Darktable, Linux, Lightroom and Pentax

[EArenz]

I'm also looking forward to your review and thanks for doing this!

 

[gkreth]

Ha! That's because it turned into, let's say, a 15-month review

Basically the news is this: I really like working in Linux and haven't looked back for a moment.

I have a longer article in draft form and will finish it off and post it when I get a moment away from some other projects.

Thanks for reminding me!

Bob

I would also be interested in reading what you have.

I have an older PC running Vista, and I've been thinking about changing it over to Ubuntu - although I have been looking at Ubuntu 16.04 since it is the latest LTS release.

Greg

 

[BobORama]

Just to add my own experiences to the heap, and no as a reaction or rebuttal...

I've been using Gimp on Linux for like 10 years now... Between ImageMagick, Gimp, Hugin, FFMPEG its about all I have ever needed for my work. I am also somewhat of a SuSE bigot, but for the right reasons, you can almost always upgrade and patch SuSE without breaking anything - its designed for stability not glitz. German engineering and all that. Basically it doesn't matter, its Linux.

As a practical matter if you take a cheap ( $100 ) SSD, or a pair of them because you like your stuff enough to do RAID 1, and Linux and Windows will boot in a couple seconds just like the Mac, and cost about 1/4 the price. My hodgepodge box I use for editing boots in, I kid not, about 5 seconds and it is made from stuff I found in the hallway headed for recycling. I also edit HUGE files ( >500 megapixel ) images with GIMP and it works very well. The SSD is really the key , and they are SO cheap.

GIMP has been a real late comer to the 16 and 32-bit / channel game, which is exceptionally frustrating. Their dependance on and slow adoption of GEGL and other framework bits have been real stumbling blocks. After nearly 6 years, it looks as if this will finally come to fruition. The primary benefit is the ability to entirely replace Photoshop for 32-bit / channel workflows.

It is almost easier, some times, to use ImageMagick to perform lossless high bit depth processing, and my own internal loss-less time lapse processing is done in 16 or 32-bit / channel spaces using ImageMagick's Magick++ API - which is great, BTW. By that I mean I will use GIMP to "what if" and then have ImageMagick do the conversion on the 16-bit / channel source files.

The ability to automate and script these tools is the strength of Linux. Its VERY easy to, for example, create automated workflows for time lapse photography or panoramas where the images are staged in a folder and scripts will do the rest of the work Or just apply your "standard" fixes to images.

For example, I have a motion control setup using a cheap telescope mount. A Pi runs the Java motion control code, It slews the camera to take a panorama series. These stills are pulled off the EyeFi and queue up on my server. Once I have the complete set for the panorama, they are rendered down to a panorama using a pre-built Hugin project. ( The rig provides precise / repeatable camera positions, so after you make the first panorama align properly, you can use the same project file over and over just swapping out the images. ) This just sits there running and running submitting the next job to the Hugin batch processor. ) The whole chain is FOSS tools.

Anyway another big plus 1 for Gimp, Linux, and self determination.

-- Bob
http://bob-o-rama.smugmug.com -- Photos
http://www.vimeo.com/boborama/videos -- Videos
http://blog.trafficshaper.com -- Blog

 

[newmikey]

I've been using Linux for my photography for over 10 years. I've always worked for companies who have supplied me with locked-down laptops and a prohibition to install "strange" software so I eventually settled on booting Linux off an external hard drive, today a superfast Sandisk 240Gb Extreme 500 which boots in 5 seconds flat.

I have always settled on PCLInuxOS but have recently started using ArchLinux as well because of the increased access to cutting-edge (and therefore sometimes unstable) image editing software.

Ditto on your ImageMagick story, I actually use it scripted with ufraw for batch raw conversion. I have started using the 16/32 bit version of Gimp but over the years have found Digikam to fill my need for gui-based image-wide edits much better.

Over the past few months I have started to use the Darktable 2.1 beta which has quite an awesome set of features but is taking some time to get used to.

My only non-free, yet indispensable piece of kit is NeatImage for Linux - a decent upgrade policy and reasonable price have made this part of my kit for the last 6 years or so.

On the subject of distros: anything goes. Linux is Linux and there may be small differences but the essence remains. Use Mint, one of the *buntu's, SuSE, CentOS or go for a smaller distro such as Manjaro or PCLinuxOS - it's all good nowadays. Easy installs and accessible GUI's.

 

[miroshi]

I also use Linux, started with Ubuntu 8.04, then went to Xubuntu, now I am with Linux Mint XFCE edition.

I do not like PP but have few programs for editing, just in case:

Gimp - all you know it;

Fotoxx - it needs lot of RAM but with it you can stack, create panoramas and etc.;

Hugin - create panoramas, and it is lighter than Fotox. Hugin use

ImageMagic - it is basic soft in LinuxMint, it seems other programs use it for some processes. I made a small bash script, that use ImageMagic for batch resizing of JPG images. You give the input and output directory, quality in percent and the max-size of the bigger side of the image If someone need such script I can share it.

RawTherapy and Darktable - they seems similar to me. Some people say Darktable needs more RAM, I don't know. Here is a interesting tutorial for Darktable, I found these days.

gThumbs - my main program for watching and simple editing of images. I use it mostly because most of other viewing programs does not gave Print menu

As I know there is not good astro-stack software for Linux, There are few tutorial for automatized stack with gimp, but I didn't try them.

It will be good to have a place to share info about Linux image editing software

 

[Hank Pi]

bkpix, thanks for this. I'm a Linux user as well and am happy with Rawtherapee for raw conversions, although I might give Darktable another try to make comparisons.

I'm especially interested in your experience with printing B&W. I will be using an Epson 4800 for quite a bit of B&W in the near future, and plan to use Gutenprint. Most of the prints will be on lustre paper, but some may be on matte. Needless to say, I don't want to go through the pain and expense of switching between photo black and matte black inks. Do you know if it's possible to adjust the ink densities in Gutenprint to get good blacks on matte paper using photo black ink?

 

[bkpix]

Hank: I haven't tried photo black ink as all my printing is matte.

Everyone: I have posted my longish account of working the past year in Linux/Darktable on a different thread.

 

[chris gunn]

I also use Linux, started with Ubuntu 8.04, then went to Xubuntu, now I am with Linux Mint XFCE edition.

I do not like PP but have few programs for editing, just in case:

Gimp - all you know it;

Fotoxx - it needs lot of RAM but with it you can stack, create panoramas and etc.;

Hugin - create panoramas, and it is lighter than Fotox. Hugin use

ImageMagic - it is basic soft in LinuxMint, it seems other programs use it for some processes. I made a small bash script, that use ImageMagic for batch resizing of JPG images. You give the input and output directory, quality in percent and the max-size of the bigger side of the image If someone need such script I can share it.

RawTherapy and Darktable - they seems similar to me. Some people say Darktable needs more RAM, I don't know. Here is a interesting tutorial for Darktable, I found these days.

gThumbs - my main program for watching and simple editing of images. I use it mostly because most of other viewing programs does not gave Print menu

As I know there is not good astro-stack software for Linux, There are few tutorial for automatized stack with gimp, but I didn't try them.

It will be good to have a place to share info about Linux image editing software

Well, for stacking I'm using Deep Sky Stacker (DSS) and Registax under WINE with Linux.

There's also a Javascript stacker one can use in Linux called: Regim

 

[Logics]

Where is the update? Can you provide a link, please?

 

[tonybelding]

I've long been interested in Linux, but every time I give it a spin, some obstacle, some deal breaker, pops up. Right now there are two major programs on my Mac Pro that I depend on heavily, and I haven't been able to find any Linux counterparts: Scrivener and Lightroom.

Every time I've looked at Darktable (I still have it installed on my Mac now, actually), I feel like I'm hitting my head against a brick wall. The interface is impenetrable. Furthermore, even though it's been touted as an Aperture/Lightroom alternative, it doesn't seem to provide the same functionality at all.

 

[robgendreau]

I've long been interested in Linux, but every time I give it a spin, some obstacle, some deal breaker, pops up. Right now there are two major programs on my Mac Pro that I depend on heavily, and I haven't been able to find any Linux counterparts: Scrivener and Lightroom.

Every time I've looked at Darktable (I still have it installed on my Mac now, actually), I feel like I'm hitting my head against a brick wall. The interface is impenetrable. Furthermore, even though it's been touted as an Aperture/Lightroom alternative, it doesn't seem to provide the same functionality at all.

Take a look at Digikam as well. There's a Mac port. Doesn't have all the functionality of the other OS version, but it does some things well. I still prefer Lr, but if you wanna use a different raw processor then consider it. Free, after all.

 

[His Dudeness]

tonybelding wrote: Scrivene

I don't know this tool and I only had a quick look at the web page. It sounds quite unique. However, I did most of my writing in LaTeX, which I really, really love, but this was academic writing and collaborative work. So maybe, this is simply not what you are looking for... and it is not phototgraphy

Every time I've looked at Darktable [...] The interface is impenetrable.

That is quite unspecific. What do you mean? For me it is easy to use.

Furthermore, even though it's been touted as an Aperture/Lightroom alternative, it doesn't seem to provide the same functionality at all.

Note that darktable is neither an Aperture clone nor a Lightroom clone. Therefore, don't expect it to work the same way and don't expect the functionality to be the same. Migrating from one software to another implies compromises. And the other way round it is exactly the same. Lightroom does not completely cover darktable's capabilities.

So, in case you are interested in learning darktable and you are missing certain features or you don't know how to achieve some particular effect, you should ask precisely for that.

 

[ttbek]

I've long been interested in Linux, but every time I give it a spin, some obstacle, some deal breaker, pops up. Right now there are two major programs on my Mac Pro that I depend on heavily, and I haven't been able to find any Linux counterparts: Scrivener and Lightroom.

Every time I've looked at Darktable (I still have it installed on my Mac now, actually), I feel like I'm hitting my head against a brick wall. The interface is impenetrable. Furthermore, even though it's been touted as an Aperture/Lightroom alternative, it doesn't seem to provide the same functionality at all.

Two main sections, one for viewing images and manipulating files, folders, and exporting, the other for editing, file history, etc... In that mode modules are on the right, history on the left, and file info below that. All editing is done through the modules, I just enable all of them right away, I prefer not to have any hidden. There is an excellent user guide on their website that goes through far more than I can cover here in a very well explained manner.

....What functionality are you looking for?

They take a different approach to file tracking, rather than copying everything to an internal library they keep a database of locations and use history sidecar files (some people like the lightroom approach, but others, like myself, hate that and want our images to stay where we put them organized the way we left them).

Yes, there are certainly area where Lightroom has the feature advantage (e.g. stacking, which Hugin is a good replacement for rather than Darktable), but others where Darktable is ahead (e.g. some of their more recent color tools).

 

[Simon Devlin]

Thank you for the extensive post but I use Lightroom 6 on Win 10 and never ever have problems with it.

I built the PC 7 years ago, Intel i3 based, and have never once seen the blue screen. Win 7/8/8.1/10

Many different components have been used, video cards, sound cards, more used RAM, cheap ebay USB 3.0 cards etc. and never has it blue screened.

It is still fast but I may put a silent seek drive in it to speed it up.

A quality power supply is key to a stable computer. I bought a used Enermax ATX, it is about 12 years old now.

I used Linux in work years ago (software engineer) and it is a good job. The Red Hat days of Linux.

Lightroom 6 is simply brilliant though and nothing compares

 

[ttbek]

Thank you for the extensive post but I use Lightroom 6 on Win 10 and never ever have problems with it.

I built the PC 7 years ago, Intel i3 based, and have never once seen the blue screen. Win 7/8/8.1/10

Many different components have been used, video cards, sound cards, more used RAM, cheap ebay USB 3.0 cards etc. and never has it blue screened.

My blue screens have been mostly rare and random (of those mostly back in the XP era), only time I started getting them often it turned out to be a bad motherboard .... too much heat upstairs, summer, no AC.

It is still fast but I may put a silent seek drive in it to speed it up.

A quality power supply is key to a stable computer. I bought a used Enermax ATX, it is about 12 years old now.

Not that something else can't go bad anyway, but as long as that thing is not the PSU the problem usually remains isolated.

I used Linux in work years ago (software engineer) and it is a good job. The Red Hat days of Linux.

Lightroom 6 is simply brilliant though and nothing compares

I find some of their tools quite primitive. .. but if I had stayed in their ecosystem I wouldn't have seen anything better. On the other hand they have many tools at which they are the best as well. What makes Adobe not work for me is their lack of Linux support because my work life is on Linux..... it's bad enough having to reboot sometimes for gaming, but to do so every time I want to edit photos is a whole new level of frequency that is just totally unacceptable for me.

--
Simon
Legacy lens lover
Anarcho-primitivist and avid anti-technology advocate

 

[tonybelding]

They take a different approach to file tracking, rather than copying everything to an internal library they keep a database of locations and use history sidecar files (some people like the lightroom approach, but others, like myself, hate that and want our images to stay where we put them organized the way we left them).

That actually is my biggest complaint. I don't want the program to leave my images where I put them and where I organized them. I don't want to have to organize them at all. The app should do that for me; it's why programs like Aperture (and later Lightroom) were invented. For Darktable to not do this, it seems to me like missing the whole point of why this type of applications even exists.

 

[newmikey]

That actually is my biggest complaint. I don't want the program to leave my images where I put them and where I organized them. I don't want to have to organize them at all. The app should do that for me; it's why programs like Aperture (and later Lightroom) were invented. For Darktable to not do this, it seems to me like missing the whole point of why this type of applications even exists.

Opensource being the free software ecosystem it is, it seems you have two options: either choose not to use Darktable until it does what you want or get actively engaged with a user group that thinks like you and (help)spin off a fork of Darktable that is aimed at developing the functionality you need. Help doesn't always take the form of coding either, it could be money, translations, forum management or a number of other ways. (you obviously would need to at least interest some coders in going along)

Organizing images, developing raw files and pixel editing are three different functionalities. In the Windows world, one tends to see software that sings, dances and makes coffee at the same time. Typically, on Linux, programs tend to focus on key functionality and expect non-core functionality to be taken care of by yet other applications. No value judgment here, just establishing facts.

I prefer the second approach and use Rapid Photo Downloader for my initial download and organisation needs, Digikam for rating, (geo)tagging and selection, Darktable or Rawtherapee for raw conversion and Gimp (16-bit) for pixel editing. I can understand not everyone liking that approach but then everyone is entirely free to build on the available sourcecode and extend it in any way they like. If nobody got up to do that until now, apparently there's not a great demand for that kind of functionality yet.

But there's also not a lot wrong with being happy with using either Windows or OSX and the software available for those systems either - who am I to say otherwise? My Linux evangelism days are far behind me: you use it if you want to, or you don't if you don't - it's that's easy and it's called freedom.

 

[Model Mike]

Point well made about the distinct roles of image management, non-destructive raw-conversion and pixel editing. LR does a pretty good job of integrating the first two.

My question is: is there an image management package which can provide a workflow, using Darktable, which is a reasonable analogue of Lightroom's combined features? At the very least, a way to open Darktable directly from a preview displayed in the image management application?

 

[newmikey]

Point well made about the distinct roles of image management, non-destructive raw-conversion and pixel editing. LR does a pretty good job of integrating the first two.

My question is: is there an image management package which can provide a workflow, using Darktable, which is a reasonable analogue of Lightroom's combined features? At the very least, a way to open Darktable directly from a preview displayed in the image management application?

I suppose that might be Digikam where you can right-click a raw file and choose to open with any raw editor of choice (as shown below)







--

Mike Bing

Explore Mike Bing’s 3,455 photos on Flickr!

www.flickr.com

John Michael Bing Art for Sale

Shop for artwork by John Michael Bing. Purchase canvas prints, framed prints, tapestries, posters, greeting cards, and more. John Michael Bing artwork and print-on-demand products are ready to ship in 3 - 4 business days. I am a Dutch photographer with 35 years experience in analog as well as...

fineartamerica.com

 

[newmikey]

For those who are interested as to how one could use Darktable in combination with a DAM application such as Digikam, I just ran a few screenshots as well as the OOC jpeg and the final raw converted to jpeg.

The OOC jpeg for this series of screenshots is this one:



What I especially like about DT is the manner in which you can define your own styles, which can then be applied to either a single raw or a whole batch of them. The other Darktable must-have feature is the fully automated geometry analysis and correction which I end up using quite a lot as it is so much more accurate than lining things up with grids.

First is the files as they appear in Digikam, already organized in folders at the time they are imported from the SD card. A right-click on the PEF brings up a context menu with all of the raw converters available on the system (and I pack almost all of the free ones on my system):



The PEF then opens in the library view of DT:



And is transferred to the "Darkroom" section for conversion, where I apply a pre-saved style to the image (bottom left shows the style selected, here LaPalma2, and the modules applied in that style):



Which results in the following screen with the style applied:



Seeing I shot at a slight upward tilt, the verticals are obviously off - I don't particularly care about the horizontals in this image so choose automatic analysis of verticals only. The thin green lines are the verticals found by the correction module:



All that's left now is to automatically crop, either to the largest rectangular area possible or to a rectangular area with the same aspect ratio as the original file:



And exporting the converted file to get this result:





--

Mike Bing

Explore Mike Bing’s 3,455 photos on Flickr!

www.flickr.com

John Michael Bing Art for Sale

Shop for artwork by John Michael Bing. Purchase canvas prints, framed prints, tapestries, posters, greeting cards, and more. John Michael Bing artwork and print-on-demand products are ready to ship in 3 - 4 business days. I am a Dutch photographer with 35 years experience in analog as well as...

fineartamerica.com