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Professional Photographers Using Linux?
thesun asks: "I'm a freelance writer and photographer and I'm wondering what Pro Photographers have done in regards to color matching and scanning under Linux, especially when going from slides to digital. I just can't get anything close to a good image when I scan a slide. They're blurry and the colors are so off that doing anything with my thousands of slides is proving to be prohibitively time-consuming. Are other Pros (or talented amateurs) having similar problems? Are there solutions out there I haven't found? (Sorry, I can't dump thousands into a piece of hardware---I'm looking for a way to make the most of my Epson Perfection 2400 with transparency adapter)."
I took some slides for a yearbook production in town, and try as I may: Windoze, Linux, BeOS, anything, they all came out terrible. Using a flatbed scanner with Slide Adapter just doesnt produce great results. Period.
print 'Hello world!';
http://compbrain.net
Back when I was using a film scanner, I was using VueScan with good results - I think you would be fairly pleased, as it gives you a number of advanced options for scanner control. I am pretty sure that it works with flatbed scanners as well.
They do sell a Linux client in addition to OSX and Windows, and the program has been around a long time.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
http://www.linuxprinting.org/
Electrons are free; it is moving them that becomes expensive.
A 10 second bout of googling and I found The Gimp color manager which lets you use ICC color profiles. You'll find the relevant profiles on your Epson driver disk.
I'm sorry if I haven't offended anyone
I've never gotten good results scanning slides using an adapter on a flat bed scanner. This could be your main problem. There are some lower priced slide scanners these days that produce good results. Canon makes a rather affordable slide scanner. Mid-hundreds, but not thousands. Another suggestion would be trying it under windows and seeing if that produces any better results. I think your hardware is more of a problem than your software though.
Ok, maybe I should've done a bit more reading before posting the parent...scribus is apparently open source. I found a few other links too...
Hope there's something useful in all of that...
but have you considered the following argument: shut up.
Sorry but reality is that Photoshop is not available on Linux (yet) so trying to use GIMP to do this is not the best route to take. Your best bet is to get a Mac and Photoshop and have most of the benefits of LInux (UNIX underpinnings) and the ability to run popular commercial software. P.S. Some Macs are not that expensive. I downgraded to a 20" iMac G5 from a dual CPU G5 and I don't miss the extra speed, saved a bunch as well.
I have NEVER seen the cheesy slide attachments that come with flatbed scanners work well. There is a way to get passable results without spending a ton of money.
Project your slides onto good screen with an overhead projector and take pictures with a digital camera. You'll want to disable the flash for this. Are the results as good as a dedicated slide scanner? No. Will it look better than what comes out of your scanner attachment? Absolutely.
The focus and color problems you're having are not related to your choice of operating system or software, but with your scanner. If you can't get the slide adaptor to hold the slide so it's in focus, there's no chance of getting good scans regardless of the software you choose.
s .html. You should be able to find some of the older ones are more affordable used (check eBay) and even though they're not cutting edge will still generate much better results than an adaptor on a flatbed.
Like many folks here have said, you'll have a much better time using a real slide scanner. There's a good number of such devices supported by SANE - see http://www.sane-project.org/sane-supported-device
Failing that, rent or borrow a good slide scanner, or have a service bureau scan your slides on their equipment.
Then you either don't have any professional photographers where you're from or you don't know anything about professional photography. Allmost all professional (commerical) photography is done digitally or on transparencies (a.k.a slides)
If you want your entire workflow calibrated for WYSIWYG color output, I don't think you'll find it. About a year ago I bought a Canon 10D and wanted:
1) Linux based RAW to TIFF converter
2) Linux monitor calibration
3) ICC support for printing
I was able to find a free tool to do the RAW conversion, but I was disappointed with the output. Color's were washed out because it didn't understand colorspaces and there were no controls for adjusting exposure (one of the big selling points of using RAW).
I was unable to find any Spyder (hardware to calibrate your monitor) which worked with Linux. If you have *really* good eyes, you might be able to do it via software, but I found the results were completely inconsistant for generating prints.
There was some limited ICC printer support in Gimp, but Gimp is no Photoshop. Don't get me wrong, Gimp is a great tool and is of commerical quality, but PS is *much* more advanced and has a much larger user community around it providing free and commerical plugins as well as help on retouching photos.
Basically, if you're only interested in posting on the web in sRGB @ 72dpi, then Linux is probably good enough for your needs. People who are viewing the images won't have their monitors properly calibrated anyways, so it won't really matter. But once you want photo quality output, your best platform is still a Mac (I ended up getting a G5 1.8 and Cinema HD LCD) with Windows a close second.
I bought a Canon FS4000 and run it over SCSI with Vuescan under linux. So far I'm very pleased with digitizing slides. Vuescan is a dream, except I'd like to optimize his backend code... (Gimp displays the picture in a second, vuescan can take 15-30 seconds). The Infra Red dust removal works well. So far, I've been having more difficultly with negatives: they come out blue, and once you fix that the colours don't look as good as photos.
Any hints about that?
I've got a PrimeFILM scanner from Costco. Looks great. The one I have runs about $280 now (it was on sale at the time, about $150). They have the same one used at the University of Virginia's digial media center for $390.
This is going to be said by a lot of people here...
...but like I said, photoshop pays my mortgage. I'm not unbiased.
There's nothing Linux (or any other OS, for that matter) can do to allow you to get a good-quality image out of a half-assed trans adapter on a flatbed scanner.
I have seen ok images come out of a trans adapter... but those were large-format negatives, and they were still only really good for comps.
Repeat after me:
There's no replacement for a slide scanner.
There's no replacement for a slide scanner.
There's no replacement for a slide scanner.
I bought a dimage slide scanner, and I haven't looked back. If you're serious, $250 is not expensive.
I'm sure there are people who consider GIMP to be completely usable, better than photoshop, etc etc. I can't really speak to that. I use photoshop about 5 hours a day, and on those occasions where I have tried GIMP, I was not favorably impressed. It struck me as being a program designed by people who have never actually had to use that sort of software. I'm not denigrating the project, but I won't sacrifice speed, flexibility, quality and my own sanity in order to make some point about open source.
m-
You catch enchiladas by picking them up behind the head and holding them underwater until they don't kick anymore -VeGas
I have an Epson 2450 Photo and I've found that scanning any type of film, positive or negative, is abysmal at best. The problem lies in the focal plane of the scanner. Becuase the scanner does not refocus properly on the image it cannot get a crisp scan. What I did to *improve* my film scanning was to build a little test rig out of thin cardboard like the kind off of the back a notepad. Basically, I stacked overlaping layers ranging from directly on the glass to 3-4 millimeters above the glass so I could figure out where the focal plane was on the scanner. If I remember correctly, the film adapters hold the film about 2mm off the glass, but I discovered I got crisper scans at 3mm. Consequently, I had to build little 1mm shims to hold my film adapter up a little higher.
Aside from that, the *unsharp mask* is your best friend. Any digitally acquired image should have an unsharp mask applied to it to help reduce the digital artifacts. In fact film is often treated the same way to reduce the appearance of the film grain. Don't set it and forget it, different photographs will need different values in the unsharp mask. Experiment and you'll get the hang of it.
I have to point out, if you want to be a professional then you need to invest in a true film scanner. That's the only way you're really going to get crisp scans. You don't need to drop $10,000 on an oil mount drum scanner. Read Epinions or some other review site. Check ebay for some used models. Get the highest DPI you can afford (or the lowest you can tolerate). Also, make sure you buy something with a fast interface. USB v1 sucks, SCSI is ok, USB v2 is better, Firewire (IEEE 1394) is the best.
Hope that helped! If you need more deatils on how to build the cardboard test appaeratus let me know and I will post in more detail.
I won a used Minolta DiMAGE II slide/film scanner on ebay for $162.50 a month ago.
I downloaded the GIMP for free.
Grokking the GIMP is available online.
HTH
"I worked hard for it. I deserve it. And I have it," Campbell said. "It's all mine."
Or you can give people a link.
actually, it isn't. you need to buy a license for it just like the mac & windows versions.
abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
> Currently the gimp is only 8 bit color.
I agree that GIMP isn't the tool for a professional photographer (and I'd argue that a Beseler and a Swiss 4x5 are the main tools, still), but my understanding is that GIMP has been 24-bit in RGB and 32-bit in RGBA for quite some time, and that the coming version will be 48-bit Float in RGB, and 128-bit Float in RGBA.
What he means is that the GIMP is 8-bits per component == RGB8 == 3 Components * 8-bits == 24-bits per pixel. Or RGBA8 == 4 Components * 8-bits == 32-bits per pixel. One of the bigger gripes among professional users is that the GIMP doesn't support 16-bits per component (RGB16) which is more common when converting RAW images to TIFF. Since professional photographers are probably shooting exclusively in the RAW formats for anything that they would sell then the GIMP is a tool that they cannot use.
As to the "48-bit Float" comment I assume you mean 96-bit Float for RGB (3 components * 32-bits = 96-bit) since the "float" type is 32-bits.
--
Sounds like a scam, but it works.
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infested with jello like fishes no melotron wishes
-bill!
He had bought another model of that series (3170). But anyway yours should be similar if not the same setup. I used:
l l ... but make sure to copy all icc profiles into /usr/lib/color (hardcoded in main.c ... I guess you can name some files to: scanner.icm, printer.icm and display.icm (if you have according inputs) ... but I way able to install some scanner icm's under different names and was able to select them anyway .exe .ic_ and rename the result to
:-)
/usr/lib/color so I have some kind of setup.
:-) ) to my dad and he just tossed it into /usr/lib/color (as root) and has not complained yet :-D
...
-SuSE 9.0 (distro does not matter)
-Gimp 1.2
- a matching sane along with xscanimage (though now used)
-iscan package installed and linked as a gimp plugin, from epkowa: http://www.epkowa.co.jp/english/linux_e/index.htm
-littlecms library from:
http://www.littlecms.com/
-gimp color management plugins from:
http://www.freecolormanagement.com/color/gimp.htm
(do not give a damn for the "alpha" status)
- grab some scanner drivers for Windows from the Epson site. The EXE Files are self extracting Zipe-Archives, so you can simple do an unzip
- look for the *.ic_ files
- install msexpand (package mscompress) from your distro (or from here: ftp://ftp.penguin.cz/pub/users/mhi/mscompress
- then do an expand
- alternative
+ if no *.ic_ files found, look for *.cab files
+ install cabextract from your distro (look here http://freshmeat.net/projects/cabextract/
+ look for *.icm file
- the file program should tell you that the icm-file is a:
# file Per317_r.icm
Per317_r.icm: Kodak Color Management System, ICC Profile
First I installed a icm for the scanner for prints mode and a seperate icm file for slides/negatives mode. Per317_r.icm for prints (r=reflective) and
Mine were Per317_t.icm (t=transparent) -- that made the most sense.
If you have access to a Windows Box or do run wine you can grab the following windows program (ran under wine pretty flawlessly):
iccinspect.exe from: http://www.littlecms.com/iphoto/inspect.htm (Open Source !)
This program enables you to closely examine the contents of the icm files. It prints shows all the stuff like vendor and color-space infos and whatnot
Second I scanned a picture with the scanner and applied the input icm to the scan with using the gimp (There is a command line tool for non-gimp users).
Then I adjusted my monitors settings, resulting in my setting the color temperature to 9300K since that resembled the picture the best.
I tossed in the Windows own icm file "sRGB Color Space Profile.icm" that I found under C:\Windows\system\color (Windows 98) as sRGB.icm and monitor.icm into
If you do have a disk with the correct icm file on it, use that file instead. Only use sRGB.icm if you want to exchange files with others.
Third I send a icm file for my dads printer (an epson
I keep on ignoring slight color glitches while working on the pictures since I beleive the correct colors will come out of the printer anyway
---------
There is plenty of more reference out there:
http://www.efg2.com/Lab/Library/Color/index.html
---------
But feel free to ask if nessecary.
The acronym that accompanies RTFM is STFW.
t ml #rtfmW .html
l
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.h
http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/S/STF
A nicer alternative is GIFY.
http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/G/GIYF.htm
Currently the gimp is only 8 bit color.
I'm not sure what you mean by 8 bit here. 8x3 (RGB) maybe and an alpha channel. But gimp is far beyond 64 colors.
"professional photographers CAN'T use Linux. "
Are you nuts?!? Pro photographers can't use Linux? What can't they do? I guess I haven't really been a professional all this time.
We average 3500 photos a month with the max of 16000 and ALL of it has been on Linux (SuSE in particular) for nearly 3 years.
What exactly do I need to run on windose or a mac? iPhoto is a nifty tool, but not needed, Photoshop...The GIMP works just fine.
Now, I no longer futz with chromes and haven't scanned anything in quite some time, so maybe you got me there. I also don't do any MF work. Been shooting with the Canon 1D for over 2 1/2 years.
Now I do admit that NeatImage and NoiseNinja are great products and I do use them when I have to shoot in ungawdly dark venues that I can't strobe. Work fine under wine, you're right on that point. It would be great if those products could run natively, but until then, the once every 2 months that I need it... wine it is.
The workflow that I use, gets me through a rough edit of 100 images in 4-5 minutes(cull, rotate, rename, watermark, IPTC keywords, resizing for web display, and copyrighting). http://actionathletics.com/actionimage/ ActionImage moves through images fast!
Prepping images for printing or submition... looking at a recent folder, 1-2 minutes per image, I'd say that's not bad.
So, what exactly is it that makes you say "professional photographers CAN'T use Linux"? What else do I need?
Someone should mod this up. I use Bibble under Linux and love it. The only thing I really need now is Spyder color calibration support for Linux. For now, I just double check my results elsewhere.
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.
I have the exact same scanner and encountered the same problem. Set the focus to 2.5mm above the glass. In SANE it's in the advanced settings. I corrected color issues by increasing brightness and contrast by the same amount until what I got from the scan matched the original. Good luck.
I use the PrimFilm 3650u Slide Scanner that I bought from Costco for $199. It has digital ICE(dust/scratch removal). I have sucessfully used it with Linux. I use it mostly to archive old negs, because I shoot mostly digital now.
I have a pretty solid workflow going on Linux for my Wedding Photography business, which includes scanning and/or capturing from digital camera, editing with the GIMP and other tools, burning to CD's, and posting to website album. I have most of this automated with scripts. Sure, it might be easier in windows, and frankly, you could probably purchase a high-end editing box with windows with the proceeds from just one or two weddings if that's your thing.
Part of the problem is color matching from scans and slides (transparencies.) I am aware of no tool that will match colors as well as programs like photoshop or others that are out there for the windows and (primarily) Mac markets.
For all the features that's being sought after I am aware of no tools to do that kind of quality work from the scans and slides. Linux doesn't have tools for high quality scans.
I like linux as much as the next geek, but it lacks software to support this market right now.
DarkMantle I been bored, so I started a blog.
Certainly it ran faster than it did on the powerbook. That's because the Digital ICE is implemented in software, which wasn't happening under Linux. And Digital ICE is the whole reason you pay the premium for a Nikon scanner. It's practically magic. But it does slow things down.
My Nikon is a bit of a pain to get running sometimes, but it's worth the time. Sorry about your experiences, though.
(Sorry, I can't dump thousands into a piece of hardware---I'm looking for a way to make the most of my Epson Perfection 2400 with transparency adapter)."
A transparency adapter on an Epson 2400 or most other consumer scanners will not give you acceptable quality, not under Linux and not under Windows. If you want low-cost slide scanning that is of reasonable quality, your best bet is to put a slide adapter on a digital camera. But the only way to get good slide scans it to get a slide scanner.
For color correction, LCMS is a good bet. You can calibrate it using a digital capture of an image with known colors on (the SCARSE package helps you with that). Don't expect hand holding: you actually have to know what you are doing in order to use LCMS. The good news is that it is an excellent and flexible CMS and that batch processing is easy. (You can get a plugin for LCMS for the Gimp, but that is probably not the best way of using it.)
Getting good scans of slides is a lot of work, on any platform. Every slide will take some manual work to post-process. That's why commercial slide scanning costs so much money. One big area is dust and scratch removal, which is why scanners with automatic dust/scratch removal are so popular.
Note that the big strength of Linux is the large number of powerful and high-quality image processing software available for it (in particular, scientific image processing), and the way you can easily combine that software through scripting. A good place to start is to look for image-related packages on your Linux distribution (Debian has pretty good coverage).
It isn't half as irritating as being a Linux user is.
Sounds like a personal problem to me. Seriously, If I found it irrating to use Linux I would use something else - but the fact is, it gives me the least grief of any of the OSes I've seen. Sorry to rain on your parade, but I have no intention to switch to mac. Just out of curiosity, do all mac users have to bash other OSes to make themselves feel good abut their choices?
I switched from Linux to OS X because I eventually realized that desktop Linux distributions generally create far more problems than they ever solve. The reason Mac users always suggest switching to a Mac is that for a lot of desktop problems, Macs are the answer.
Like I said, I've seen and used OSX. Sure, it's cute, and it's nice that it's unix inside, but it doesn't solve anything for me, and there is no compelling reason to switch. If there were no linux, I would quite likely be a mac user, but there is Linux, and it is what it is. You mac users are just going to have to learn to coexist.
To me it sounds like he's an amateur photographer who is just starting to experiment with digital. It's quite possible that the mediocre quality of The GIMP would suffice for him. Perhaps all he knows about colour management is "use Velvia". Further, it seems that his scanner is working with Linux.
It actually sounds like his hardware is the problem. He's got a cheap scanner with a slide adapter, and it gives him blurry results. If the results are blurry, you should try software first. Check that you are scanning at realistic resolution. If the scanner resolution is too high, drop the scanner resolution or downsample. Using that scanner with slides, that won't be a problem. If the scanner resolution is ok and the results are a bit soft, an unsharp mask should fix them. You can do that with The GIMP just as well as you can with Photoshop.
More likely he needs to invest in some decent hardware in order to make the setup work to his satisfaction. Windows or a Mac might be necessary, but solve the first problem first. If he isn't a pro, he might be able to use Linux for this.
Whoever corrects a mocker invites insult;
whoever rebukes a wicked man incurs abuse.
--Proverbs 9:7
Here you go...
Raw Digital Photo Decoding in Linux
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.
Seriously- I bought a Nikon Coolscan 4000 off ebay for 500$. Slide adapter- comes free. Bulk feeder- 280$ - 390$.
I used to work for Kodak. I know CM (Colour Management). I also know you've got to pony up to get to at least a basic level of hardware that is capable of doing something.
Tell me, honestly, how is an Operating System going to affect how sharp your slide scanner is? Really- THINK ABOUT IT. One has NOTHING to do wit h the other. If you can't get sharp scans off your slide scanner, ebay it, throw it out, and stop wasting your time and buy something worth it.
Trust me, you won't regret it.
I wrote imaging chains for Drum scanners (8000lpi) and custom chains for other scanners, but they all had one thing in common: They were good pieces of equipment to begin with.
Once you have a good, consistent scan, the CM is actually pretty easy- but come on back when you've got a good piece of equipment.
So, what's wrong with Cinepaint?
I'm a loser baby, so why don't you kill me.
So you do pro graphics using GIMP?
GIMP is nowhere close to Adobe PhotoShop in terms of functionality and ease of use.
Hmmm...another comment from someone who obviously hasn't used the GIMP for any length of time any time recently.
I do not work with the GIMP (or Photoshop) professionally; I suck at that sort of thing. But I do know several people who do. Mostly they are working in electronic media...web or software development and such. But I also have a friend doing work for a lot of pro photographers who has been using the GIMP a while. She doesn't seem to miss any functionality, although she came over from Photoshop and Windows. I think the switch was for ideological reasons, though I don't really know...I'll bet she's saved a bit of money as well.
Anyway, the point is, GIMP is more than ready for real photography work and has been for a long time. Material headed for magazines and newspapers was for a while out of reach...but CMYK support is fine now, so that removes one of the last gripes.
Given a choice between free speech and free beer, most people will take the beer.
It does look like there's not an OSS driver that's known to work with the i9900. That's too bad. However, turboprint may work for you...it's moneyware, but if you're currently using Windows you should be used to that. Anyway, that printer is supposed to be fully functional with that driver, so maybe that removes that last barrier for you.
I hope so. It would be nice to see more people in these desktop intensive industries pick up Linux. I'm not deluded at all about the nubmers; I'd imagine we're lucky to have a tenth of a percent of pro photographers......but if you've got the inclination and a bit of time, there's really not a lot holding you back any more.
Given a choice between free speech and free beer, most people will take the beer.
To be harshly realistic, even the highest resolution scans are lower quality than they would be if I had a $500 dedicated film or slide scanner, and everything requires some color correction, but these are headed for the web, or casual printing, not publication in any sort of consumer magazine. As placeholders and comping they would be useful.
around, and have the luxury to screw around with mediocre tools, gimp being the only exception. it is getting quite good...]
nous
As a just-separated IT Manager at one of the best digital labs in the United States, I can say unequivocally that linux does not fulfill any of our needs, except possibly as a server.
Unfortunately, my job didn't allow me the time to climb that particular learning curve, and I stuck with Mac OS 9.x AppleShare (feature-poor, but fast and runs well on retired desktops) and Mac OS X Server 10.3. (It's a young business and doesn't choose to allocate IT capitol to the newest-and-bestest when we can recycle the dependable and cheap.)
None of our Apprentice or Master Printers (staff members who use Photoshop more than 80% of the day) has the time or bandwidth (or inclination) to learn a completely new set of tools for the sake of using Linux.
While the GIMP is a nice feature demo, it isn't nearly as capable as Photoshop in the areas we need it to be, like integrated color management, layer and type tools. Photoshop's feature and interface parity across platforms allow a consistent vocabulary of tools and actions for us and our customers.
I think Linux is a fine product, but the more mature systems (Mac OS X to be exact in our case) are often cabable of serving sermi-vertical markets like professional photographer and photographic printers much better.
Photography has a largely technophobic element of users; despite the photovested gear-queers and their toys, most photographers want effective, simple solutions. While Linux has made great strides in usability (no, really!), Windows and Mac OS X will continue to be the preferred operating systems for professional photographers for the forseeable future.
You kinda forgot the point, huh? Macs have ColorSync. Windows doesn't.
I write in my journal
As to the "48-bit Float" comment I assume you mean 96-bit Float for RGB (3 components * 32-bits = 96-bit) since the "float" type is 32-bits.
There is in fact a 16-bit float format, commonly called "half". It was developed by ILM as part of their open-source EXR image library, and is now implemented in hardware by nvidia and other graphics cards. So "48-bit float" is in fact quite possible. There is no reason to use 32 bit float for brightness information, as the brightness resolution is then about 100,000 times better than the human eye. The main reason it is used is because that is the smallest floating point format supported by Intel hardware.
However there are very very good reasons to use floating point instead of integers. They are naturally a "log" space that matches how they eye perceives brightness (ie the samples are closer together near zero) and they can cover high dynamic range (HDR) such as a light of brightness 32000 verses the 1.0 for paper, and still show details in dark shadows. They also allow the number to actually represent the brightness of the image, which makes filters such as blur and sharpen actually work.
I highly recommend that any future Gimp or Cinepaint other development ignore integer or fixed-point and use "half" for representing image brightness. It is the same size but vastly superior to 16-bit.
Under Linux (using xsane), my epson perfection 1240u has a 'Focus Position' option you need to set for slide scanning. The choices are "Focus on Glass" and "Focus 2.5mm above glass" I think you need the later option to scan slides. The settings are under the "advanced options" window.
;)
I have noticed that I get much better high-resolution scans by scanning a photo instead of a negative or slide. I think it's more-or-less a limitation of the scanner. At high resolution, it seems to suffer from a prism effect from the optics (whether or not it is in slide mode). On the other hand, I think my epson is a bit older than yours, so this might not be as much of an issue on your model.
As for color correction, etc (mentioned by other posts), I haven't had any particularly bad problems under Linux. Granted, I'm not a professional photographer, but if I really care about color matching, my printer driver / scanner driver allow for manual calibration. So far, the defaults are "good enough" for me. At any rate, I don't think color correction will fix blurry scans.
Still, you won't hear me complain when it works out of the box under Linux.
I've found that VueScan (not Free software, but it does work under Linux and there is an edition that costs nothing) gives good results, and the multi-scan feature is especially good. However, there are two problems with using Linux downstream from that point. Firstly, the GIMP doesn't support colour depths greater than 8 bits, while my slide scanner produces 14 bits of colour depth (or 8 if you don't want 14). It's a shame to have to throw away those extra 18 bits of information per pixel.
Having said this, Photoshop Elements has the same limitation, though I'm sure that the premium Photoshop product does not. The Nikon scan tools don't. I use Photoshop Elements but not GIMP. The reaon why is a bit hard to pin down but it comes down to usability. The layering and selection tools in Photoshop Elements are more suited to doing photo manipulation than the ones in GIMP. Also, if you have a complex selection, Photoshop Elements is noticably more responsive on Windows than GIMP is on Linux on the same hardware. GIMP isn't actually sluggish, but PhotoSchop is more responsive and hence certainly easier to use.
I use Linux for exerything else (except a few bits at work) and I wish this wasn't true, but I find that Windows is indeed a better platform for photo work. That's ignoring the whole area of printing, too. Finding a printer that produces high-quality results which works under Linux is easy; finding one that the vendors still sell is much harder. I don't have a lot of time to devote to that search, so I haven't bought a printer yet.
In fact, I wish there were businesses that would sell "Lilnux compatible" hardware. I wouldn't look for support, and I'd pay a premium. I'd just like to be able to buy stuff from someone who can say "I got it to work with Linux".
That's the stupidest thing ever written down by man.
'sharpness' of negative and reversal film is, of course, the same.
you can find it here It has native linux support. If you want a free product you can look at CinePaint
Get a free ipod.
I run a high end post production house in NYC. I wish--in so many different ways--that there were solutions for high end imaging on Linux. But there just aren't. I've got thirty Macs in my shop. Have you any idea of the $$$ the business would save if we were not dependant on the apple platform? I have one linux box in house. Its a RIP from a company called Dalim that cost us damn near $40K. Its the single most stable piece of software I have ever even heard about. It has not gone down once in two years of 24/7 usage. My macs, on the other hand, have all crapped out at one point or another, for one reason or another. Not that we don't love macs! But I'd rather save the cash. Linux needs two things to be adopted in my industry: 1) an image processor that is either a photoshop port or MIMICS the user environment and fuctionality absolutely. 2) a graphically pleasing and elegant desktop environment. Retouchers are best thought of as creative types. If the work environment is ugly, they will bitch. Oh--windows is not an option for a variety of reasons. Mostly cost of maintenance. We tried. we also found the fastest windows box could not perform certain photoshop processes as fast as the fasted Macs. Plus we've had a couple of virus disasters with windows--even with some extensive network security. Windows seems to be the domain of home users who have a PC and want to get into photoshop without buying a new box.