Digital Photography with Linux: Reference Guide [Archive]

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cedm

26th of June 2008 (Thu), 06:22

Digital Photography with Linux: Reference Guide

Here's a list of recommended applications for photographers using Linux.
Rather than being extensive, the list focuses on applications best fitted for the job.

I tried to cover all area of interest.
Feel free to complete the list and share your tips. Thanks!

Photo Managers

- digiKam digiKam is an advanced digital photo management application with extensive editing options. It offers image enhancement tools such red-eye removal, color management, image filters, special effects and batch processing. DigiKam supports 16 bit/channel images.

Website: http://www.digikam.org/
Screenshots: http://www.digikam.org/drupal/node/323
Documentation: http://www.digikam.org/drupal/docs
Supported color depth: up to 16 bit/channel
Licence: open source
- F-Spot
F-Spot is a full-featured personal photo management application. It provides intuitive tools to help you share, touch-up, find and organize your images.

Website: http://www.f-spot.org/
Screenshots: http://www.f-spot.org/Features
Documentation: http://www.f-spot.org/User_Guide
Supported color depth: up to 8 bit/channel
Licence: open source
- gThumb gThumb is an image viewer and browser. You can organize and view images as catalogs, or as a slideshow, bookmark folders and catalogs, and add comments to images. gThumbs includes basic image editing.

Website: http://gthumb.sourceforge.net/
Screenshots: http://gthumb.sourceforge.net/screenshots.html
Supported color depth: up to 8 bit/channel
Licence: open source
- Google Picasa Picasa helps you instantly find, edit and share all the pictures on your computer. It automatically locates all your pictures and sorts them. Picasa makes it a snap to share your pictures (email, post to blog, and upload via Picasa Web Albums).

Website: http://picasa.google.com/linux/
Supported color depth: up to 8 bit/channel
Licence: closed source, freeware

Simple Photo Viewers

- Geeqie Geeqie is a lightweight image viewer. It supports EXIF, IPTC and XMP metadata browsing and editing, as well as, fast preview for raw image formats. Geeqie comes with tools for image comparison, sorting and managing photo collection.

Website: http://geeqie.sourceforge.net/
Screenshots: http://sourceforge.net/apps/trac/geeqie/wiki/screenshots
Supported color depth: up to 16 bit/channel
Licence: open source

- Eye of Gnome The Eye of GNOME (eog) image viewer is the official image viewer for the GNOME Desktop environment. With it, you can view single image files, as well as large image collections.

Website: http://www.gnome.org/projects/eog/
Screenshots: http://www.gnome.org/projects/eog/screenshots.html
Supported color depth: up to 8 bit/channel
Licence: open source
- Gwenview Gwenview is a fast and easy to use image viewer for KDE, featuring folder tree window, thumbnail view and basic lossless manipulations.

Website: http://gwenview.sourceforge.net/
Screenshots: http://gwenview.sourceforge.net/screenshots/
Licence: open source
Supported color depth: up to 8 bit/channel
Note: default image viewer for the KDE desktop

Raw Viewers/Converters

- UFRaw UFRaw is a utility to read and manipulate raw images from digital cameras. It can be used on its own or as a Gimp plug-in.

Website: http://ufraw.sourceforge.net/
Documentation: http://ufraw.sourceforge.net/Guide.html
Supported color depth: up to 16 bit/channel
Licence: open source
- Rawstudio Rawstudio is a program to read and manipulate RAW images from most digital cameras. It will convert your RAW files into JPEG, PNG or TIF images which you can then print or send to friends and clients.

Website: http://www.rawstudio.org/
Screenshots: http://www.rawstudio.org/screenshots.php
Supported color depth: up to 16 bit/channel
Licence: open source
- RawTherapee Raw Therapee is a RAW converter and digital photo processing software. It offers ICC color management, thumbnails browsing and numerous post processing in 16 bit / channel mode.

Website: http://www.rawtherapee.com/
Supported color depth: up to 16 bit/channel
Licence: closed source, freeware
- LightZone LightZone is a non-destructive RAW editor. It allows you to enhance photos in a simple and natural way. LightZone can create and apply pre-determined image transformations to an entire batch of images.

Website: http://www.lightcrafts.com/linux/
Supported color depth: up to 16 bit/channel
Licence: closed source, $199.95
- Bibble Lite/Pro Bibble is workflow and RAW conversion software designed to quickly and easily let you maximize the results from most major cameras and RAW formats.

Website: http://www.bibblelabs.com/
Supported color depth: up to 16 bit/channel
Licence: closed source, shareware $70 and $130 respectively

Image Manipulation & Photo Retouching

- GIMP GIMP is a popular free software for photo retouching, image composition and image authoring. It can be used as a simple paint program, an expert quality photo retouching program, an online batch processing system, a mass production image renderer or an image format converter.

Website: http://www.gimp.org/
Screenshots: http://www.gimp.org/screenshots/
Documentation: http://docs.gimp.org/
Tutorials: http://www.gimp.org/tutorials/ http://www.gimp-tutorials.com/
Supported color depth: up to 8 bit/channel
Licence: open source
- Krita Krita is a painting and image editing application for KDE. It contains both ease-of-use and fun features like guided painting and high-end features like support for 16 bit images, CMYK, L*a*b and even OpenEXR HDR images.

Website: http://www.koffice.org/krita/
Screenshots: http://www.koffice.org/krita/krita-screenshots/
Documentation: http://docs.kde.org/development/en/koffice/krita/
Supported color depth: up to 32 bit/channel
Licence: open source
- Cinepaint CinePaint is a deep paint image retouching tool that supports higher color fidelity than ordinary painting tools. CinePaint is used to retouch feature films and in pro photography. CinePaint opens high fidelity image file formats such as DPX, 16-bit TIFF, and OpenEXR, and conventional formats like JPEG and PNG.

Website: http://www.cinepaint.org/
Screenshots: http://www.cinepaint.org/pix/index.html
Documentation: http://www.cinepaint.org/docs/index.html
Supported color depth: up to 32 bit/channel
Licence: open source
- digiKam digiKam does not limit itself to photo & album management; it also provides extensive photo manipulation options (color management, exposure, levels, lens distortion correction, noise reduction, etc.). A true one-stop software solution for your photography needs.

Website: http://www.digikam.org/
Screenshots: http://www.digikam.org/drupal/node/323
Documentation: http://www.digikam.org/drupal/docs
Supported color depth: up to 16 bit/channel
Licence: open source
- Fotoxx Fotoxx is a small application to edit or enhance image files from digital cameras. It includes the usual tools for color and contrast enhancement, red-eye removal, sharpen, etc. plus HDR and panorama image compositing. Unlike similar applications, Fotoxx focuses on ease of use through a restricted set of options.

Website: http://kornelix.squarespace.com/fotoxx/
Supported color depth: up to 16 bit/channel
Licence: open source

HDR

- Qtpfsgui Qtpfsgui is an open source graphical user interface application that aims to provide a workflow for HDR imaging.

Website: http://qtpfsgui.sourceforge.net/
Screenshots: http://qtpfsgui.sourceforge.net/screenshots.php
Documentation: http://qtpfsgui.wiki.sourceforge.net/
Supported color depth: up to 32 bit/channel
Licence: open source
- Exposure Blend (plug-in for Gimp) exposure-blend is a GIMP plug-in for contrast blending 3 bracketed images.

Website: http://turtle.as.arizona.edu/jdsmith/exposure_blend.php
Supported color depth: up to 8 bit/channel (GIMP dependent)
Licence: open source

Panorama Stitching

- Hugin Hugin is panoramic imaging toolchain based on Panorama Tools. With it you can assemble a mosaic of photographs into a complete immersive panorama, stitch any series of overlapping pictures and more.

Website: http://hugin.sourceforge.net/
Screenshots: http://hugin.sourceforge.net/screenshots/
Documentation: http://hugin.sourceforge.net/tutorials/index.shtml
Supported color depth: up to 16 bit/channel
Licence: open source
- Pandora (plug-in for Gimp) Pandora is a GIMP script which helps in stitching together multiple images to make a panorama.

Website: http://shallowsky.com/software/pandora/
Supported color depth: up to 8 bit/channel (GIMP dependent)
Licence: open source

Batch Processing

- Phatch Phatch is an easy-to-use Photo Batch Processor and Exif Renamer with a nice graphical user interface. It can batch resize, rotate, apply shadows, perspective, rounded corners, ... and do much more actions in minutes.

Website: http://photobatch.stani.be/
Screenshots: http://photobatch.wikidot.com/interface
Documentation: http://photobatch.wikidot.com/tutorials
Supported color depth: up to 32 bit/channel
Licence: open source

- ImageMagick ImageMagick is a software suite to create, edit and compose bitmap images. Use it to translate, flip, mirror, rotate, scale, shear and transform images, adjust image colors, apply various special effects, or draw text, lines, polygons, ellipses and Bézier curves.

Website: http://www.imagemagick.org/
Documentation: http://www.imagemagick.org/Usage/
Supported color depth: up to 32 bit/channel ?
Licence: open source

- digiKam and GIMP also provide extensive batch process capabilities.

Color Management Profiler

- LPROF LPROF is the only open source ICC profiler with a graphical user interface. It can be used to create ICC version 2 compliant profiles for cameras, scanners and monitors.

Website: http://lprof.sourceforge.net/
Screenshots: http://sourceforge.net/project/screenshots.php?group_id=146038
Licence: open source
- Argyll CMS Argyll is an open source, ICC compatible color management system. It supports accurate ICC profile creation for scanners, CMYK printers, film recorders and calibration and profiling of displays.

Website: http://www.argyllcms.com/
Licence: open source
- GAMMApage GAMMApage is a small gamma-adjusting utility for your monitor. Able to adjust gamma on the fly and save settings to be used at each login (on a per-user basis. GAMMApage will only write to the user's home directory.)

Website: http://www.pcbypaul.com/software/GAMMApage.html
Licence: open source

File Recovery

- PhotoRec PhotoRec is a data recovery software tool designed to recover lost files (including JPEG & CR2) from digital camera memory, hard disks and CD-ROMs. PhotoRec ignores the filesystem and goes after the underlying data, so it will still work even if your media's filesystem has been severely damaged or re-formatted.

Website: http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec
Licence: open source

Print

- PhotoPrint PhotoPrint is a utility designed to assist in the process of printing digital photographs. It allows you to print photographs 1-up, 2-up, 4-up or with any user-selectable number of rows and columns, create posters, split over several pages. PhotoPrint sends 16-bit data to the printer, to avoid "contouring" problems in smooth gradients.

Website: http://blackfiveimaging.co.uk/index.php?article=02Software%2F01PhotoPrint
Supported color depth: up to 16 bit/channel
Licence: open source

Using Windows-compatible applications on Linux

It is possible to run some applications written for Windows on Linux through Wine*.

The following softwares have been reported to work well:

- Adobe Photoshop version 7 to CS2
- Noise Ninja Standalone version 2.1
- Adobe DNG Converter

While Wine gets frequent updates and the number of supported applications grows with each release, most softwares written for Windows are still unusable on Linux.

(*) Wine is an emulation software that provide a compatibility layer to run Windows applications on a Linux system. The Windows operating system itself is therefore not needed.

Get the softwares / installation

Most of these applications are available from your distribution software channel and requires no manual installation. Select the applications you want from your package manager and click the install button. You may have to enable extra repositories to access them all. Please refer to your distribution manual for more details.

For softwares not available through your distribution software channel, refer to the application's website and follow their instructions.

Further Reading

- Linux Photography (blog)

Linux Photography is a blog dedicated to digital photography on Linux. Its author, Joel Cornuz, discusses color management, workflow, photography techniques, printing and much more. Think of it as a giant tutorial.

Website: http://jcornuz.wordpress.com/

- Gimp 2 For Photographers (book)

GIMP 2 for Photographers" has evolved from the classroom materials which the author developed and taught in courses and workshops on image editing with the GIMP. It covers the basics of image editing and guides the reader through the functions and tools of the GIMP from simple adjustments to more advanced techniques of working with layers and masks

Website: http://www.rockynook.com/books/1-933952-03-2.html

dpastern

26th of June 2008 (Thu), 07:23

cedm

26th of June 2008 (Thu), 09:39

Good idea - you missed gimpshop though under image manipulation etc. I'd also recommend xnview and irfanview for inclusion in the photo manager section. Might not be bad to mention dcraw in the RAW section, since it's the daddy of them all :)
Dave

IrfanView.. well, it's a Windows application, so it doesn't really belong here, and I'm not fond of adding all "wine-compatible" apps here either.

Gimpshop? I'm only worried that is not actively developed anymore. It's still using Gimp's old code base and I saw no mention that they would re-sync it with the current Gimp tree. Do you have any news?

I added xnview.

dcraw... yes... but it it's mostly used as a library which other applications depend on. I prefer to opt it out to keep the list readable (not going to list imageMagick either for the same reason, we would end up with a 3 pages list if we go this path).

dpastern

26th of June 2008 (Thu), 16:24

Fair enough. I was unaware that gimpshop was no longer being actively developed, that's a bit sad. That said, I think Krita is only going to keep continuing to eat into the GIMP users portion. I was sure that Irfanview offered a Linux version, but it seems not. xnview it is then.

Dave

bomberman

28th of June 2008 (Sat), 02:33

Thanks... This is a useful thread for me. I guess not too many other people are interested, but at least you'll get a free bump.

cedm

28th of June 2008 (Sat), 03:09

Thanks... This is a useful thread for me. I guess not too many other people are interested, but at least you'll get a free bump.

Thanks bomberman.

I just added Fotoxx and PhotoPrint to the list, as well as a quick description for each softwares. Enjoy!

scokar

29th of June 2008 (Sun), 02:13

both GNOME and KDE programs will also work with either desktop as long as their supporting libraries are installed. more choices.

javaprog

1st of July 2008 (Tue), 09:16

TTGator

1st of July 2008 (Tue), 10:39

Never used Fotoxx... is the HDR processing any good? Comparable at all to Photomatix?

darosk

1st of July 2008 (Tue), 10:57

V. useful thread - thanks a lot :)

cedm

2nd of July 2008 (Wed), 04:29

digiKam has batch RAW conversion

Based on the link I would not call Fotoxx an image editor on par with gimp or krita. An Image editor should have brushes or pens or something similar. with the exception of HDR and panorama stitching digiKam can do everything shown in that Fotoxx link and more.

I wasn't quite sure how to categorize Fotoxx, it doesn't fit well in any of these categories, yet it's not specific enough to have a category of its own. "Image Manipulation" is probably the "less worse" match.

digiKam can indeed do a lot of things and a better description of it would make it better justice for sure. I may also add it to the "Image Manipulation" category, or just review the categorization altogether. I put this list up pretty quickly and tried to keep it brief. Feel free to provide some copy :)

cedm

2nd of July 2008 (Wed), 04:39

Never used Fotoxx... is the HDR processing any good? Comparable at all to Photomatix?

I've never used Photomatix, so I can't tell.

As for Fotoxx, I added it to the list mostly because of its originality. The user interface is weird and doesn't match the rest of the desktop, but it's a no brainer to use: all tools are a click away. Very different from the traditional image manipulation softwares (Photoshop, Krita, Gimp...).

I haven't tested Fotoxx enough to tell about the output quality. Try and let me know, ok :)

cedm

6th of July 2008 (Sun), 05:03

Alright, quite a few more updates...

- removed XnView from the "Photo Viewers" list (development stalled 3 years ago).
- added Cinepaint under the "Image Manipulation" list.
- added digiKam under both "Photo Management" & "Image Manipulation" list
- improved description for some of the applications
- added new category "Further Reading"
- added supported color depth information to all application (please help me correct any error).

and a few more goodies will come later... :)

dpastern

10th of July 2008 (Thu), 00:20

Just because something isn't actively developed doesn't mean that it's not usable.

Dave

cedm

10th of July 2008 (Thu), 02:38

Just because something isn't actively developed doesn't mean that it's not usable.
Dave

I've never said so. I'm compiling a limited list of applications best fitted for the job, not an extensive one. I see no point listing all possibilities for the sake of it.

In this context, I prefer to promote up-to-date applications over oldies any day. Especially when these recent applications do everything the old ones did and in a more pleasant way. Xnview's main interest is its large support for eclectic formats, but in a photography-related environment it's close to useless. Not to mention the lack of updates poses security concerns.

cedm

15th of July 2008 (Tue), 11:46

I added new category: Batch Processing.

It's still incomplete and notably miss the RAW softwares listed above.

Give it some review and come back to comment, thanks!

bieber

25th of August 2008 (Mon), 22:59

Any chance we could get someone to sticky this thread? I keep having to go searching to find it, which is a little tricky when you can't remember the title...

dow

21st of November 2008 (Fri), 11:53

Any chance we could get someone to sticky this thread? I keep having to go searching to find it, which is a little tricky when you can't remember the title...

+ 1 here. Definitely a great resource.

Bump for a Sticky request. :D

cedm

22nd of November 2008 (Sat), 03:01

There we go, we're a sticky now, under Canon Digital Photography Forums (http://photography-on-the.net/forum/index.php) > 'Sharing Knowhow' section (http://photography-on-the.net/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=7) > RAW, Post Processing and Printing (http://photography-on-the.net/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=18) > Computers (http://photography-on-the.net/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=129)

Thanks to the moderators!

::John::

22nd of November 2008 (Sat), 15:59

strmrdr

28th of November 2008 (Fri), 01:49

cedm

29th of November 2008 (Sat), 00:03

Photoshop cs2 works great under wine
http://news.softpedia.com/news/Install-Photoshop-CS2-on-Your-Ubuntu-PC-77260.shtml

With a little work noise ninja plugin will also work fine.
noise ninja standalone works just by installing it.

Thanks. I added a new section about running Windows softwares through Wine.

Let me know if there is any other major photo-related software that works well through Wine.

strmrdr

29th of November 2008 (Sat), 10:01

Thanks. I added a new section about running Windows softwares through Wine.

Let me know if there is any other major photo-related software that works well through Wine.
Elements 7 is the next goal but it is about 6-9 months out.
CS3 mostly works but is not stable.
CS4 will likely never work because of the openGL acceleration.

em21701

27th of January 2009 (Tue), 12:41

cedm

30th of January 2009 (Fri), 01:00

Argyll CMS (argyllcms.com) should be added to the Color management section. It natively supports many colorimeters, creates and installs color profiles in linux. I used it with my Spyder2 and the results were amazing.

Eric

Thanks, I'll add it to the list by this weekend.

Btw, can you create a color profile with Spyder2 using Linux only? That'd be valuable info to add here too.

Heffo_J

13th of March 2009 (Fri), 02:53

Hi there,

I'm new to the forum and use a Canon 1000D (from Santa). I also use Linux Mint.

I have followed the development of Fotoxx for a while now. It seems to be moving in leaps and bounds with new features added with each release. It is still a little rough.

I use Geeqie as my viewer. It has forked from another stagnant view GQview (I think it is). It handles RAW and has a convenient link page to your favourite editors.

Best regards
John H

cedm

13th of March 2009 (Fri), 04:22

cedm

7th of August 2009 (Fri), 09:36

Been a while since I last updated this thread...

I just added PhotoRec (http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec) under category "File Recovery" (new), and Geeqie (http://geeqie.sourceforge.net/) as Image Viewer.

Geeqie is still in beta, but it's definitely worth trying. I use it as my default RAW browser/viewer without any issue.

In other news, RawTherapee (http://www.rawtherapee.com/) is now available in version 2.4 and comes with:
Exif/IPTC support
Theme switching
Improved GUI layout
Improved filebrowser
Ranking support
Basic file operations possible (delete, remove, rename)
Filtering based on Exif data
Configurable thumbnail caching
Live thumbnails (showing the images in the processed state)
Resizable thumbnails
Configurable thumbnail layout (left - right, top - down)
Basic batch processing
Controllable workqueue
Copy/Paste processing profiles (or only parts of them)
Direct sending of images to the workqueue
Improved auto-exposure and spot white balance
"Send to Editor" feature (Gimp, Photoshop, custom editor)Panorama sticher Hugin (http://hugin.sourceforge.net/) reached version 0.80, improving with:
Fast preview window
Celeste sky identification
New panorama projections
Batch processor
Translation for Slovenian and Chinese TraditionaldigiKam (http://www.digikam.org/) is nearing version 1.0 with the release of a beta 3 last month. This version will include a new batch queue manager, a first run assistant, support for PGF wavelet format, liquid rescale, XMP metadata, etc.

Enjoy!

Spacemunkie

30th of August 2009 (Sun), 07:25

This is excellent. Just installed Ubuntu on one of my PCs and this is a great resource for a total Linux noob. Ta :)

photogs_spouse

1st of September 2009 (Tue), 13:20

Following tip is originally from message 11 here: http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=277806
Gimp uses "Scripts" rather than "Actions" as in Photoshop.
Differences between PS actions and GIMP scripts http://osp.wikidot.com/gimp-scripts

There are several different script languages and you might need more downloads to handle the Python-Fu versions. Script-Fu should be fine.

Gimp Plugin Registry http://registry.gimp.org/
a search for GIMP FX will net you one install to get tons of scripts.

Word to the wise: pay attention to script versions because the older the script, the less likely it may be that it will work in newer GIMP versions.
----------------------

We had no end of difficulties with WINE, so we installed VirtualBox instead.
You then install the desired version of Windows into that VirtualBox area and our Canon software works fine.
Why? DPP has the settings for camera owner in the software, rather than in hardware and no plans for a linux version when I checked earlier this year.
Personally, I use the VirtualBox for much less software than I believed I would.
(A recipe manager, a genealogy program, birding software, and ,rarely, DPP.)

Amamba

4th of September 2009 (Fri), 15:06

Every year or so, I start playing around with Linux, mainly out of sheer curiosity rather than anything else - I honestly think XP is the best home user OS I've ever dealt with, even though most other Windows flavors were total or partial POS...

My previous experience with Linux was mixed, at best. Some distros didn't run well at all, some ran sort of, I was never able to get FlashPlayer or Shockwave working, printing was always a challenge, sound was a lottery, etc.. I guess the longest one was Ubuntu 6.x, just as a backup measure until I grew tired of video screw ups on my ancient Riva TNT2 card, fighting with Grub's default boot list after each upgrade, and so on, and removed it completely.

Well, I am now on my 4th day of trying OpenSUSE 11.1, and it surely looks like there was a lot of progress over the last couple of years. It's much easier to install and configure than any of the past distros I tried, it's very stable, and doing simple things is finally getting, well, simple.

So, I found this thread... the selection is huge, but what I am really interested in is not just the list of available programs, but the personal opinions of people who used them. What's a better Raw program (I tend towards UFraw). What's a better viewer ? How does Gimp compare to Krita ? Was anyone able to run PS7 under Wine ? Any tips & tricks ? And the most important question - is there anything on the Linux side, photography wise, that is unavailable in Windows or would cost major $ ?

cedm

5th of September 2009 (Sat), 01:53

So, I found this thread... the selection is huge, but what I am really interested in is not just the list of available programs, but the personal opinions of people who used them. What's a better Raw program (I tend towards UFraw). What's a better viewer ? How does Gimp compare to Krita ? Was anyone able to run PS7 under Wine ? Any tips & tricks ? And the most important question - is there anything on the Linux side, photography wise, that is unavailable in Windows or would cost major $ ?

Which software is the best for the job is a matter of personal preference, really. There are tons of imaging software on Linux but I only listed the most compelling solutions here. All these are good at what they are made for.

To process raw files I also like to use UFraw and then finish the work in Gimp, but I know many people like more integrated workflow solutions or application that mimics Lightroom. RawTherapee does that. Some other people only swear by Bibble. When it comes to integrated workflow, digiKam is probably the most complete solution. That said, all the open source Raw converters are based on the same DCraw library.

Krita goals are quite different from Gimp, so they are not direct competitors (unlike Gimp and Photoshop for instance). Krita focuses on painting whereas Gimp focuses on image retouching. However Krita can be of interest to photographers for its native 32-bit/channel support. Gimp is still 8-bit/channel only, although 16-bit is progressively been implemented as we speak (partially coming in Gimp 2.8 and hopefully complete by v3.0).

For deep color depth support, Cinepaint is also an alternative, but the user interface is far from being friendly (it's actually a fork of Gimp from the 90s).

Photoshop 7 works very well through Wine. My wife is using it and has never complained about it.

As for your most important question, softwares developed for Linux are mostly all open source applications made to run on any Unix system (we call that POSIX compliance) rather than being restricted to a single OS. More and more of these are ported over to Windows too nowadays (the whole KDE 4 environment -including digiKam and Krita-, Gimp, UFRaw, etc.).

You could run most of these software on Windows too, but they are much better integrated to Unix systems and desktop environments as they are built for them in the first place.

As far as money is concerned, well I'm sure you already know open source applications are FOC. That you won't be forced to buy an upgrade of your Raw application because you got a new, unsupported, camera.

All that said, just use whatever you're comfortable with and does the job. What matters is the end result, not the tools you used.

Amamba

5th of September 2009 (Sat), 10:24

...
Photoshop 7 works very well through Wine. My wife is using it and has never complained about it.
...

I am getting an error message when I try to run PS under wine, something about not being able to load personalization settings.

I tried DigiKam. A very nice application, however CR2 files that were underexposed looked weird when exposure was bumped up, with lighter areas getting sort of "neon glow" effect. Had the same thing in UFraw although less profound. It may be that I just don't know how to do it right yet, I get spoiled by DPP.

cedm

6th of September 2009 (Sun), 04:09

I am getting an error message when I try to run PS under wine, something about not being able to load personalization settings.

You may need to tweak wine settings to make it work. Or you can use crossover (http://www.codeweavers.com/products/cxlinux/) instead, which will take care of the configuration for you.