[BigMackCam]

My main PC is a fast laptop with i7-4700MQ processor and 12GB RAM, running Linux Mint 18.3. For photo processing, I'm using Darktable 2.4.3 as my RAW developer and GIMP 2.8 for editing, along with digiKam 5 for library management. It's a setup I'm very happy with, and the performance is excellent.

Now, I've just acquired a second (new, but very inexpensive) PC for general use in my home office, and it's due for delivery in the next couple of days. Its main purpose will be to support basic day-to-day computing needs - internet browsing, office applications (word processing and spreadsheets), video and music streaming. It's a rather low power unit, with an AMD Carrizo-L E2-7110 64-bit processor and just 4GB RAM (though I can upgrade this if necessary, to a maximum of 16GB), and I'm intending to wipe Windows 10 and install Linux Mint 18.3 as with my main machine. I don't intend to use it regularly for photo processing, but it would be nice to have some basic capabilities in that area, if in fact it's feasible at all.

My question is, what (if any) RAW development tools are suitable for such a low power machine? I love Darktable, but I'm guessing many of its functions will run very slowly. How about RawTherapee? Another option would be to use UFRaw import into GIMP, as I believe GIMP should run OK (especially since 2.8 deals with 8 bit images only). Then again, digiKam has an image editor that seems quite capable... I wonder how that would run on a lower power machine?

As an aside, is Linux Mint 18.3 a wise choice, or would I be better off looking at a lighter distro, or at least a lighter desktop?

Any thoughts and advice would be greatly appreciated

---

Last edited by BigMackCam; 06-03-2018 at 02:43 PM.

[GUB]

I see that processor is benchmarked around 2300 which is similar to my second unit but I have 8 gb ram.Yes Gimp 2.8 will be fine because of the 8 bit processing. I find Darktable is nimble enough until I apply denoise - then it takes forever to export. Digikam purrs along nicely and the very little editing I have done on it seems fine. Hugin takes a while but that is what coffee breaks are for. Don't worry about the desktop it will be fine. What is default in Mint? I use Gnome3 on Ubuntu and love it. That extra 4 gb of ram (or more) would be probably a worthwhile investment. My primary rig is benchmarked somewhere around 11000 with 16gb ram soon to be upsized. Gimp2.10 with its floating bit editing is considerably slower on it than 2.8 on the old machine. I have reasonable gpu s but haven't got opencl up and running yet - that is a step too far in the thinking department!
EDIT and Rawtherapee runs just fine in the slower build.

[BigMackCam]

I see that processor is benchmarked around 2300 which is similar to my second unit but I have 8 gb ram.Yes Gimp 2.8 will be fine because of the 8 bit processing. I find Darktable is nimble enough until I apply denoise - then it takes forever to export. Digikam purrs along nicely and the very little editing I have done on it seems fine. Hugin takes a while but that is what coffee breaks are for. Don't worry about the desktop it will be fine. What is default in Mint? I use Gnome3 on Ubuntu and love it. That extra 4 gb of ram (or more) would be probably a worthwhile investment. My primary rig is benchmarked somewhere around 11000 with 16gb ram soon to be upsized. Gimp2.10 with its floating bit editing is considerably slower on it than 2.8 on the old machine. I have reasonable gpu s but haven't got opencl up and running yet - that is a step too far in the thinking department!
EDIT and Rawtherapee runs just fine in the slower build.

Thank you, this is very helpful and encouraging

Good to know that GIMP 2.8 should be OK And, yes, I'd heard that 2.10 is resource-hungry... but I guess that's to be expected, given all the additional power.

Regarding Darktable, how do you approach denoising? Lately I've switched almost entirely to the Equalizer module for both chroma and luminance noise reduction. Even on my main PC, I find it faster than bilateral and non-local denoise (not to mention far more flexible and effective).

Mint's default desktop is Cinnamon, and I really like it - but if a lighter desktop will make life easier on my second machine, I'm open to that idea.

I'll almost certainly add more RAM to the machine. Because of the CPU and board, I believe I may have to keep the modules of equal size, so I'll probably just add another 4GB module for a total of 8GB. I could replace the existing 4GB with two 8GB modules, but I'd be defeating my original objective of acquiring a low-cost second PC. If I can get by with 8GB for general use and occasional photo editing - with, as you indicate, a few coffee breaks while waiting - that'll do just fine.

EDIT: Incidentally, I have a GeForce GT740M GPU in my laptop, with Linux set up to use NVIDIA's drivers and working with OpenCL. I realise it's a rather old and basic GPU by today's standards, but I'm surprised at how little difference it makes to Darktable processing... In fact, because video playback on YouTube and other streaming services is actually better using the integrated Intel graphics, I now use that by default

[beachgardener]

perhaps try the Xfce version of Mint, it is better for slower machines. If darktable and Raw therapee are too heavy maybe UFRaw with Gimp, or perhaps even Shotwell I think DigiKam handles Raw.

[photoptimist]

Have you considered using the ps command in Linux? It might be really helpful to you in your quest. You can use ps to see how these different development tools are utilizing your CPU and memory (and also spot other resource hogs in the system that might be hobbling the tool's performance). That might help you determine if a candidate tool could be accelerated by adding more RAM or if it really is a lost cause.

[BigMackCam]

perhaps try the Xfce version of Mint, it is better for slower machines. If darktable and Raw therapee are too heavy maybe UFRaw with Gimp, or perhaps even Shotwell I think DigiKam handles Raw.

Thanks for the tip on Xfce... I'll look into that. Perhaps I'll try Mint with Cinnamon first, and if it's sluggish, I can look at the Xfce implementation as an alternative.

Shotwell's not something I'd considered, so that's handy to know too

Yes, digiKam handles RAW files very well. Some of its processing functions are pretty slow compared to Darktable, so I'm not sure how they would fare with a less powerful processor... but I guess I'll find out soon enough - I've just found out that the PC is scheduled to arrive on Tuesday morning

[beachgardener]

the layout on Xfce is a little different, but not that different, still Minty

[GUB]

I just use the profiled denoise in Darktable. It recognises the K1 but seems a little heavy handed but that might just be a product of FF ( you are pixel peeping and the final result is not magnified as much as apsc). Often I turn the profile part off and just use the strength slider a bit. I tend to shoot a base iso and push my edits so it doesn't fit the profiles that well.

[BigMackCam]

I just use the profiled denoise in Darktable. It recognises the K1 but seems a little heavy handed but that might just be a product of FF ( you are pixel peeping and the final result is not magnified as much as apsc). Often I turn the profile part off and just use the strength slider a bit. I tend to shoot a base iso and push my edits so it doesn't fit the profiles that well.

Understood.

I wholeheartedly recommend you take a look at the Equalizer module for noise reduction... If you don't already use it, it can be daunting at first, but it's really impressive - and it's fast. The presets are fine for low ISO images at correct exposure, but for higher noise images you need to work manually. Even so, it's pretty straightforward. And for the very few situations where chroma noise can't be completely removed (which only happens for me on very high ISO images), a small amount of bilateral denoise on top does the trick

[jbinpg]

Hi, Mike. Get as much RAM as will fit in the machine. Your darktable will thank you.

As for the equalizer module, IMO, this is by far the most useful module in dt. Hanatos outdid himself writing this one. A tip from Harry Durgin to help visualize equalizer effects: turn the luminance way up, switch back to equalizer and change the blend mode to difference. Then play around with different effects in the equalizer, e.g., pulling up the sharpening starting from the large scale on the left. This allows you to fine tune noise reduction, sharpening or anything else the module provides. Once you have decided on what works, reset the luminance and blend mode and apply at will. The fact that you can also use parametric masking in equalizer just adds to its utility.

Jack

[GUB]

Understood.

I wholeheartedly recommend you take a look at the Equalizer module for noise reduction... If you don't already use it, it can be daunting at first, but it's really impressive - and it's fast. The presets are fine for low ISO images at correct exposure, but for higher noise images you need to work manually. Even so, it's pretty straightforward. And for the very few situations where chroma noise can't be completely removed (which only happens for me on very high ISO images), a small amount of bilateral denoise on top does the trick

Thanks I will try it

[BigMackCam]

Hi, Mike. Get as much RAM as will fit in the machine. Your darktable will thank you.

Thanks, Jack

The PC arrived this afternoon and I've just finished installing Mint 18.3 and updates, setting up my security and desktop preferences, installing Argyll and a few tools, calibrating the display profile (I'm using an HP 23xi monitor I already owned) and taking Timeshift snapshots along the way.

Considering what I paid for this machine, it's pretty impressive It boots Mint quickly, Cinnamon desktop is responsive, and while things do take just a little longer to load than on my i7 laptop, there are no obvious delays. It runs the software I'll be using most - Firefox and LibreOffice, primarily - just fine, and streams Amazon video and music beautifully. GIMP 2.8 loads quickly, but I haven't tried processing anything yet. One nice surprise is that since it's a lower power and energy efficient processor, the unit runs cool - and with a very quiet fan that only seems to speed up very, very occasionally under heavy load, it's the most near-silent PC I've used

I still need to decide whether to add a second 4GB RAM module, or take out the existing one and put in 2 x 8GB modules. Looking purely at the cost, I'd really prefer just to add another 4GB module... but I guess I'd regret that - and I suspect you're right, I should just bite the bullet and put a full 16GB in there right away.

I'm going to install digiKam 5 and Darktable 2.4.3 tomorrow. I'm expecting both to load OK but run into problems when dealing with images from my higher resolution cameras. It'll be interesting to see just how bad it gets

As for the equalizer module, IMO, this is by far the most useful module in dt. Hanatos outdid himself writing this one. A tip from Harry Durgin to help visualize equalizer effects: turn the luminance way up, switch back to equalizer and change the blend mode to difference. Then play around with different effects in the equalizer, e.g., pulling up the sharpening starting from the large scale on the left. This allows you to fine tune noise reduction, sharpening or anything else the module provides. Once you have decided on what works, reset the luminance and blend mode and apply at will. The fact that you can also use parametric masking in equalizer just adds to its utility.

The more I use the Equalizer module, the more I marvel at it. It's my favourite tool by far, and I wonder how I did without it in Lightroom for so long. Thanks for the Harry Durgin tip. I'm becoming reasonably adept at using the module now, but I'll be sure to try this out!

[damianc]

Have you considered using the ps command in Linux?

top (/usr/bin/top) gives a nice visual feel to resource usage in real time <shift>m sorts by memory usage <shift>p by cpu usage

I've long used Rawtherapee for noise reduction as it seems to do an excellent job. When a machine is low on memory it struggles with tools like Tone Mapping, and can crash when sending to GIMP, but a workaround is to save out the file as a jpeg or tiff

[BigMackCam]

Have you considered using the ps command in Linux? It might be really helpful to you in your quest. You can use ps to see how these different development tools are utilizing your CPU and memory (and also spot other resource hogs in the system that might be hobbling the tool's performance). That might help you determine if a candidate tool could be accelerated by adding more RAM or if it really is a lost cause.

Thanks for this

I'll be trying out some photo processing in digiKam, Darktable and GIMP later today, so I'll give the ps command a workout then!

[BigMackCam]

Well, colour me surprised...

I just installed Darktable 2.4.3 and tried processing a RAW file from my K-3... and the performance really isn't bad at all. Certain isolated tools - e.g. bilateral denoise - are slow, but not unusable by any means. I wouldn't want to rely on this PC as my main photo processing station, but it's perfectly capable of handling occasional photo work. Much better than I expected, frankly.

I'm even more encouraged now to add the extra RAM. I've snagged an inexpensive new / bought-in-error 8GB DDR3L-1600 UDIMM module on eBay, which should arrive in a couple of days. With the 4GB installed, that will give me 12GB in total. I'll see how that works out before deciding whether to replace the 4GB module with another 8GB UDIMM...