Linux alternatives to LR

[snooper]

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Hello folks !

 

I have to admit that like many others I'm a bit tired of Mac, iAnything including iPhone, iPay, etc.. I have 3 Macs, including the latest MBP i7 with 16Go RAM and 1To SSD and the stupid "touchbar", but I also started 2 other configurations that sound very promising for many things (web, office work, music..). One is under Windows 10, the other one is a very nice surprise with Linux Ubuntu 16.04 on an Asus laptop.

 

I have my company sending me the big config from Dell under Ubuntu, as I really got into it with pleasure.

 

In the meantime, I'd like to avoid searching testing and getting lost in some forum mazes: does anyone here use any Linux tools for photography ? Is "darktable" a good option ? I know Gimp of course... But I'm looking for a LR equivalent?

 

I use a M240 and a M246 (for the raw process)...

 

Thanks for your help !

Edited January 17, 2017 by snooper

[ASpes]

Once upon a time... I turned to Linux/Ubuntu for everything but my programming and my photography because that's where my bread and butter were.
In the long years that have passed since then I found tools in both areas that not only were effective but offered me a long and satisfying relation.

The first that hooked me and let me make the transition of my photography into the Linux world was Rawtherapee. The first versions were rather slow and often crashing, but now it is stable and quite fast.
Do I recommend it? Absolutely. Its GUY is more traditional, something that will ease the transition, but good enough to stand any request.

Years later I stumbled on Darktable and tried for some time to get to grips with it. I found its GUY less intuitive, difficult, which means just different from what I was accustomed to. I dropped it a couple times but eventually found my way through it and now it's my tool of choice.

Darktable has everything I could dream of and much more, and, mind, I'm a good dreamer...
It's just different, so the learning curve could be steep, it depends on how strong are your previous habits, but in the end absolutely worthwhile.

Comparable to the best around? yes, they both are.
Better than LR? Depends on you. Just try them and judge yourself.

Please let's not turn this into an o.s and programme war. As long as a tool does its job and does *my* job, it's just a question of choice.
No tool is perfect, but experience makes you go around its quirks and get the job done the way you want. That's the only thing I need.

 

Hope this helps.

 

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[snooper]

Thank you ! :-))) I'll try it out under Ubuntu 16.04...

The issue is not LR, and LR comes with the cameras... The issue is Apple :-(

I also look at Windows 10 on the Surface Studio, sounds like a good pair...

[mnsh]

I have tried RawTherapee and like its developing options but it is not reading the date from my M8 DNG files and attributes them all to the 0th day of January 1900 at 00:00:00 time.  So in the programme they don't show in order taken.  It is fine with JPG files from my D-Lux4.  While I have the photos organised by day/month/year in folders so I know when I took them, the lack of date could be a problem if I export them as processed JPGs and want to make a slide show of them in the right order.

Please am I doing something wrong, or is this a known issue with RT?  I am using Ubuntu 18.04 and RT 5.5 

I also tried DarkTable and DigiKam; they are overcomplicated but do display the dates taken so my DNG files themselves must be ok.

Thanks, Matthew

 

[Nick_S]

20 hours ago, mnsh said:

I have tried RawTherapee and like its developing options but it is not reading the date from my M8 DNG files and attributes them all to the 0th day of January 1900 at 00:00:00 time.  So in the programme they don't show in order taken.

Raw Therapee 5.5 in Manjaro Linux also shows this behaviour with M9Monochrom DNG files, but not the corresponding JPEGs. As all my files are from the same camera body they show in order with filenames generated by the camera.

I am currently trying out both Darktable and RawTherapee, with a marked preference for the latter so far, which has a very clean interface (given its many detailed options) and it also seems to run okay on older laptops with limited space on the screen.

The following article was very useful for me as a starting place for selecting a working set of photography software options under Linux:

https://www.linuxjournal.com/content/photography-and-linux

Note that some desktop environments for Linux provide more straightforward support for colour management and ICC profiles than others.

Edited March 27, 2019 by Nick_S

[mnsh]

Thanks Nick that was helpful and a good reference article.

[rotpunkt]

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AfterShot Pro (https://www.aftershotpro.com) is by far the fastest option, I prefere it to Darktable.

[mnsh]

Dear Nick

I had a look on pixls.us forum to see if they knew about it, they didn't but have raised a request for it and it should be solved in RT next version so I hope this may solve it for you as well.

Dear Rotpunkt

I did look at ASP last year and did the free trial, but I couldn't get the printing side worked out.  I print my favourite pictures as 4x6 and keep in shoeboxes.  (The ultimate backup.)

Matthew