Professional Photographers Using Linux? 724
thesun asks: "I'm a freelance writer and photographer and I'm wondering what Pro Photographers have done in regards to color matching and scanning under Linux, especially when going from slides to digital. I just can't get anything close to a good image when I scan a slide. They're blurry and the colors are so off that doing anything with my thousands of slides is proving to be prohibitively time-consuming. Are other Pros (or talented amateurs) having similar problems? Are there solutions out there I haven't found? (Sorry, I can't dump thousands into a piece of hardware---I'm looking for a way to make the most of my Epson Perfection 2400 with transparency adapter)."
Flatbed film scanning... (Score:5, Interesting)
I wound up buying a Nikon LS30 for the several negatives images in my collection.
The specs on a real film scanner as opposed to a flatbed are night and day. When a film scanner says it does X resolution, it's real. When a flatbed says it, it's probably some kind of interpolated crap marketing hype.
The ratio of black to white on the scanned image is also vastly larger with a film scanner - this makes a big difference, particularly with slides. You're going to lose a lot of data if you don't have as wide a bit lattitude as you can get.
In short, you're going to put a lot of time into scanning those slides. Don't sell short the value of your time. It's stupid to spend 500 to 1000 or more hours of your life using a piece of junk. Better off just not doing it until you have access to the proper equipment.
Ask around. There may be people who can lend you a proper scanner. I've lent mine to several friends, since it's not like I use it all the time; I'm now completely digital. My scanner sits in its box for 6 months to a year at a time. It's possible you could find someone similar who might let you borrow it for a few months.
Re:Well... (Score:1, Interesting)
Go figure.
Re:Slide projector (Score:5, Interesting)
The best thing to do is send your transparencies out to a repro house to scan on a drum scanner. This can be expensive, but it's what professionals do, and they don't do it just so they can put it on their tax return.
Be prepared for some pain in manipulating the scans on Linux; there's a reason so many graphic artists use Macs.
Professional? Spend money. (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Pro photographer? Using Linux? (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Well... (Score:5, Interesting)
One day, the Powerbook quit recognizing the scanner. If you've worked with Macs (OS 9) you know how they can be. They 'just work'. But when something goes wrong...
The first thing he tried was buying a SCSI card, and installing it in his new Compaq PC with Windows 2000. Downloaded the drivers, installed the scanner...seemed to work great untinl he tried to scan some slides. Only half the slide would show up. The whole thing would show up in the preview mode, however...
After screwing around with Nikon support, re-installing the drivers, and even a fresh install of Windows, I joked that he should try it under Linux.
We took the SCSI card out of the Compaq, and put it in a Pentium 166MMX he got from TigerDirect for $49.99. We loaded up Redhat, SANE recognized it, and everything worked perfectly on the very first try. Odd thing was, it ran faster than it did on the Powerbook.
Sorry. Transparnencies with Photoshop (Score:4, Interesting)
Sigh. I do a lot of medium and large format transparencies and they get scanned in with a Canon DU2400.
For the run of the mill, knock off, transparecies they are adequate without haveing to resort to a 10K$ drum scanner, or a 20K$ digital back for the 4X5. The 2400 dpi in a 4X5 transparency is "good enough" for most interactions with the customer. IF higher definition is required well then I can send it out for a drum scan.
Such as it is, I still keep windoze around for both photoshop and premire. Sigh.
Note that my jpegs run over 100 Mbyte/image with this. And I am NOT doing 35mm images. These are full blown, commercial shots.
Re:Well... (Score:3, Interesting)
what happened to Linux enabling you to do more while spending less?
Re:Well... (Score:5, Interesting)
Maybe. But Free Software is more than just a "right tool for the job" decision, there could be other considerations. So there is some argument for using Free Software. Obviously it is foolish to target a profession in which all the digital tools are highly proprietary and then hope to be competitive using Free Software.
As someone who has been heavy into photography since childhood, I would no more like to see my digital darkroom owned and controlled by a handful of corporations than I'd like to see my film cameras limited to only using one brand of film, or even having to bring the camera to the shop to get the film out and prints made. From that perspective, I would cheer wildly for anyone trying to do digital imaging work on Linux.
Anyway... I don't think one can expect to get high quality scans off a $200 (or even $400) scanner with a film attachment, which is what the Asker seems to want to do. I have to wonder if that same scanner is known to work much better under Windows and the issue is drivers, or if the problem is just that the scanner is just cheap. I've always gotten my film scanned (before the advent of 4 megapixel digital cameras) by pros with high-end film scanners. This means my time investment is minimal and the results are likely to be better than anything I can manage at home. This is available for about 50 cents a slide. Which would be expensive for the Asker to do his "thousands," but the time savings and quality make up for it, imho.
Re:bibble (Score:2, Interesting)
The way I understand the "RAW" argument is that it requires a conversion step -- which requires converting colors from one colorspace into another. There is nothing "missing" from the pallette on either side of the conversion, but the parameters involved in the conversion itself are open to interpretation, and the standardized process for converting happens to be encumbered by one or more patents, making this the sole domain of Adobe.
Now, if you want to talk "workflow", I'm sure you will find people who choose PS because that's where their experience lies, you will also find people who choose PS because it has a higher quality user interface. Again, for audio production, this can be a matter of opinion -- I prefer the workflow aspects of Magix to Cubase, for example, and the fact that one is a $100 program and the other is a $900 program doesn't enter into this evaluation. I don't doubt there are people who prefer working with GIMP. On the other hand, a co-worker whose specialty was graphic art, and who worked in a serious production environment, set me straight about just how many of the features of PS he actually used -- things that are supposed to be in that 'esoteric' featureset that 'nobody' uses more than a subset of? WRONG.
Then, I understood this from my years as a legal secretary -- the argument that people don't really use all the features of their wordprocessor, what a load of crap. There are folks out there who do indeed use pretty much every feature it's got.
Anyway, where was I? Oh, right, the argument between PS and everything else -- how much is based on technical arguments and how much is just hype? Which parts are due to intellectual property encumbrances, and which are due to the lack of participation in the development effort?
Re:I'm sorry... (Score:4, Interesting)
around the time gimp 1.1 was in development, i read an interview with one of the original GIMP developers where he stated that not only had he never used photoshop, he had only seen it once when a college buddy was using it to remove the clothes from (iirc) cindy crawford. the original developers haven't coded on the GIMP since pre-1.0, so i have not idea how much of that heritage still remains, but your impression is correct, or at least was at one point in time. i can't speak to the current state of the GIMP as i have not used it much since version 1.2.
Re:Pro Photographers (Score:1, Interesting)
How so?
I havn't seen anything new in Linux since at least 98 or 99. Is there something I missed? Last I noticed there was 2 major widget sets for Linux that behaved, looked, and acted differently (qt/kde and gnome). Both are ugly, Windows knockoffs. Neither are near as good as handling simple tasks like printing as Windows or OS X. Thats not to say that there are still tons of other widgets out there like Motif and tk that both look different and worse than qt or gnome.
(shrug) Sleep as long as you like - meanwhile I'm using linux happily, with a "real GUI" (yes, I've seen and used OSX, and I prefer Linux). I've no idea what you mean about the packaging system - apt works a treat, as do the package formats it manages.
Just out of curiosity, what real Linux only GUI do you run? Most people are split between KDE and Gnome, which seem pretty much the same to me. I last ran WIndowmaker because it was not a Windows knockoff and I just liked it better than the others. I've run KDE, Gnome, and Windowmaker on other OSes besides Linux. Oh, btw, seeing OS X and using it are very different.
apt works with rpms? I'm a Debian fan. Best distro out there for Linux in my opinion, however much 3rd party hardware and software requires Redhat and/or RPMs. When I mean a working package manager, I mean somthing where I get a CD or download something for Linux I can double click on it or use one commandline command to install it. Alien is nice, but its a hack for a fundamentally broken problem. Don't get me wrong, all unix like things are just as broken, and Debian is the mostly not-broken, but being that it does not handle RPM natively (yeah, I know about the apt-rpm stuff). Even if there is sufficent stuff for apt to handle an RPM, good luck on it actually running correctly.
Gee that's funny, I'm not suffering, and neither are any of the linux users I know. We all CHOSE our OS, and use it because we prefer it. But I suspect that you are suffering. Does it drive you crazy that some many prefer Linux or other OSes over your beloved OS X?
I really only know 1 person that is left running Linux. He also uses Windows ME (yeah!) to make up for Linux' deficiencies from time to time. I know a physicist who runs Linux, but he is a masochist, and he is one of my most annoying users. Actually, he is the most annoying, I don't care if he suffers, he probably prefers it.
No, it doesn't drive me crazy, except when I see posts like this on slashdot. Noone (now there is one post), including yourself, has anything good to tell this "Professional Photographer using Linux". Except the Gimp color manager, but then again if Gimp is good enough for you, I don't consider yourself a professional. Maybe if you have reimplemented all of Photoshop's plugins in your spare time. Then your a genius wierdo, and you can do what you want.
I don't have an ax to grind. I love Linux. Its cool.
Linux for GUI stuff is still at least 10 years below par.
Maybe instead of suggesting OS X, I should just say wait 10 years. But I'm sure that will get as much grief.
Yes and No (Score:3, Interesting)
Can you use linux for digital photography, yes you can. Can you get the best results using linux? No, you can't. The fact is most, if not all, drivers for photographic equipment are written for windows and macs.
I'm sure that a determined amature could push the limits under linux and get acceptable results, but they will not be as good as under windows. My current photographic printers are the Canon i9900 and Epson Phto R300. Both of them us very complex drivers to get their photographic outputs. Both of these printers do professional level prints that would be unavailable without the dedicated drivers.
I don't know of any camera manufacturer that makes linux drivers ether I know there are none available for my Nikon D70 or Sony DSC-828. Without these drivers you can't talk to the camera through the built in USB ports. Of course there really is no reason to do so. Everyone that is serous about photography uses an external card reader instead of hooking up their camera right to the computer. Hell, I've never hooked ether of my camera's up the any computer.
Gimp is a fine tool for what it does. But trying to use it for professional level work woudl be very fustrating. I is an excellent graphics program but it is no where near the level of Photoshop CS. Anyone who says it is simply doesn't know how to use photoshop or has no clue what they are talking about.
Photoshop also supports a wide range of 3rd party plugins too. These plugins are not going to be available under linux. For most among these plugins are ones that let you read and manpulate RAW camara images. Simply put, with out the abliltiy to use RAW images you will be limited to JPEGS, limiting the most powerful features of these cameras. There are some GNU plugins for some cameras but most of those are limited in the scope of what they can do.
In short, you can use linux but true professional level results will not be available to you.
Re:Well... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Don't use linux - yes they do (Score:0, Interesting)
With Linux I can take a whole directory of pictures, thousands of them and write a quick macro to change the whole directory and save it to another directory, say for color correction, contrast, etc. For effects photoshop comes close but just isn't as good. I have used both for many years (photoshop much longer) and I can't do in photoshop what I can do in Gimp. I've tried. Photoshop is a very capable program though, just not as good. I sure wish there was a good Linux answer to premier pro, audition and the adobe dvd maker. I'm starting to really hate them. They are very buggy. Especially the audition and the dvd maker. Gimp does take getting use to though. Sort of like moving from a bicycle to a car or a car to a jet. The controls are a lot different.
The one thing that pisses me off to no end is they keep changing how things are done in Gimp and some features dissapear. Then I have to make macros to do the same thing. When you use it for thousands of times, upgrade to say FC-3 or the latest Suse and a boatload of things change, that hurts. Then I have to take time and figure out where they put stuff. Don't move things or offer to keep things as they were for those of us who are used to it the other way. Word Perfect did that crap and I feel that is why they are barely used now.
For me I save thousands of bucks by not using Windows and Adobe. With the linux people, I can talk to them and they are nice. The adobe people act like they are doing me a favor to talk to me. Even when I remind them of how much of their software I have (most of it purchased from them), it doesn't seem to matter. Sort of like dealing with Microsoft, only worse in my opinion. You might be wondering why I keep their stuff around? Again, I use it when I do the video stuff. Easier than moving frames to the Linux box, modifying it and moving it back usually. Sometimes I end up doing that anyhow as it would be easier to do on the Linux box than in windows.