Linux lacking bigtime in "Professional" Photography!

[jedimasterk]

When are Linux developers going to start producing high end professional photo editing applications. Windows and Mac users have Adobe's Creative Suite, which the pros use exclusively. Sure Gimp is fine, but when you actually read the vast array of photo editing magazines, as well as books by professional photographers. They all use Photoshop, with either Windows or Mac. Not Gimp on Linux!!. And not Photoshop CS with Wine. Linux is truly lacking in this area!!. High End "NATIVE" Professional Photo Editing Applications for Linux, that the professional photographers will use over Adobe products. Like everything in the Adobe Creative Suite CS3!.

[dann]

I somewhat disagree with this statement. You make two errors I believe.

First, GIMP is a professional level. There are many books and articles claiming this. Thus, there are professional level tools for photographers who wish to use Linux.

Second, you reference magazines claiming that they focus on Adobe products running on Windows or Mac, Not Linux under wine. I will add that rarely do these magazines mention any other product available for professional photographers now do they, even if they run on Mac or Windows.

So what you really want to say is that, "There is no native version of Adobe Photoshop or Creative Suite for Linux and this can be a barrier for Professional Photographers."

The burden of responsibility here is not on the shoulders of the FOSS developers they have come through (i.e.; Gimp, Inkscape, Scribus, Blender just to mention a few) but companies like Adobe who refuse to put out a native version of their products for Linux.

[Tsuroerusu]

When are Linux developers going to start producing high end professional photo editing applications.
...
Linux is truly lacking in this area!!. High End "NATIVE" Professional Photo Editing Applications for Linux, that the professional photographers will use over Adobe products. Like everything in the Adobe Creative Suite CS3!.

I know next to nothing about photo editing, so I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. However in return for that, let's for the sake of argument say, that such tools got produced, let's call it OpenShop (Creative aren't I? No pun intended), licensed under the GNU GPL and ran on GNU/Linux, *BSD, Solaris, Windows and Mac, and it could do the same stuff as Photoshop users claim Photoshop can do, and Gimp cannot, and a bit more just to make OpenShop seem that much more irresistible.

I am willing to bet that even in this scenario, the Photoshop users would still find something about OpenShop to whine about, and then say something like "I've already trained my staff to use Photoshop, we can't switch now", "The interface is too different" (When in reality a certain tool might be two centimeters to the right) or "I use Photoshop at work/school/<insert whatever you want here> and I have to use it at home too". And then we're at the point where OpenOffice.org is today! How ... delicious!

You say tools which "the professional photographers will use over Adobe products", don't exist. A parallel situation to Adobe's dominance in the photo editing market, exists in the office productivity market, where Microsoft is deeply entrenched with Microsoft Office. The difference however, is that there IS a good alternative in that field, it's OpenOffice.org, yet every time it gets mentioned, people always find some little detail to whine about. To add to that, most people who use Photoshop aren't novice computer users (Such as my mother) like the users of Microsoft Office are, so they're even more likely to find details about OpenShop to whine about, so I seriously doubt that Photoshop users would switch to our hypothetical program, OpenShop, even IF it got written, like you claim it currently isn't.

Like Dann said, it's not the free software community's responsibility to produce a clone of Photoshop (Because obviously Gimp is not good enough! ... /sarcasm), because first of all, what people like you want, is not an alternative to Photoshop (Or even a clone of it), what I'm guessing you want, is Photoshop for GNU/Linux, and it's only Adobe who can produce that for you. Secondly, even if the free software community produced an alternative to Photoshop (Like we have OpenOffice.org as an alternative to Microsoft Office), I'm convinced that the likelihood of you guys switching to it, are next to none.

If users of Photoshop on Windows, don't want to switch to Windows Vista, once you're being forced to (Microsoft will end sales of XP on PCs quite soon, except for small devices like the Eee PC), and don't want to invest in a Mac either. Well, may the stars help you! Then you can either run Photoshop on GNU/Linux via Wine, bite the bullet and try to use GIMP, or beg and plead at Adobe's feet saying "Mighty Adobe, please port Photoshop to Linux for me!" [1]. And I'm quite sure that for businesses, educational organizations etc., buying second-hand licenses for Windows XP aren't going to be an option, because of the restrictiveness of the Windows EULA.



[1] The ironic thing about this sarcastic example of mine, is that it's really a variant of a statement by Richard Stallman, about what users of non-free software have to do if they want a certain change: "Oh mighty developer please make this change for me".

[davijordan]

I have a brother who works for a newspaper in a west Texas town and he uses the Adobe products because he has to, He has also wanting to move to open source based software also. He has bugged me to come where he lives and set up a system with all the goodies. Lots of driving and gas is a bit high for now. In the area where I live, all the independent professional photographers that have had a chance to really use the gimp now do prefer it. Now that Adobe wants to encompass the open source community, it is possibly prima facie evidence that they are afraid of the tools available from open source are excellant and will take way from their market share. How much you want to bet that someone will try to buy out the gimp soon.

[allix]

Gimp is not good enough for professional photographers because it does not handle 16 bits / channel, color , only does rudimentary color separations and ICC color profiles is not that great . Cinepaint have fixed some of the issue espeically with 16 bit colur however its not really designed for photographers therefore its lacks certain things.

In regard to what the industry users, thats' not completely correct as several commercial films have used cinepaint for editing.

A interview given just before fosdem 2008 by cinepaint : http://www.linuxmovies.org/2008/fosdem.html

A link on the site that have actually used cinepaint in real life : http://www.cinepaint.org/about.html

Studio Users

Studios such as Sony Pictures Imageworks and many smaller studios use CinePaint. Disney, DreamWorks, and Pixar funded Crossover (Wine) to make Adobe Photoshop for Windows run nicely on Linux and that's what they use. Some studios use proprietary or internally developed tools. CinePaint is open source software. Nobody is obligated to tell us they use it. Studios use many Linux motion picture applications, not just CinePaint. This list of studios using CinePaint is just some we know about.

* Amalgamated Pixels
Elf, Looney Tunes
* Computer Cafe
League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
* Flash Film Works
Duplex, The Last Samurai
* Hammerhead
Showtime, Blue Crush, 2 Fast, 2 Furious
* Rhythm & Hues
Harry Potter, Cats & Dogs, Dr. Dolittle 2, Little Nicky, Grinch, Sixth Day, Stuart Little, Planet of the Apes
* Sony Pictures Imageworks
Stuart Little II, Spider-Man

[davijordan]

My understanding is that gimp does support 16 bit now. There was a plug-in called gegl I think that let you do 16bit on older versions. But if you think about it. How many colors does 16 bit represent? Have you used every one of those colors yet?


Gimp features:
Support for file formats
16/32 bit bitmaps and alpha-channel support in BMP;
24 bit and Vista icons can be opened and saved.

[allix]

My understanding is that gimp does support 16 bit now. There was a plug-in called gegl I think that let you do 16bit on older versions. But if you think about it. How many colors does 16 bit represent? Have you used every one of those colors yet?


Gimp features:
Support for file formats
16/32 bit bitmaps and alpha-channel support in BMP;
24 bit and Vista icons can be opened and saved.

That support has just gone into the development branch, which the developers will not recommend for everyday use, i think it will be at least a year before they release 2.6.
Whenever you use the raw format from a digital camera it is at least 12 bit , which gimp cannot handle.

I use ufraw to convert the files to 16 bit TIFF and when i open them with gimp i get this message



As it says, information will be lost, just like information is lost in a mp3 , ogg, h.264 and other files

I don't have an expensive camera , so its not uncommon for above 8 bit that stable gimp only handles.

[jedimasterk]

My understanding is that gimp does support 16 bit now. There was a plug-in called gegl I think that let you do 16bit on older versions. But if you think about it. How many colors does 16 bit represent? Have you used every one of those colors yet?


Gimp features:
Support for file formats
16/32 bit bitmaps and alpha-channel support in BMP;
24 bit and Vista icons can be opened and saved.

That support has just gone into the development branch, which the developers will not recommend for everyday use, i think it will be at least a year before they release 2.6.
Whenever you use the raw format from a digital camera it is at least 12 bit , which gimp cannot handle.

I use ufraw to convert the files to 16 bit TIFF and when i open them with gimp i get this message



As it says, information will be lost, just like information is lost in a mp3 , ogg, h.264 and other files

I don't have an expensive camera , so its not uncommon for above 8 bit that stable gimp only handles.

Need we say more!. Gimp is not nearly as powerful as Adobe Photoshop or Lightroom for that matter. And does Wine or Crossover support the latest version of Adobe's Creative Suite CS3, Lightroom, or even Photoshop CS3 Enhanced?. Also as a person who wants to get into Astrophotography in the future. 16 and 32 bit is pretty common. Does Gimp or Cinepaint support 32 bit. And what Astrophotography programs are available for Linux users?.

[jedimasterk]

And since Adobe is all about joining the opensource movement lately. Will the issue of porting Adobe's vast Digital Media products to Linux be mentioned to them, by companies like Ubuntu, Novell, RedHat, etc.. I for one would purchase Adobe Photoshop CS3 if it was available for Linux, natively, like it is for Mac OSX, another Unix like OS.

[davijordan]

Is the version you are using the latest 2.4? attach and zip a small thumbnail or let me know of a site that has such a picture and I want to try it for myself.

[allix]

Need we say more!. Gimp is not nearly as powerful as Adobe Photoshop or Lightroom for that matter. And does Wine or Crossover support the latest version of Adobe's Creative Suite CS3, Lightroom, or even Photoshop CS3 Enhanced?. Also as a person who wants to get into Astrophotography in the future. 16 and 32 bit is pretty common. Does Gimp or Cinepaint support 32 bit. And what Astrophotography programs are available for Linux users?.

Cinpaint, krita , digikam , imagemagick can handle 16 and 32 bit floating point images however they don't have as much functionality as gimp.
digikam has come a long way and some of its plugins IMO are better implemented than on gimp, i don;t mean the code but the way the user works with them.
I am not sure what you mean by Astrophotography programs , i am under the impression Astrophotography involves such photography techniques such long exposure times, multi-exposures, different lens filters and of course accurate timing to capture the moon for instance when its visible in the sky.
What are the programmes that you use on windows or macx that are specialised for Astrophotography?

Is the version you are using the latest 2.4? attach and zip a small thumbnail or let me know of a site that has such a picture and I want to try it for myself

I am using gimp 2.4.5 which is the latest stable version. For some practice you can download some raw files from http://raw.fotosite.pl/
and convert them to either 16 bit png or 16 bit tiff using ufraw (standard jpeg files only handles upto 8 bit images) , which is just a matter or yum install ufraw , apt-get install ufraw or whatever package manager you use.

[jedimasterk]

Need we say more!. Gimp is not nearly as powerful as Adobe Photoshop or Lightroom for that matter. And does Wine or Crossover support the latest version of Adobe's Creative Suite CS3, Lightroom, or even Photoshop CS3 Enhanced?. Also as a person who wants to get into Astrophotography in the future. 16 and 32 bit is pretty common. Does Gimp or Cinepaint support 32 bit. And what Astrophotography programs are available for Linux users?.

Cinpaint, krita , digikam , imagemagick can handle 16 and 32 bit floating point images however they don't have as much functionality as gimp.
digikam has come a long way and some of its plugins IMO are better implemented than on gimp, i don;t mean the code but the way the user works with them.
I am not sure what you mean by Astrophotography programs , i am under the impression Astrophotography involves such photography techniques such long exposure times, multi-exposures, different lens filters and of course accurate timing to capture the moon for instance when its visible in the sky.
What are the programmes that you use on windows or macx that are specialised for Astrophotography?

Is the version you are using the latest 2.4? attach and zip a small thumbnail or let me know of a site that has such a picture and I want to try it for myself

I am using gimp 2.4.5 which is the latest stable version. For some practice you can download some raw files from http://raw.fotosite.pl/
and convert them to either 16 bit png or 16 bit tiff using ufraw (standard jpeg files only handles upto 8 bit images) , which is just a matter or yum install ufraw , apt-get install ufraw or whatever package manager you use.

MaxlmDL, Maxlm DSLR, CCDSoft, Registax, Starry Night Pro Plus 6, The Sky 6 Professional, Megastar 5, Skytools 2, etc..

[jedimasterk]

http://thelinuxadvocate.blogspot.com/20 ... ds-to.html
Gimp vs Photoshop Comparison.

And how does Gimp do in Commercial Printing?.

[snarkout]

What exactly are you expecting from this thread? You are either going to get answers like "OH YES IT DOES!! FOSS FWT UR GAY NEENER-NEENER-NEENER!!!" or "YEAH, LINUX SUX FOR MULTIMEDIA I HATERZ IT I UZE MACINSTOSH!!!" or "I'm using XYZ and it does what I need it to." Generally if you want to have more than an argument, you should probably make suggestions or at least have a point.

[dann]

Perhaps we can say a few things based upon the points here.

1) Most professionals prefer to use Adobe Photoshop because

• the majority of businesses use this application
• the majority of educational institutions teach this application
• Adobe has marketed their product very well.

2) Some of the FOSS offerings for professional photographers are still lacking important features, for example

• 16 and 32 bit color (coming in 2.6)
• Better layer tools

3) Most professionals may be adverse to running Photoshop on wine or in a virtual machine.

4) Wine does not support the latest version of Adobe Creative Suite

5) Adobe has not shown an interest in porting their applications to Linux

So what could probably assist in rectifying these points:

1) More developers throwing their time into Gimp and other FOSS projects
2) More testers to assist these projects
3) Campaigns to encourage Adobe to release Linux ports of their software
4) Better marketing to encourage more Linux uptake facilitating the above