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A linux raw digital photography workflow

I’ve been using Linux to manage, edit and print my digital photographs for a few years now, but it’s only in the last few months that the available software has really come together.  Here’s a quick guide to what I’m using, why I like it, and what the alternatives are

Photo management

A.k.a DAM (digital asset management).  I use DigiKam 0.10 (the official 0.10 version has just been released) because

  • It has a very nice, logical user interface with multiple tabbed panes
  • It reads metadata nicely from raw files (and will soon be able to write)
  • Very quick tag searching
  • It’s easy to integrate with other apps (see my post here)
  • Manages both raw and jpg files

Alternatives: F-spot, Picassa

RAW conversion

The best software I’ve found for raw conversion is Bibble – currently version 4.10, but looking forward to version 5 which is in development. It’s not open source, but I use it for the following reasons

  • Very fast, takes advantage of multiprocessor machines
  • A great range of plugins that I couldn’t live without
  • Flexible output batches to allow you to customise a really quick workflow
  • Integrated noise-reduction software (a simplified version of Noise Ninja)

Alternatives: RawTherapee and RawStudio are both promising open source projects.

Printing

Another piece of non-free software – Turboprint.  Printing has never been particularly easy on Linux, in my opinion, but this piece of software makes it much slicker.

  • Fully colour managed printing with custom colour profiles
  • Integrates with GIMP
  • Gives you ink and printer status updates

Alternatives: Most linux distributions ship with GutenPrint, which takes care of printing on most printers, but the experience isn’t so good, and you have to take care of colour management at the application level.

Any comments about your own workflow?

PS Selling a digital camera? Check out this article on my new blog – 10 tips for selling a digital SLR camera.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 18th, 2009 at 11:20 am and is filed under Linux, Photography. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

2 Responses to “A linux raw digital photography workflow”

  1. Paul Finnigan Says:
    January 15th, 2010 at 8:53 am

    Hi,

    I have just seen this post. Sorry it took me so long to get around to finding it. My workflow is very similar but I use Geeqie for management (http://geeqie.sourceforge.net/). I like it and think more people should know about it. I have Lightroom but find that the lightness of Geeqie is great for going through my photographs.

    For RAW processing I use UFRaw in general but also have Lightroom and use that as well.

    For editing I use Lightroom/GIMP.

    For printing I too use Turboprint. I have a Canon printer and it is a requirement! I think that Turboprint is worth the money but if you are commited to Open Source just avoid Canon.

    I use Fedora and am just going to try to experiemnt with Gnome Colour Manager. My first attempt at compiling it failed but I will have another go and rpms are now available in the testing repository. Colour is the one area where I feel that Linux lets me down, although Lightroom does fix some of the problems. If GCM works then I will probably invest in the colour managed version of Turboprint.

    Thanks for the post.

  2. Paul Finnigan Says:
    May 7th, 2010 at 12:14 pm

    Just an additional note about Gnome Color Manager. It works and has transformed my workflow! I managed to compile it from the Gnome GIT after a little trouble. If you are not that brave then it is included with Fedora 13. The beta is available now and the final release is available on 18th of this Month (May 2010).

    Gnome Color Manager is worth the trouble of changing distributions! With this all my photographic needs are met by Linux.

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