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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)."
...is a joke. If you want any kind of decent results, you need a REAL film scanner. Check eBay.
I wound up buying a Nikon LS30 for the several negatives images in my collection.
The specs on a real film scanner as opposed to a flatbed are night and day. When a film scanner says it does X resolution, it's real. When a flatbed says it, it's probably some kind of interpolated crap marketing hype.
The ratio of black to white on the scanned image is also vastly larger with a film scanner - this makes a big difference, particularly with slides. You're going to lose a lot of data if you don't have as wide a bit lattitude as you can get.
In short, you're going to put a lot of time into scanning those slides. Don't sell short the value of your time. It's stupid to spend 500 to 1000 or more hours of your life using a piece of junk. Better off just not doing it until you have access to the proper equipment.
Ask around. There may be people who can lend you a proper scanner. I've lent mine to several friends, since it's not like I use it all the time; I'm now completely digital. My scanner sits in its box for 6 months to a year at a time. It's possible you could find someone similar who might let you borrow it for a few months.
The parent is not off-topic, but there are problems with processing transparencies this way. It's very difficult to match contrast for a start.
The best thing to do is send your transparencies out to a repro house to scan on a drum scanner. This can be expensive, but it's what professionals do, and they don't do it just so they can put it on their tax return.
Be prepared for some pain in manipulating the scans on Linux; there's a reason so many graphic artists use Macs.
A friend of mine was using his Powerbook (Firewire) to do professional photography for his uncles studio. He was scanning slides in with his Nikon slide scanner, and recording them to CD's.
One day, the Powerbook quit recognizing the scanner. If you've worked with Macs (OS 9) you know how they can be. They 'just work'. But when something goes wrong...
The first thing he tried was buying a SCSI card, and installing it in his new Compaq PC with Windows 2000. Downloaded the drivers, installed the scanner...seemed to work great untinl he tried to scan some slides. Only half the slide would show up. The whole thing would show up in the preview mode, however...
After screwing around with Nikon support, re-installing the drivers, and even a fresh install of Windows, I joked that he should try it under Linux.
We took the SCSI card out of the Compaq, and put it in a Pentium 166MMX he got from TigerDirect for $49.99. We loaded up Redhat, SANE recognized it, and everything worked perfectly on the very first try. Odd thing was, it ran faster than it did on the Powerbook.
Although I am a diehard penguin fan, there are just some aps that ought to be ported over, but aren't.
Sigh. I do a lot of medium and large format transparencies and they get scanned in with a Canon DU2400.
For the run of the mill, knock off, transparecies they are adequate without haveing to resort to a 10K$ drum scanner, or a 20K$ digital back for the 4X5. The 2400 dpi in a 4X5 transparency is "good enough" for most interactions with the customer. IF higher definition is required well then I can send it out for a drum scan.
Such as it is, I still keep windoze around for both photoshop and premire. Sigh.
Note that my jpegs run over 100 Mbyte/image with this. And I am NOT doing 35mm images. These are full blown, commercial shots.
Maybe. But Free Software is more than just a "right tool for the job" decision, there could be other considerations. So there is some argument for using Free Software. Obviously it is foolish to target a profession in which all the digital tools are highly proprietary and then hope to be competitive using Free Software.
As someone who has been heavy into photography since childhood, I would no more like to see my digital darkroom owned and controlled by a handful of corporations than I'd like to see my film cameras limited to only using one brand of film, or even having to bring the camera to the shop to get the film out and prints made. From that perspective, I would cheer wildly for anyone trying to do digital imaging work on Linux.
Anyway... I don't think one can expect to get high quality scans off a $200 (or even $400) scanner with a film attachment, which is what the Asker seems to want to do. I have to wonder if that same scanner is known to work much better under Windows and the issue is drivers, or if the problem is just that the scanner is just cheap. I've always gotten my film scanned (before the advent of 4 megapixel digital cameras) by pros with high-end film scanners. This means my time investment is minimal and the results are likely to be better than anything I can manage at home. This is available for about 50 cents a slide. Which would be expensive for the Asker to do his "thousands," but the time savings and quality make up for it, imho.
I do not have a signature
It struck me as being a program designed by people who have never actually had to use that sort of software.
around the time gimp 1.1 was in development, i read an interview with one of the original GIMP developers where he stated that not only had he never used photoshop, he had only seen it once when a college buddy was using it to remove the clothes from (iirc) cindy crawford. the original developers haven't coded on the GIMP since pre-1.0, so i have not idea how much of that heritage still remains, but your impression is correct, or at least was at one point in time. i can't speak to the current state of the GIMP as i have not used it much since version 1.2.
If I don't put anything here, will anyone recognize me anymore?