With Darktable, like with Lightroom, you can organize, store, visualize. But you also can modify/edit your photo pictures (in RAW as in JPEG), including in a non-destructive way.

It’s worth trying by yourself (with this kind of price, there is no downside).

• Download Darktable (in English).
• Download Darktable (en français).

It’s been years that I was tracking this product with great care. Here is the best photo news of 2017 (it will compensate the worst one from Adobe Lightroom).

Sometimes, people will remember that GIMP is a program allowing to do digital photography on Linux. And, often, many people think that it is only available on this relatively uncommon platform. But, as a matter of fact, GIMP also exists on Windows. And, because of its price but also because of its features, it is recommended to at least try this Windows software.

The big news of this version 2.8 is the arrival of what its developers designate with the ugly name of single-window interface, which is actually a presentation based on a free window along with tools palettes.

This version is also able to handle layers (individually or as a group), to work on 16-bit or 32-bit pictures, but it’s the more discreet improvements that may be the most critical for user comfort and efficiency. Things like:

• The use of the Cairo library (which gives a much improved rendering of texts and graphics)
• The use of independent processes for save and export operations (which offer a much faster feeling for these long operations)
• Direct editing of text strings (rather than the editing in a separate window, for better Wysiwyg)
• The nicer design of many little tools like spin buttons and many controls

So, if you are not fully convinced by the small fortunes that Adobe is requiring from the customers at each new version, it is now time to upgrade your mind and check GIMP.

To get even more:

• All GIMP-related posts
• Download (freely) GIMP v2.8.0

• Install digiKam 1.6 on Ubuntu 10.10
• RAW Magic In Digikam: Understanding RAW Photo Settings
• Process RAW Files in digiKam
• New Features in digiKam 2.0: Geolocation
• New Features in digiKam 2.0: Face Recognition
• Work with Photo Metadata in digiKam
• How to find duplicate images on Digikam
• Geotag Photographs with Open GPS Tracker and digiKam
• Sieve through Photographs with digiKam’s Light Table Tool
• Batch Process Photos in digiKam

But Digikam is not the only tool in Linux photographers life… Particularly, if you are looking for software programs to handle the RAW files from your digital photo camera, the choice is still quite large and diverse enough to have you fooling around for quite some time:

• Editing RAW Photos on Linux with Rawstudio 2.0
• Convert RAW Files to DNG with DNGConverter
• Process Raw Image Files for Free with RawTherapee
• Process RAW Files with Rawstudio

digiKam special!

This nice software program has earned its own sub-list of links because of its own quality:

• Introduction to Digikam
• Finetune digiKam by Tweaking Its Settings
• Find the Shutter Count Value with digiKam
• Publish Photos on a WordPress blog from Digikam

Additionally, some users may want to also have Digikam running on Windows (even if Linux is a better host for such a program). In this case, you would be well inspired to go and visit “Amarok and Digikam on Windows.”

Once again! More links, more sites, more web pages to serve the needs of the photographers using GNU/Linux. As we noticed, most of the Linux-based photographers seem to be speaking English (and nothing else).

• Add brushes to The GIMP
• Krita – The KDE Answer to GIMP
• Ubuntu 10.10 Adds New Photo Manager, Improves Multimedia Experience
• Tackle Color Management on Linux
• 3 Photo collage programs on Linux
• 3 programmi per foto collage su Linux
• Install CHDK on Your Canon Camera Using Linux

• Unshake is a free photo editing software written in Java that can remove blurs from your photos. It can be used on virtually any platform (Linux, PC, Mac, etc.)
• GIMP is the GNU/Linux-based photo editing software. It also exists in versions for Windows, Mac OS X. Since it has a full system of plug-ins, you can go quite far (including improving your photos with the Refocus-It and Iterative Refocus plug-ins for sharpening the photos).
• Another specific noise-reduction plug-in for GIMP is the GREYCstoration plugin (it will work well to improve photographs shot at high ISO levels).

That’s worth trying, isn’t it?

Besides, an for those of you who are strictly interested in using GIMP, there are additional resources to check:

• techZilo has compiled a handy list of its top 40+ plugins for GIMP.
• How To Use Photoshop Plugins On Linux

Unfortunately, ArgyllCMS is only a set of command line tools. So, they lack most of the pleasant interface that we photographers prefer to use.

This is no longer an issue when you start using dispcalGUI, a graphical front-end for several utilities from the open source color management system ArgyllCMS, specifically dispcal, dispread, colprof and dispwin, which when used together allow you to calibrate and profile your display using a measurement device.

No need to worry about command line commands and options!

Screenshots

GNOME	GNOME: Gamut Mapping Options	GNOME: Edit Testchart
GNOME: Display Adjustment	GNOME: Measure	GNOME: View Curves
KDE4	Mac OS X	Windows 7

If you are a photographer and you use Linux, you cannot afford not to use dispcalGUI.

This is clearly true that the lack of a full Raw development solution at the level of performance of something like Lightroom (or whatever pro picture development offer) under Linux is hampering our photographic activity on this platform. It’s true that many crude utilities exist, like DCRaw (and its natural complements). Somebody would easily remember the name of RawTherapee, which is providing a quality-oriented solution under rapid development.

You will also easily find amateur people definitely convinced by Lightzone (previously mentionned in Roumazeilles.net). But for Lightzone, you’d better have very powerful computer, big CPU large memory, to reach a satisfying level of comfort.

Often more snappy and available on Windows and Max as well as for Linux (it’s 50% cheaper on Linux), here is Bibble 5 Pro which has the notable advantage of providing a full solution totally operational from the management of a photo library to an end-to-end Raw development workflow.

Another tool worth writing about here is DigiKam. It targets Photoshop-level of features (of course, it’s less extensive but full of ambition) from inside KDE.

Clearly, DigiKam has progressed a lot since it version 1.0 (at the time of this writing, it’s up to v1.4) and nobody can neglect it anymore. Its importance on the market is reflected in the kind of issues reported by useful posts like those I could collect here:

• DigiKam – Light table
• Watermark Photos with DigiKam
• Retouching photos
• Correct Lens Distortion with DigiKam

DigiKam is no longer a kid’s toy.

Last but not least, I’d like to mention one more resource, since we have to admit that it is not yet possible to fully ignore the presence of Windows when you swithc to Linux: How To Use Photoshop Plugins On Linux could be useful reading for the Linux photographer.

This month, it’s time for a new round of GIMP links. Of course, the Linux-based photographers are the primary target of this list. But, remember that GIMP is also available as a valuable option for the money-sensitive user of Windows, too.

• Use GIMP to Process Time Lapse Photography (from LifeHacker)


• GIMP 2.8: A preview of the new features!


• GIMP vs. The World: The State of GIMP


• GIMP 3-D, 3 Ways: Drop-Shadows and Bump Maps and Lighting Effects


• Video: Preview of The GIMP 2.7.1 and New features


• Fixing Your Holiday Photos With GIMP: Redeye, Low Light, Exposure Settings, Healing Blemishes


• Making Skies dramatic in GIMP


• And, for the most adventurous ones (with some code programming ability): Add your own GIMP features (Dive into the code base of the GNU Image Manipulation Program)

• Selective Noise Reduction with GIMP — Repairing Noisy Skies pour une meilleure gestion des réparations locales des photos.



• How to Enable Photoshop Save For Web Feature in GIMP (minor improvement)
• How to replace a sky with GIMP, suit les mêmes principes mais pour un nettoyage définitif (par remplacement)
• L’accentuation avec Gimp
• How To Remove Red Eyes With GIMP, pour nettoyer les yeux rouges.
• How to Find and Use Scripts in Gimp
• How to turn a photo into a card with GIMP
• 6 GIMP Tricks Everyone Should Know! (rounded corners, cropping, red eye removal, image size change, file size reduction)
• GAP is a collection of GIMP plugins that make it possible to create animations as sequences of single frames
• Opening RAW Images In GIMP with UFRaw For Windows – The Basics

In the end, I would sum it up with the 10 Reasons GIMP is Better Than Photoshop:

• GIMP is free
• GIMP is small
• GIMP is fast and stable
• GIMP is more user-friendly
• Anybody can modify the code and develop plug-ins
• It has a better management for automated actions
• GIMP opens, edits and saves Photoshop .PSD files
• Upgrades are free
• GIMP can look-and-feel like Photoshop
• GIMP is portable

The solution? GTKRawGallery is an open source photo manager and camera RAW files processor written in Python for Linux O.S. It is providing all the basic features of an Adobe Camera Raw, and then some. Actually, it is really a image file viewer (like Adobe Bridge) integrating the RAW management/development ability. Unusually well-balanced and totally recommended for all Linux-based photographers (I should also think that it would be a good solution for those whishing to use an ultra-portable notebook running under Linux OS, but I did not try this by myself).