consider you a "professional". And solutions that work for one field won't work for another.

I won't pretend to be a professional photographer, but if a particular professional's work only involves using a digital SLR (i.e. Nikon D1X, Canon 1DS, etc.) in the field and editing and submitting the resulting pictures to a magazine, I really don't see why Linux can't be used for such a photographer's work, provided they're using the appropriate software such as Bibble.

Dude, jsut bacause the OS doesn't have a built in CMS doesn't mean you can't do color management. Kodak among other have versions of Their CMM's for linux for folks who are intersted in including them in their apps. As for simple, check out bibble (See post above), and check out its highlight recovery, IMHO (And I'm biased), its a few steps aheaad of what the ohter guys are offering in their Win/Mac only products. http://www.bibblelabs.com/products/bibble/Highligh ts.html Eric

So try Bibble then. Same professional quality, workflow and Speed as the Mac and Windows versions. Workflow is fully color maanged, preserves Exif, Allows for custom WB among other things. Details at: http://www.bibblelabs.com/ Eric Eric

without a good RAW converter, pros who have made the jump to digital and who have seen the light of shooting in RAW mode will not use Linux for their workflow.

Why not? There are products available for Linux to handle RAW files.

Digital photography can be done very well with Linux. At least since Bibble-Labs has released their "Professional Raw Workflow software" for Linux.

I have been using Bibble 4.0 quite some time now and the results and it's speed are amazing.

Gimp is a nice program, but if it comes to RAW images, Bibble can save you much time.

See http://www.bibblelabs.com/
Bibble 4.1 LE costs 69$ more than the free Raw converter "dcraw", but hey, if you can afford a professional digital camera...;-)

So your claim "Until GIMP receives more power (features, interface) under the hood, or Adobe or Jasc start porting their products, professional photographers CAN'T use Linux" may have been true some months ago - but today Linux is very usable for "professional photographers".

And if you were to make copy of an anlog photo, would you prefer to make a copy from an exising print, or reprint a new one from a negative.

There is a whole lot more involved in taking an image from the native hi-bit space of the camera and producing 8 bit output from it, A lot of which can't be "Redone" once the conversion has happened.

Case in point, Highlight recovery, you can't do this with a jpeg or 8 bit tiff:
http://www.bibblelabs.com/products/bibble/Highligh ts.html

Eric

real pro photographers now *can* use linux. supposing they are photographing digital and shooting raw-files (what generally is seen as the way to go for pros) there now is a tool to convert them in a way that allows a professional workflow. and i know that there are quite a bunch of them already using and liking it. just a beta-testera and happy user, no other affiliation with the company: http://bibblelabs.com/ for details and trial.

professional digital photograpy = RAW .. bibble 4.x is the first and so far only serious full-featured raw-conversion/workflow software, cheap and with incredible support.. see details&get trial @ http://www.bibblelabs.com/ [no affiliation with it other than being an engaged&volutary beta-tester]

Because TIFF doesn't do the job. This isn't another direct display format. It's a raw format. For example, the raw files from my Nikon equipment require processing before they can be displayed (FWIW, Photoshop CS already supports the nikon raw format - .NEF). Raw format files are nothing more than the the CCD saw....it doesn't take into account the dot screen or any filtering that is integral to the CCD...your processing software (whether it's in the camera or 3rd party like Nikon View, Bibble, or something else) needs to apply color correction and actually interpolate the sensors on the CCD into the correct colors.