bwcolor
Veteran
How does Darktable compare to Shotwell (Ubuntu's current Std. Photo-Ap)?
Linux users and a new application for image processing
- Thread starter Phil_F_NM
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colyn
ישו משיח
Shotwell doesn't hold a candle to Darktable.
Another Linux app if you use the KDE DE is DigiKam otherwise if you use Gnome Gimp and Darktable is the way to go..
MartinP
Veteran
I just upgraded the mobo and cpu on my ubuntu box, so this is the perfect moment for trying out a different photo-app. Thanks for the tip.
divewizard
perspicaz
I hope this works. The lack of a great photo app is the only reason I have not 86ed windows.
titrisol
Bottom Feeder
Darktable is fine, need to generate profiles for Pentax Raw which look grrenish but otherwise is good.
Ronald M
Veteran
Why fight it all. Bite the bullet get a Mac and PS. A Mac mini will do for a start.
tyrone.s
Well-known
I smell a troll ... :angel:
Darktable looks OK. Certainly it aspires to be much more than either shotwell or what ever used to ship with ubuntu. Looks pretty excellent reallly (as in having lots of potential). Right now it does seem slow (Core 2 Duo 2.53 - 4 gig of ram) but it's an early release. Not sure if a Lightroom inspired UI is necessarily the way to go - but it seems to have a pretty OK sort of UI despite my opinion and a lot more power than Shotwell has.
Of late I've been happy enough using shotwell and doing all of my editing in Gimp (all scans, mostly fixing dust and neg scratches with clone and doing the odd bit of grain reduction using the G'MIC plugin). Shotwell is OK for a simple holder that allows me to simply upload my photos to picasaweb online etc and it does an OK job of that for me (i.e simple and I don't have to think too much about getting pics online). Honestly I'm not sure if I'd be better off dumping shotwell and just using folders to store my photos and edit in gimp from their as needed. But shotwell does offer the option of reverting to original if I stuff up - which can be handy.
To install darktable on my Ubuntu I typed this in the terminal:
# sudo add-apt-repository ppa😛mjdebruijn/darktable-release^C
# sudo apt-get update
# sudo apt-get install darktable
(it's about 7 mb's to download).
At any rate I find Linux great for my photographic needs. Gimp does pretty much anything I want. Hugin is excellent for pano's when I want them (never seem to use my VC15 Heliar any more these days). Philosophically the freedom implicit to Linux is also valuable in itself.
An open source effort (evil slr: Pentax S1a with $16 Elicar 128 @ 5.6). Forgive the blown highlights - that's my scanning and use of sunny 16 and not Gimp's fault:
Cheers,
Tyrone
Phil_F_NM
Camera hacker
Why fight it all. Just go buy yourself an M9 or another M9 to compliment the one you already have.
Same issue here. Some of us prefer linux, that's why. I'm one. I definitely love the ability to have a fully working suite of programs and having paid only for the hardware and my time compiling.
As far as DT itself, it doesn't have any support for Kodak DCR files, which is kind of irksome but not that big of a deal. What I don't handle in DT, I still can work in UFRAW then export to GIMP.
Phil Forrest
Mablo
Well-known
I tried it. After two months I was ready to go back to Linux. I just couldn't stand OS X. I hated it so much. The Mac mini is now running Ubuntu and works nicely. I'm happy too.
colyn
ישו משיח
Been there...done that...I'm now back to Linux..
ibcrewin
Ah looky looky
I'm so glad I found this thread! I'm a long time windows user and started using ubuntu when it first came out. It ran waaay faster than windows on my pc, but it lacked some things I liked in windows. Looks like it's time for a revisit!
colyn
ישו משיח
Check out Linux Mint....streamlined version of Ubuntu...
Proteus617
Established
I had been using Gimp for Widows but recently ditched it for PShop CS5 due to Gimps lack of 16bit support for greyscale. I found my B+W neg scans broke up pretty quickly at 8bit. What I like about Photoshop: The selection tools and content aware cloning and healing are miles ahead of Gimp. What I don't like: layer and mask management are byzantine in Pshop, intuitive in Gimp. As soon as Gimp gives me 16bit, I'm migrating back.
RZetter
Member
How come nobody has mentioned Bibble 5(bibblelabs.com) yet? It may be propietary, but I'm also guessing it's the best RAW converter/DAM available for Linux. It has a great plugin and layers system, and is lightning fast due to high parallelism.
pvdhaar
Peter
Linux, isn't that some kind of penguin about which you can find a lot of information on the internet? 😛
Phil_F_NM
Camera hacker
There are not very many users of Bibble and it's a few hundred dollars. I think those factors feed themselves. Not too many people from whom to find some real user experience and the cost. At least that's kind of my take on it.
And the cost... It's not too much with regard to photography equipment or processing programs but in my mind if I'm going to spend a few hundred on one program, that's a bit of opportunity lost from spending that money on Lightroom or the whole Adobe suite and running in a VM.
Personally, I use Linux because it's stable, 100% virus free (at my lowly level) and doesn't cost anything. I was broke when I moved from WinXP to Linux but I needed a few applications that I couldn't afford in XP. Years later I'm just very comfortable with Linux and hope that user interest continues to spread.
What programs like Darktable do is enable folks to have a Lightroom type workflow with non-destructive editing and history but for free. That opens up a lot of potentialfor users and could photographic interest to folks that simply can't afford a suite of programs.
Phil Forrest
And the cost... It's not too much with regard to photography equipment or processing programs but in my mind if I'm going to spend a few hundred on one program, that's a bit of opportunity lost from spending that money on Lightroom or the whole Adobe suite and running in a VM.
Personally, I use Linux because it's stable, 100% virus free (at my lowly level) and doesn't cost anything. I was broke when I moved from WinXP to Linux but I needed a few applications that I couldn't afford in XP. Years later I'm just very comfortable with Linux and hope that user interest continues to spread.
What programs like Darktable do is enable folks to have a Lightroom type workflow with non-destructive editing and history but for free. That opens up a lot of potentialfor users and could photographic interest to folks that simply can't afford a suite of programs.
Phil Forrest
HLing
Well-known
I'm just at the beginning with wet printing, but have been a linux user for about 5 years now and have pretty much every computer at home dual booting "Windoze" and Linux, or Mac & Linux. Having always used Windows for personal use and Mac for professional audio editing I've know both sides, slightly liking Mac more. Linux though, blew both away! So, thanks for the info about Darktable!
Phil_F_NM
Camera hacker
DT 1.0rc
DT 1.0rc
Darktable 1.0 release candidate is out.
http://www.darktable.org/
I've been using 0.9.3 for quite some time on both my laptop and desktop and I've been quite happy with the vast improvement in workflow and tools. The tool suite is amazing now. Enough so that I have to use GIMP far less.
What I really need to get going is to network both computers and automatically archive my raw & .xml files between the two and permanently store them on my 4TB RAID.
I digress. DT has repos on on the major distros and there is even a build for Mac OS.
I'm really happy that we are about to have a real professional caliber alternative to Lightroom. If Adobe won't port it, that's ok, we make our own.
I've noticed that between 0.7 and 0.9.3 that the raw conversion has gotten much better. The UI is still a bit of a pain with the weird sykmbols representing tools but I'm starting to remember what is what. I'm hoping that we can get an alternative to cornerfix for the extreme wides like the 21mm SA, CV 15mm and 12mm, ZM 15mm and the others that cause the red edge problem. It's not far off though.
Phil Forrest
DT 1.0rc
Darktable 1.0 release candidate is out.
http://www.darktable.org/
I've been using 0.9.3 for quite some time on both my laptop and desktop and I've been quite happy with the vast improvement in workflow and tools. The tool suite is amazing now. Enough so that I have to use GIMP far less.
What I really need to get going is to network both computers and automatically archive my raw & .xml files between the two and permanently store them on my 4TB RAID.
I digress. DT has repos on on the major distros and there is even a build for Mac OS.
I'm really happy that we are about to have a real professional caliber alternative to Lightroom. If Adobe won't port it, that's ok, we make our own.
I've noticed that between 0.7 and 0.9.3 that the raw conversion has gotten much better. The UI is still a bit of a pain with the weird sykmbols representing tools but I'm starting to remember what is what. I'm hoping that we can get an alternative to cornerfix for the extreme wides like the 21mm SA, CV 15mm and 12mm, ZM 15mm and the others that cause the red edge problem. It's not far off though.
Phil Forrest
Rico
Well-known
Interesting. DT has canned features, applied in fixed order, to polish your image. Meanwhile, Gimp has general processing flexibility, most importantly via Layers. I do like the 32 bits per channel of DT (the 8 bits of Gimp is just crippling 🙁).
