Transition to linux complete, happy as a clam

[benca1]

Not a fun transition, let me tell you. But I'm a smarter man now then before ;-)

My workflow is now totally automated. Once I plug my camera in, I launch a script that asks me to name a directory, and everything on my CF card is downloaded into that directory. Then, automagically, every file is renamed according to the EXIF header information contained in every image. The format I follow is this, 2003-11-08++15-05-49.jpg, which allows me to quickly find images of a certain time of day or date. Once this all done, I launch another script to generate 160 pixel thumbnails, a index.html page, and then when everything hits 650 MB, it all gets burned to a CDR. I like the automatic webpage with thumbnails, because it allows for easy navigation anywhere at anytime.

I also made my own website, and everything is automatically copied to my web server published folder, and converted to 800X600 resolutions.

Finally, any 'keepers' are touched up with The Gimp (Photoshop equivalent) with levels adjustments and unsharp mask.

Benefits for me over Windows:
1) Cost (what prompted a move to linux, everything is free)
2) Easy and free webserver, coupled with dynamic dns, and a cable or dsl account allows for easy family sharing. http://www.dyndns.org/
3) Everything is automatic.
4) Camera software is superior then what Canon provides (haven't tried breezebrowser)
5) Best of all, 2D acceleration is vastly superior for me with a GeForce card then under WindowsXP.

Drawbacks:
1) Learning curve. I couldn't overstate that.

Here's the resources:

http://www.varp.net/photos/dps.html
I copied and the altered his scripts for image renaming and index generation. Nice guy, great photographer.

http://cs.uhh.hawaii.edu/~jeschke/photography/articles/gimp/tutorials.shtml
Gimp tutorial, nice to have moving from Photoshop. The Gimp user interface is different.

Finally the software:

http://www.gphoto.org/
Works flawlessly with the Canon G3. You can use the powerful command line for automation or 'gtkam' for a easy interface.

http://www.gentoo.org/
My OS of choice now.

http://www.apache.org and gimp.org
Web server and image manipulaiton software.

And my favorite gem:
http://www.imagemagick.org/
Which allows for fast and whiz-bang command line control of everything image related.

For whatever it's all worth...

[FrankTek]

FYI, for those Windows users out there, you can accomplish much of the same automated workflow with some great shareware and freeware utilities:

Breeze Systems Downloader Pro - download images with EXIF naming; allows scripting
http://www.breezesys.com/Downloader/index.htm

Breeze Systems Breezebrowser - view, manipulate, convert (RAW) images, renaming, publish to HTML, print contact sheets
http://www.breezesys.com/BreezeBrowser/index.htm

Irfanview (free) - image viewer, editor; allows batch processing from the command line
http://www.irfanview.com

GIMP (free) - windows port of an open source Photoshop alternative
http://www.gimp.org/~tml/gimp/win32/


I personally find the Downloader/Breezebrowser combo fantastic - vastly superior to Canon's bundled software. Unless you're looking to host your own web server I see no advantages in moving to linux.

[benca1]

I hear great thing about breezebrowser. Irfanview is fantastic. However, it's still not GQview on linux, which is the best image viewer I've used since the Macintosh shareware, JPEGView.

The GIMP is available on Windows, unfortunately it's an older version missing numerous bells and whistles. The current rev, 1.3.22 is much much better. Particulary for those coming from Photoshop.

Of course, there's always the OS debates, but I went to linux from Windows due to the cost of running Windows. 400 bucks for Office, 600 bucks for Photoshop, 300 for the OS, etc, etc, etc. What did it for me was having to pay several times over for the same software which was merely bought by 3 successive comanpies. The same ole same ole. A friend just said, do it on linux and don't worry about it. Shoot, you can run Windows applications nearly as fast with a free emulator called wine.

Not to mention the vastly superior security and performance.

I think, fundamtnetally, the switch is worth if you're either a) broke, or b) a major geek. I qualify on both counts. ;-)

For the price of a TV Tuner card, 45 bucks, I have better then TiVo. As an astronomy buff I now have access to scientific software unavailable on Windows. Finally, without DVD restrictions, I've copied my DVD and CD collection to disk as a central media repository for the family. There's all sorts of geek factors involved with using linux that are never thought of...

[JayB]

Do you work with RAW files in Gimp, and if so where did you get the converter.

Regards

JayB
(Canon G5)

[benca1]

Hey Jay, I don't do RAW. But if I did, I could work with it in GIMP:

http://www.cybercom.net/~dcoffin/dcraw/

The author claims to get better quality image production out of it then the software the Canon provides...

[JayB]

Thanks for the info re Raw files. Now to grab the "c" code and compile.

Jay

[marcel wouters]

Ben,
thanks a lot for sharing your experience. I read a little of Gentoo pages, is that really so easy to implement and maintain?
I will get a new PC and plan to install Linux on my old one (for learning).
I actually use Dcraw under Win98se so this should work for me if Gimp is ICC aware!

[pradeep1]

Yes, there is a heavy geek factor involved in working with Linux. I personally run RedHat 8.0 workstation on an old machine. Learning curve is high. GIMP is interesting. Do most of my work in Windows 2000/XP Pro.

I am not sure what percentage of the users of this board would have the patience to learn Linux. Then again, we do have a lot of geekiness to spare, so there may be some converts if the price of maintaining a legal digital workshop gets out of hand.

[sean_]

I've been using Linux for quite a while now (current distribution flavour is Gentoo), and when considering the G3, Linux support was something that I looked into. gphoto handles the G3 without any problems, although these days I've almost completely moved to using a CF reader.

I also use GIMP to handle picture cleanup, although I haven't automated things as heavily as the original poster. Mostly because the majority of the pictures I take are still crap, and I'd rather just sort out the ones that are worthy during the initial copy phase.

As far as photo gallerys go, I like linpha ... you can see what it looks like here: http://sean.gutenpress.org

Just thought I'd throw in my 2c as a Linux person :)

[benca1]

marcel wouters wrote:
Ben,
thanks a lot for sharing your experience. I read a little of Gentoo pages, is that really so easy to implement and maintain?
I will get a new PC and plan to install Linux on my old one (for learning).
I actually use Dcraw under Win98se so this should work for me if Gimp is ICC aware!

Oh good, I'm glad it was interesting. Gentoo is frustrating, easy and hard to install - an adventure. More fun if you have standard hardware like a IDE drive, Nvidia or ATI based video card, and no ISA cards like an old modem. And it's pure hell for a laptop. But everything is fixable, do-able, and attaintable.

As for maintaining, and I can't exaggerate this; gentoo linux is easier then Windows. One command and your system goes out to the internet, downloads source code (checked against a database of md5 sums for authentication), compiles it based specifically on your hardware (not the lowest common denominator), and installs it. New system without even a reboot. Now that's a 'gee whiz' factor!

Linux is a challenge, but for those with the inclination, it's a blast and a education.

There's numerous image editing programs, it's just that the GIMP is king. There's also the light and friendly XV and EE.

Ben

[rock808]

Hello! I'm also a long time Linux user who recently got a G3.

I've been using gphoto2 from the command line to retrieve/delete
pictures from the G3, but I'm also interested in a way to be able to
capture images (have a script that takes a new picture every 60 seconds or so).

Has anyone been able to do this on Linux?

thanks,
david