manage photos

[Nikolai]

Cefiar wrote:

> So, breaking it down into points, basically the process you're using here is:
>  Camera takes RAW
>  RAW moved to PC
>  RAW converted to PSD/TIFF
>  Image edited in PSD/TIFF
>  Image exported to JPG
>  JPG printed/distributed (eg: web)
>  JPG deleted (easy done manually)

Correct. However, the mass processing of images (I'm talking hundreds of 
images in one go) bypasses the PSD/TIFF stage. In other words, only 
those images worth working with individually (improving, adding 
something to it or fixing something) go through 16-bit editing (PSD or 
TIFF). All the rest are good enough as they are to be converted to JPEG 
for output (print or screen).


> I think the big issue is converting from RAW to PSD/TIFF, and it'd be really 
> nice if whatever program you are using can actually do this as an integrated 
> part of the application, and allow you to tweak with the import settings 
> (which of course affect how the picture renders into the new format).

There are many such applications (all proprietary), e.g. Adobe Camera 
RAW (part of Photoshop), CaptureOne and a few others. Of course, 
Photoshop hasn't been ported to Linux yet and the alternatives in Linux 
are, unfortunately, nowhere near Photoshop.


> As 
> such, I don't think anyone expects the ability to save to RAW formats 
> (especially as there are so many), and I'm not sure if anything out there 
> actually does this anyway.


You can't save to a RAW format, you can extract data from RAW and then 
save it in a format you want (e.g. JPEG, TIFF, PSD etc). RAW formats are 
read only (unless you hack them).


> Something that I've noticed that a lot of coverters/editors don't do (or don't 
> allow you to manage properly), is the creation/preservation/management of 
> EXIF data, either when converting (going from RAW to JPG or another format) 
> or after manipulation (such as resizing of JPG's which have EXIF data 
> attached).

I have had an opposite experience - most applications I've dealt with 
were handling EXIF data very well. Again, this is primarily proprietary 
stuff of the Windows/Macintosh world. In open source, yes, I think EXIF 
data could be handled better than it is now.



> An example here is that if I shoot directly to JPG, my camera includes EXIF 
> information in the JPG about a huge amount of things. Some of this includes 
> what I may consider to be useful information (such as the 
> ISO/shutter/apeture/focal length details) that I don't mind including in the 
> final image. Some of this information is stuff I wouldn't want to include 
> (eg: the serial number of the camera). Especially when doing bulk conversions 
> (eg: scaling stuff for the web), I'd appreciate the ability to see a list of 
> all the fields across the photos I'm about to convert, and allow turning on 
> or off this information in the resultant output images.


You can do that in Adobe Camera Raw. I haven't tried yet any open source 
application that can do that.


>> dcraw is the engine that drives ufraw and rawstudio and perhaps some
>> other projects. Both ufraw and rawstudio are very capable RAW converters
>> but still lacking some very important features from a professional
>> photographer's point of view.
> 
> I'm wondering what specifically you're missing here? Last I tried (which was 
> almost a year ago), there were a few things that seemed to be lacking, but I 
> wasn't that aware of the professional options at the time either. Of course, 
> a year can be a long time in the open source community, so they've probably 
> improved somewhat since my last look.


The most lacking feature, IMO that is, is the ability to mass process 
RAW files. At the moment, the tools I looked at, can only process one 
file at the time and it's good enough for most people but not for most 
photographers since most of them are wedding photographers. In this 
field you're dealing, on average, with 800-1000 files (some shoot 2000 
and more per wedding) per job. It will take forever to process 1000 
files one at the time. Plus, you don't really need to process one file 
at the time, especially so if it's a wedding. A lot of files are shot in 
similar light condition, so one setting can be good for more than one 
file. In wedding photography, this is true for hundreds of files because 
they are shot in lots of hundreds (e.g. church, apartment, location 
etc). You should be able to set certain conversion settings on one image 
and then apply them to as many as you need. To insure everything is OK, 
you should be able to quickly browse through thumbnail previews to see 
if anything is off and then move on to the next butch. Once you're 
finished, you should be able to convert the whole lot into JPEG or what 
not with the settings you set. All in all, to process 1000 RAW files 
shouldn't take more than two hours or so (without file conversion, this 
can take awhile if your puter is slow). At the moment, this speed is 
impossible to achieve on Linux.

The above workflow assumes the RAW processing tool saves processing 
settings (exposure, white balance and so on) somewhere, in a separate 
file for each RAW file. This is again lacking in current open source 
tools I looked at. Every time you process a file, you start from scratch 
and this is unacceptable. You have to be able to comeback to an already 
processed RAW file and either process it differently if you want or 
convert it to a workable format again for whatever reason. I can assure 
you this happens a lot in professional photography (coming back to an 
already processed RAW file).

Lastly, with the tools I looked at, the only way you can change white 
balance in an image is by sliding a slider here or there. This is like 
walking in a dark room trying to find scissors, you know where they are 
but you can't find them. One should be able to set white balance based 
on some RGB value in the image by, for example, pointing at an area of 
the image with some tool (usually they appear to be an eye dropper). 
Obviously you should be able to see the RGB values where you're pointing at.

This is what, IMO, stops a lot of photographers from using Linux, they 
can't process their images properly. This is why I dual boot (still).


> Don't get me wrong here. I'm not a coder, but if we can identify ways in which 
> software can be improved, at least we can hopefully help the people writing 
> it to improve it.


I'll be more than happy to help in any way I can and hopefully the day 
will come when I won't need Windows and Photoshop anymore.

Nikolai