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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)."
Real pro photographers don't use linux.
I don't know what to tell you, other than my uncle is a professional photographer and he uses a Mac. Says it's a dream.
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.
...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.
Until GIMP receives more power (features, interface) under the hood, or Adobe or Jasc start porting their products, professional photographers CAN'T use Linux. Whatever Linuxies may claim, those of us generating 2000+ images per month can't make any sacrifices in our workflow. Die-hard Linux users are well advised to use a little Wine http://www.winehq.com/ with their photo processing...
As for scanning - I agree with the above - Vuescan is great on Macs.
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.
There's a famous quote that gets thrown around quite a bit:
"Linux is free only if your time has no value" - Jamie Zawinski
If you are truly a pro photographer than you time is worth a lot more than the purchase price of a decent iMac You charge for your time, it's your most valuable resource. Why waste it trying to do things the hard way?
Why use the wrong tool for the job?
Linux (and other free unices) have their time and place, but as a professional photography scanning and retouching system it's just not ready yet.
Does the GIMP even use ICC profiles?
Cheers...
Specialist Mac support for creative pros, Melbourne
Linux doesn't come close to comparing with windows or a mac in photo utilities. It's a shame too.
Gimp is nice, and making progress but it's still lightyears behind photoshop.
As far as hardware, reference photo.net. They will point you in the right direction for scanning in your slides.
May I suggest a new acronym to accompany RTFM? UTFSE - for Use The Fine Search Engine.
I'm sorry if I haven't offended anyone
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.
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.
Because reshooting all the pictures he already has on slides would require a lot of travel and/or a time machine?
All I have is a rusted-out Schwinn bicycle. I'm too cheap to buy one of those newfangled "automobiles" or "motorcycles."
There must be a way to make a shitty bicycle do what I want. I'm willing to put any amount of time into this project but not any real money; that's because my time isn't worth anything. Tell me how to do it!
Sadly, you're mistaken about what it means to be a "professional." You are correct in thinking that a "professional" gets paid for their services. You are incorrect in thinking that all professionals are knowledgeable and know what they're doing in return for the pay they are receiving. I have seen wedding photographers who actually arranged and took worse pictures than even I would take - and I would hardly even consider myself an amateur at this point because not all of my pictures turn out well.
The person that wrote this "Ask Slashdot" may just be in the camp of those who get paid for services they're not qualified to perform. Or they may just be getting started. In any case, they did preface the question by mentioning that they were not willing to pay for the high quality stuff that many professional photographers use, so I don't see why you're so up in arms with their lack of desire to use "real" equipment. Just answer the damn question!
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.
The same reason for which we keep DaVinci's Mona Lisa for example and not a high resolution JPEG instead.
I have used the Epson 2400 with transparency adapter and could not even fathom scanning "thousands" of slides with it. From my experience a scan took about 3 minutes. Thats almost 2 days of solid scaning for a thousand slides.My scanner is hooked up to windows and uses the Epson color correction software and gives adequate results (far from the professional results you mention). As such, I would not throw away the slides and use the digital files as replacements though. You will not get away from the blurry, scratched images that this scanner will produce.What you need to do is look into a real slide/negative scanner such as a Minolta Dimage or the like, with digital ice dust and scratch removal built into the scanner itself. For the amount of slides you mention you would also be wise to look into an autofeeder. I am not sure about Linux support for these types of scanners, but you may want to think about investing in a new G5 and Photoshop (you can run Gimp if you dont want to shell out for Photoshop, but Photoshop is superior and well worth the money if you are doing lots of photo manipulation). However, if you are really serious about the professional side of things then you are going to need to shell out some cash, linux and an epson flatbed are not going to cut it for you. Alternatively, find a photo studio with the scanner and pay them to do it for you.
"When Nature Calls We All Shall Drown" Johan Edlund
This leads me to why is the poster only interested in Professionals and talented amatures?
Well, do you want the opinion of someone with 30 years experience in their field or someone fresh out of High School who bought their first camera (in this case) a week ago?
There's a reason that professionals are able to be professionals...they're good at what they do and therefore are able to make a living at it.
This is why I don't consider the post I made to be offtopic...a pro would use (as someone else mentioned elsewhere in the thread) the right tool for the job, and as of right now, Photoshop is the right tool. Therefore, you get a Mac, and don't even look at Linux. Linux is awesome for some things, but in the graphics world, Apple has Linux beat as of now.
I work for the Michigan Daily, and I have had experience using linux with my photo equipment. I use all digital cameras, a nikon d2h and a nikon d70. The problem with linux is the photo manipulation software. Currently the gimp is only 8 bit color. The color features of the gimp leave a lot to be desired for a photog. A must have is a mac or pc with photoshop. The linux platform is making steps, but currently there are too many problems.
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 $10,000 on an oil mount drum scanner. Read Epinions or some other review site. Check ebay for some used models. Get the highest DPI you can afford (or the lowest you can tolerate). Also, make sure you buy something with a fast interface. USB v1 sucks, SCSI is ok, USB v2 is better, Firewire (IEEE 1394) is the best.
Hope that helped! If you need more deatils on how to build the cardboard test appaeratus let me know and I will post in more detail.
Although I am a diehard penguin fan, there are just some aps that ought to be ported over, but aren't.
Sigh. I do a lot of medium and large format transparencies and they get scanned in with a Canon DU2400.
For the run of the mill, knock off, transparecies they are adequate without haveing to resort to a 10K$ 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.
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."
1. Yes, most pros use Photoshop and not the GIMP, and all of us hate the cost of Photoshop. Proof is obvious, anyone hates paying $$$$
2. We use PS because it does what we need, not because we are fenced in to specific Windows formats. Proof is that PS on Macs is used a lot in the graphics industry.
3. Gimp is able to deal with the formats, but does not have the required functionality. Proof is that GIMP does not handle print and printing, CMYK and ICC workflows well.
It seems that if it dealt with point 3, GIMP would instantly garner the support of zillions of photographers out there.
This is not a signature.
actually, it isn't. you need to buy a license for it just like the mac & windows versions.
abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
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.
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.
Can the human eye distinguish betwen 24-bit and 16-bit color depth? For audio and the human ear version of this argument, I take the "yes" argument (depending on numerous factors, especially the high frequency quality of the source material), but I'd like to hear the argument for photo.
The way I understand the "RAW" argument is that it requires a conversion step -- which requires converting colors from one colorspace into another. There is nothing "missing" from the pallette on either side of the conversion, but the parameters involved in the conversion itself are open to interpretation, and the standardized process for converting happens to be encumbered by one or more patents, making this the sole domain of Adobe.
Now, if you want to talk "workflow", I'm sure you will find people who choose PS because that's where their experience lies, you will also find people who choose PS because it has a higher quality user interface. Again, for audio production, this can be a matter of opinion -- I prefer the workflow aspects of Magix to Cubase, for example, and the fact that one is a $100 program and the other is a $900 program doesn't enter into this evaluation. I don't doubt there are people who prefer working with GIMP. On the other hand, a co-worker whose specialty was graphic art, and who worked in a serious production environment, set me straight about just how many of the features of PS he actually used -- things that are supposed to be in that 'esoteric' featureset that 'nobody' uses more than a subset of? WRONG.
Then, I understood this from my years as a legal secretary -- the argument that people don't really use all the features of their wordprocessor, what a load of crap. There are folks out there who do indeed use pretty much every feature it's got.
Anyway, where was I? Oh, right, the argument between PS and everything else -- how much is based on technical arguments and how much is just hype? Which parts are due to intellectual property encumbrances, and which are due to the lack of participation in the development effort?
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
(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).
If you are truly a pro photographer than you time is worth a lot more than the purchase price of a decent iMac
And how is that going to help him save time? His flatbed scanner is still going to give him lousy quality. He still has to carry out color calibration for whatever capture device he uses. And he still has manually post-processs each slide.
Actually, with the Mac he is going to be worse off. For the price of an iMac, he could get a much more powerful Linux machine. Before he can do anything, he'll have to shell out some money for software. And he has a smaller range of scanners to choose from.
Linux (and other free unices) have their time and place, but as a professional photography scanning and retouching system it's just not ready yet. Does the GIMP even use ICC profiles?
Jeez: you rant and rave for two paragraphs about how supposedly un-ready Linux is for professional photography and then it turns out you don't even know whether Linux or the Gimp has color management. What about doing some background research before you dispense advice? I do have an iMac (and a Powerbook and an iBook).
There's a famous quote that gets thrown around quite a bit: "Linux is free only if your time has no value" - Jamie Zawinski
Zawinski is a UNIX-hating night-club owner who (according to his web site) spends hours wondering whether he has a brain disease because he sees funny colors when he presses on his eyeballs (in case you are wondering the same thing: you, you don't). That's not the kind of person you want to take advice from about what platform to use.
And just because companies promise to make your pain go away when you give them money doesn't mean they actually succeed. And by the time you have turned into a platform-X-expert and don't know much about other platforms (see above), you just assume that your way is the best way and will have turned into a zealous if uninformed advocate for your platform (see above again).
The sad fact is that slide scanning in particular, and image processing in general, is a lot of work on any platform. Doing it on Linux or Macintosh is a different experience. You get a lot more handholding on Macintosh, while on Linux, you have to learn more about what you are doing initially. On the other hand, for someone who actually understands image processingand may even develop image processing software, Linux is probably a more convenient and efficient platform.
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
I agree but /. !!!
Antarctic bird.....geesh dude, this is
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.
Please leave the Macintosh its market niche so that after Linux crushes Windows there will still be a place for Apple fanbois.
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.
Can you use linux for digital photography, yes you can. Can you get the best results using linux? No, you can't. The fact is most, if not all, drivers for photographic equipment are written for windows and macs.
I'm sure that a determined amature could push the limits under linux and get acceptable results, but they will not be as good as under windows. My current photographic printers are the Canon i9900 and Epson Phto R300. Both of them us very complex drivers to get their photographic outputs. Both of these printers do professional level prints that would be unavailable without the dedicated drivers.
I don't know of any camera manufacturer that makes linux drivers ether I know there are none available for my Nikon D70 or Sony DSC-828. Without these drivers you can't talk to the camera through the built in USB ports. Of course there really is no reason to do so. Everyone that is serous about photography uses an external card reader instead of hooking up their camera right to the computer. Hell, I've never hooked ether of my camera's up the any computer.
Gimp is a fine tool for what it does. But trying to use it for professional level work woudl be very fustrating. I is an excellent graphics program but it is no where near the level of Photoshop CS. Anyone who says it is simply doesn't know how to use photoshop or has no clue what they are talking about.
Photoshop also supports a wide range of 3rd party plugins too. These plugins are not going to be available under linux. For most among these plugins are ones that let you read and manpulate RAW camara images. Simply put, with out the abliltiy to use RAW images you will be limited to JPEGS, limiting the most powerful features of these cameras. There are some GNU plugins for some cameras but most of those are limited in the scope of what they can do.
In short, you can use linux but true professional level results will not be available to you.
Supporting World Peace Through Nuclear Pacification
To put this in terms non-photo geeks might understand:
[I]Where I'm from, professionals use professional equipments - from cameras to lens to light detectors to scanners to color-management gadgets to printers and so on.[/I]
Where I'm from, professionals use amateur equipment, and amateurs use professional equipment. It's completely backwards, but that's how it is here. Pro photographers usually have old instamatic cameras, and old retired people on bus trips all have Hasselblads or Rolleiflexes. It's very odd.
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".
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.
In this message you say:
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/etc/sysconfig/networks-scripts/ifcfg-eth0.locatio n1 ... locationN, and the same for /etc/resolv.conf, etc. My script relinked the proper links for the proper network, and away I went. I had to waste my time putting this together, whereas someone at Apple just did this for me.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=107617&cid=91
I liked fedora core 1, it works pretty well for me and runs my apps, but I was keeping my eye on the market and looking at alternatives as usual. This week I switched my work desktop from redhat/fedora core 1 to Suse 9.1 - I'm impressed by the fact that everything "just works" with suse, and that it comes with absolutely everything but the kitchen sink. I installed the nvidia drivers with one click in the yast menu, and will be installing ut2004 after finals...
OK, a couple of things, I was into Linux when I was in college and when I first got out. Today, I'm not impressed when "everything" "just works", up from "it works pretty well for me and runs my apps". Pretty well is not good enough, and "everything just works" is an expectation for me. I expect it of my car, my diswasher, and my computer. Trust me, getting excited about nvidia drivers when your in your 30s is kinda immature.
From this review of Suse 9.2, this review seems about as good as my experience with Linux ever got.
This reviewer was happy that this version of Linux came with a working battery level app. I ditched linux before such luxuries came around. I have 36 minutes before my PowerBook battery is at full charge. It also shows me the time to empty too when running on battery.
The reviewer says, "Using SuSE's powerful profile manager SCPM (System configuration profile management), I can swap almost effortlessly between network configurations".
Again, this is new to me for Linux. I like the "almost effortlessly" part. For me, when I go to a different network, I pick the location from the "Location" menu, and within 5 seconds or so I'm on the network. When I used Linux, I had symlinks to files for things like
This review seems candid and summarizes my experiences as well.
Not good enough. Sorry. Got better things to do with my time. I'm happy with Linux in my server rooms. No complaints once it is up and running, but for my day to day use, I prefer something a little more mature and polished.