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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
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.
...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.
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!
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.
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
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.
"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?
I also agree. As much as people want to mod the parent (as well as the two current replies) down as "off topic" or "troll", the glaring reality is that I'd bet that professional photographers are probably the least represented amongst the Linux installed base.
That said, as much respect as I have for the accomplishments of "The Gimp", you have to understand that on the Mac (and Windows), there are widely supported and understood color management systems (ColorSync, for example) and image formats that Linux currently doesn't offer analogs for.
As much as you hate to admit it, Linux isn't perfect, and photography may be one of the places that Linux doesn't quite make the grade in.
Yet...
bash-3.00$ uname -a
SunOS panda 5.10 Generic sun4u sparc SUNW,Ultra-2
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.
I AM where he is and I have a solution to his problem.
no operating system on the planet is going to fix low end scanning hardware. Hell I even tried a $1200.00 agfa scanner and still had marginal results.
the ONLY solution to scanning slides correctly is the $5200.00 FUJI slide and negative scanner.
I am renting one for $80.00 a day from a local photographer that was willing to rent me his.
I dont care if you have a cluster of Cray supercomputers, a flastbed scanner is going to do a crappy job at scanning slides.
i have no idea why linux is even brought up in this question, it has nothing to do with an operating system and has everything to do with the scanning hardware you are using.
It's like videotaping a wedding, if you use a $500.00 garbage palmcorder you will get a crappy wedding video. use a Canon XL1s or XL2 and you get quality video, shoot in 35mm film at 24fps with $150,000.00 lenses and you get fantastic.
scanning with low end gets you low end images.
Yes, a $1000.00 scanner is LOW END.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
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.