RAW image processing workflow in f-spot 0.6.1.5 (karmic-updates)

Mary Gardiner mary at puzzling.org
Wed Nov 11 21:24:08 UTC 2009


I downloaded a new upstream version of f-spot today (from Ubuntu Karmic
9.10's -updates repo).

Here's a common workflow for me:
 1. shoot a photo in Canon's RAW format
 2. import into f-spot for photo management
 3. 'develop' to JPEG, which I would prefer to have some manual
    intervention, so that I can use the colour profiles for the Canon
    400D rather than ufraw's (too muddy) default colour profile
 4. do something with the resulting JPEG, such as export it to the web

Here's how step 3 used to work:
 3.1 right click on thumbnail in f-spot and select "develop in UFraw"
 3.2 use UFraw as desired, exit
 3.3 f-spot now knows about two "versions" of the photo, the original
     RAW and the jpeg that ufraw produced
 3.4 select the jpeg version as the working version, export or apply
     edits such as crops etc as appropriate
 3.5 export to web etc

Here's how step 3 now fails:
 3.1 right click on thumbnail in f-spot and select "Open With" ->
     "Ufraw"
 3.2 dialog box asks if f-spot should create a new copy to preserve the
     original. I think "well, that implies that f-spot might overwrite
     the original, which I NEVER want" so answer "Yes"
 3.3 a byte-for-byte duplicate of the RAW file is created
 3.4 use UFraw as desired, exit
 
 ... find that f-spot now knows about the two identical RAW version of
 the photo, but has not imported the JPEG output of UFraw. Cannot crop,
 edit or export either of the two UFraw photos because f-spot doesn't
 have that functionality, or the JPEG because f-spot has no idea it
 exists (and appears to have no way of being told "this new photo is a
 version of this other photo")

I could of course now independently edit the JPEG and manually copy it
to websites and such, but there's a reason I'm using a photo management
tool: I'd like it to manage my photos and edited versions of them, not
to serve as a thin and inconvienient wrapper around using UFraw.

Does anyone know how this sequence is supposed to go in f-spot, now?
 
Workarounds that aren't:
 - shoot in both RAW and JPEG: I guess I could do this in future, but
   due to the arrow of time I can't retrospectively reshoot photos

-Mary




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