Digital Photography with Linux: Application 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
- Shotwell
Shotwell lets you import photos from disk or camera, organize and view them in various ways, and export them to share with others. Editing is non-destructive. You can rotate, crop, reduce red-eye, and adjust the exposure, saturation, tint, and temperature of each photo.
Website: http://www.yorba.org/shotwell/
Screenshots: http://www.yorba.org/shotwell/
Documentation: http://trac.yorba.org/wiki/UsingShotwell0.7
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
- Rapid Photo Downloader
Import your images efficiently and reliably with Rapid Photo Downloader. This application generates meaningful, user configurable file and folder names. It can also download images from multiple devices simultaneously and perform backups automatically as photos are being imported.
Website: http://damonlynch.net/rapid/index.html
Screenshots: http://damonlynch.net/rapid/features.html
Licence: open source
Tethered Shooting (remote capture via PC)
- Entangle
Entangle allows to trigger the shutter of your camera from the computer, features live preview of scene before shooting and control of all camera settings from computer. It is fully colour managed, auto-detecting system monitor profile and applying the neccessary transforms when displaying images.
Website: http://entangle-photo.org/
Screenshots: http://entangle-photo.org/screenshots/
Supported color depth: up to 16 bit/channel
Licence: open source
- digiKam
digiKam offers remote capture via its "Import" facility ("Import", then "Cameras", select your camera model (auto-detected), then click the "Capture" button).
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
- Darktable
Darktable proposes tethered shooting since v0.6. (Open the "device" tab (top left), under your camera name, click the "tether shoot" button. Then open the camera settings" tab (top right) and click on the "capute image(s)" button).
Website: http://darktable.sourceforge.net/
Documentation: http://darktable.sourceforge.net/documentation.shtml
Supported color depth: up to 16 bit/channel
Licence: open source
- gPhoto2
Command line interface only. Visit site for details.
Website: http://www.gphoto.org/doc/remote/
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 …c/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
- Darktable
Darktable is a photography workflow application: a virtual lighttable and darkroom. It enables you to develop raw images and enhance them. All editing is fully non-destructive.
Website: http://darktable.sourceforge.net/
Documentation: http://darktable.sourceforge.net/documentation.shtml
Supported color depth: up to 16 bit/channel
Licence: open source
- 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: open source (since version 3)
- Corel AfterShot Pro
AfterShot Pro is a fast, flexible photo workflow solution that combines robust photo management, advanced non-destructive adjustments and complete RAW processing.
Website: http://www.corel.com …index.jsp?pid=prod4670071
Supported color depth: up to 16 bit/channel
Licence: closed source, $100
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.krita.org/
Screenshots: http://krita.org/screenshots
Documentation: http://userbase.kde.org/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://www.kornelix.com/fotoxx.html
Supported color depth: up to 16 bit/channel
Licence: open source
- Tintii
Tintii is a small application that does only one thing, but does it well: it takes full colour photos and processes them into black and white with some select regions highlighted in colour. The technique is known as colour popping or selective colouring - tintii makes it easy.
Website: http://www.indii.org/software/tintii
Licence: open source
HDR
- Luminance HDR
Luminance HDR 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/?page_id=35
Documentation: http://qtpfsgui.wiki.sourceforge.net/
Supported color depth: up to 32 bit/channel
Licence: open source
- Exposure Blending (standalone or as plug-in for digiKam)
Exposure Blending fuses bracketed images with different exposure to make pseudo HDR images. It can also be used to merge focus bracketed stack to get a single image with increased depth of field.
Website: http://kipi-plugins.org
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
- dispcalGUI
dispcalGUI is a GUI frontend for the Argyll CMS, which helps to calibrate and profile your display using a measurement device.
Website: http://hoech.net/dispcalGUI/
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.shtml
Licence: open source
Backup Tools
- Déjà Dup
Déjà Dup is a simple backup tool. It hides the complexity of backing up the Right Way (encrypted, off-site, and regular). It supports local, remote, or cloud backup locations (e.g. Amazon S3), compresses and encrypts your data, provides incremental backups and schedule options.
Website: https://launchpad.net/deja-dup
Screenshots: http://live.gnome.org/DejaDup/Screenshots
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 …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
- Google Picasa
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://oreilly.com/catalog/9781933952031/