MikeBrum.com

I’ve been using various linuxes for a while. Until recently, they always supplemented my Windows machines.

I now have Ubuntu installed on an IBM ThinkPad (lenovo T60 for those interested). The immediate benefits (unrelated to photography) are great battery life over running Windows on the same box, a more responsive system in general and a more stable machine overall. But I’ve always relied on Adobe software for my image editing and I didn’t know if Ubuntu could scale to the task (and I didn’t want to dual-boot or bother with Wine). I went on a small trip this past weekend (Thurs – Sun) and had the opportunity to try it out.

First, I shoot RAW, so I knew I couldn’t just use GIMP start-to-finish and call it a day. I basically needed two pieces of software (or one that did both of the major tasks well): one for browsing a large collection of RAW files fairly quickly to allow me to weed through the keepers and junk and another for actually processing the images.

For the browser, I’ve settled on gThumb Image Viewer (v2.10.6). It’s very intuitive and I had no problems using it without RTFM’ing. The downside is that it’s a bit slow (compared to what I’ve been used to in Bridge). I would like to hope that successive versions speed this up – time will tell.

For processing the RAW files, I’ve been using RawTherapee (v2.2) (http://www.rawtherapee.com/ – also available for Windows). It definitely has a similar feel to ACR (to me at least) and I was able to hit the ground running. I think the results were really good and I was happy with my experience with the software. One important thing to note is that the software is being actively developed (the developer responds directly to comments and questions in the software’s forum) and a new beta version was released recently. In addition to that, the developer has stated that if he’s no longer able to develop the software that the source will be released under GPL – which is pretty awesome. Anyone that’s used Sourceforge to find software knows how much of a pain it is to find software that’s no longer being developed that could really shine with a bit of TLC.

The only complaint I have with RawTherapee is that the images it produces are not quite the expected dimensions. A RAW file will contain data for more than the dimensions that the vendor states. For instance, if Canon says that your image will be 3522 x 2348, the RAW file may contain data for 3518 x 2344 or 3514 x 2340, etc. This isn’t a bug with the software per se (the data actually does exist in the RAW file) – but I like being able to preserve the expected aspect ratio without having to trim pixels from the saved JPEG. But beyond that, I’ve been very happy with the software.

Important Disclaimer: this is not meant to try to fuel the Windows vs. Mac vs. Linux debate. I don’t care what other people use. I just wanted to give some insight into my recent experience with Linux specifically in regard to photo workflow. While I definitely have a small wishlist for things I’d like to see improved, I’ve been very happy (and sure can’t complain about the price – all free!). If anyone’s interested, here’s a link to a few images I processed on Friday.

http://mikebrum.com/pub_images/20071214_macro_flower_01_web.jpg
http://mikebrum.com/pub_images/20071214_macro_flower_02_web.jpg
http://mikebrum.com/pub_images/20071214_macro_flower_03_web.jpg
http://mikebrum.com/pub_images/20071214_macro_flower_04_web.jpg
http://mikebrum.com/pub_images/20071214_macro_flower_05_web.jpg
http://mikebrum.com/pub_images/20071214_macro_lizard_01_web.jpg
http://mikebrum.com/pub_images/20071214_macro_lizard_02_web.jpg
http://mikebrum.com/pub_images/20071214_macro_lizard_03_web.jpg
http://mikebrum.com/pub_images/20071214_macro_lizard_04_web.jpg