I recently needed to perform some batch operations (add a couple of borders and resize) on a bunch of photos, and I came across this interesting app. Essentially it lets you chain operations together to make a processing pipeline, then point it at a directory of images to process. You can then save your set of operations to use next time. A really nice and unique interface, I thought.
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
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
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.
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.
The photo management application for KDE, Digikam, can read most (all?) raw camera formats, making it a very useful tool for cataloguing collections of raw files. To make your workflow run smoothly, you need to be able to open files in your preferred raw conversion software from within Digikam, which might need a bit of setup. It took me ages to find this online, so I’m posting it here in the hope that others might find this useful. I’ll use the example of adding Bibble Pro, a raw converter that is available for linux. The executable name is bibblepro.
To make bibblepro show up in the open with menu, we have to tell KDE that we want to use this program to open raw photo files. To do this we need to use the KDE system settings tool. In (k)ubuntu 8.10, we run the command systemsettings. In other distributions I believe it’s called kcontrol.
Within the system settings tool go to File associations. You might need to click on the Advanced tab. Click to expand the Image section of the Known Types on the left and select the raw file type you need to open (e.g. x-pentax-pef for Pentax raw files). Check that the Filename Patterns box contains the correct extensions (.pef and .PEF for Pentax raw files). In the Application Preference Order box you can see the list of applications that KDE knows can open .pef files. Click the Add button and type the name of your application in the box (e.g. bibblepro) then click OK. You should now see the application listed in the Application Preference Order box. Close the system settings tool and restart Digikam. Right click on a raw file of the type you specified, and you should see the new application in the Open with menu.
If you need to work with raw files of several different types, you’ll need to add the application to the Preference Order box for several different entries in the Known types.