Slashdot Mirror
Linux Alternatives To Apple's Aperture
somethingkindawierd writes "An experiment focusing on open source tools for Ubuntu Linux to compete with Aperture on the Mac. The author didn't think he would find a worthwhile open source solution, but to his surprise he found some formidable raw processing tools. A good read for any Linux fan or photographer looking for capable and inexpensive tools"
F-Spot, The default photo editor that comes with Ubuntu 8.04, was quickly discarded. [FOSS]
Picasa, Really liked the application overall. I crop all my photos to the golden ratio of 1.62:1, so this limitation is unacceptable. [NOT FOSS]
LightZone, very similar to both Aperture and Adobe's Lightroom. Costs $200 and is not open source. No online support forum.
Bibble, very fast and it only costs $130. It does not however have any photo-management capabilities. No tagging, project management, or meta data editing. [NOT FOSS]
Raw Therapee, raw photo processor, free. It does not, however, run on Mac OS X. Does not manage projects. And it does not work with anything but raw photos, so it will not allow for processing jpegs or tiffs
Qtpfsgui, another useful application. HDR tool for Ubuntu Linux, Macintosh, and Windows.
The result:
There isn't an all-in-one package that will do the trick, but by combining Ubuntu's file manager Nautilus for project management, Raw Therapee for raw processing, and the Gimp for non-raw processing, just about everything I do in Aperture can be done on Ubuntu Linux using free and open source solutions.
Aperture's "library" is just a folder; Use "Show Package contents" from "Get Info" and copy all the originals wherever you want.
I immediately subconsciously discredited the author when he stated that the golden ratio was a requirement.
Apparently, your subconscious also posted this to slashdot.
More
What, has no-one mentioned digiKam yet?
What a terrible omission from the review.
Take a look, it's really good.
"RAW" photos are a lossless capture, which means they are larger files (bad) but with few of the artifacts produced by JPEG compression, and thus your editing options are greatly increased (good).
The exact details of the format depend on the make and even the model of camera you're using; a low-end "point and shoot" camera seldom provides RAW output (see recent Slashdot article on FOSS firmware that adds RAW support to higher-end Canon P&S cameras, however).
A modern digital camera will also add a nice chunk of metadata to each image, giving the details of its exposure. The main difference between a FILL manager and a PHOTO manager is the latter's awareness of, and ability to use, this metadata in a "workflow."
By "workflow" we mean the situation where a professional photographer will routinely generate thousands of images at a wedding, and will want to pick through them to find images worth further refinement, apply a set of transforms (crop, tweak the exposure, sharpen 0.02%, yada yada) to them in large batches, but SELECTIVELY, to produce a finished body of quality work.
Managing those images only with a file manager would be nightmarish; being able to select just the images that were shot with Lens A to apply a certain transform means you can automate the process, go have pizza while the mass of bits gets twiddled, then come back and get creative with the results.
"Ain't no right way to do a wrong thing."
I don't know why the author thinks that Raw Therapee can't process JPEGs or TIFFs. Just go into the preferences screen, uncheck "Show only RAW files", and you're set.
Also missing from the comparison: Rawstudio and UFRaw.
If you're interested in RAW processing on Linux, there's an excellent blog called Linux Photography about this very subject.
I couldn't possibly fail to disagree with you less.