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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)."
Ive been a professional graphic designer and digital photographer for about 12 years now. i have enough trouble working cross platform from PC to Mac (Mac is pretty much is the design standard, espcially with the movie studios).
I cant imagine how much extra work you have to do every day dealing with Linux.
There's nothing Intelligent about Intelligent Design.
I think I would have called that "Use The Fuckin' Search Engine"
http://slashdot.org/~tf23/journal
it's sort of irritating that you answer every single computer related question with the stock answer, "why not switch to mac?"
Its even more irritating as a Linux user for over 10 years to see people still "trying to get it to work, but not trying enough to use something like google".
Would there be an ask.slashdot.org article saying "Professional Photographers Using OS X"?
No.
Why not?
As I have said, I've used Linux for over 10 years now. I get paid to admin it, I know enough about it to leave it in the server room.
Maybe for an embedded app like a mythbox or on my Linksys router, but wake me up when there is a real GUI and real working applications and a packaging system that works.
The reason that people say "why not switch to a mac?" is becuase its the best advice that people are asking for. A mac is UNIX now. It has (IMHO) the best terminal application in the business. It comes with ssh. Every day I do:
ssh linuxbox
and it works just like it did when I had linux on my desktop, but now I can do things like run Office if I want (*shutter*) run photoshop, have good looking fonts, have an installer that works, have hardware that works, have an OS that works, have a GUI that works, printers that work, network configurations across multiple LANs that work, more than one browser that works, etc, etc. Then there is stuff that other OSes can't touch, like Expose. And things that just "think different" like Quicksilver. I really, really like my Mac more and more every day. I was the same way about Linux, but a better mouse trap has come along. Trust me, its really that good.
I laugh all the time when people suffer with Linux on their desktop. Its very late '90s and pictures of it are starting to show its age.
"Linux is only free if your time has no value"
Yes. And Windows is only 300 bucks if your time has no value.
What's your point?
Gary (-;
real pro photographers now *can* use linux
Uh, no.
I looked hard at linux last year as I was setting up my digital darkroom. It wouldn't go. I was pretty sure that I could get good linux tools for capture and image manipulation. But being able to print effectively from linux within a reasonable budget is a no-go. The least expensive printer I could manage that would still meet the specs I needed (photorealistic at 13x17 inches and good giclee potential) is the Canon i9900--and there are no linux drivers for it. I couldn't find any linux photo printers that would be competitive in today's market.
I've still got linux as an alternate boot on my primary computer, but since I have to do the test prints, final color corrections, and final prints under Windows, I haven't bothered to learn the linux software.
Or he could just go buy a Dell for 299 and install photoshop on it... Identical results, More performance (than a higher priced Mac)
After he gets more jobs and brings in more cashflow, then he might want to consider upgrading to a PowerMac G5 Dual platform... Then again, he will probably get 4x the machine in an opteron box for the same money. By then he will already like windows enough to not care about mac anymore...
just a thought from me to you (the obvious mac fanboy)
Your ignorance is infinitely greater than you realize.
I work for a professional photo lab and there are more than a few of our clientelle who would like to acheive top-notch quality at Goodwill prices. Just doesn't work. I would also voice another vote for "Don't use Linux." Of our hundreds of clients, not one uses Linux. I doubt most have even heard of it. There is also a large portion who go out and spend shit loads of cash on new systems and cameras with the full expectation that that will make them a "Professional Photographer," and then blame the lab for poor results. We are not allowed, alas, to tell them if you give us shit, you get shit back.