[shedendman]

Stopped using M$windows long time back,as i'm new,what does one recommend for post using linux,GIMP is far to complicated at the moment,anything else out there?
Thanks

[Adam]

Darktable is a good choice if you tend to shoot in raw:
https://www.darktable.org/

[sergeremy]

ART (Another RawTherapee) is a great stripped-down-to-the-essentials fork of RawTherapee. With the added bonus of local editing.

[cjn314]

Dark table is great, but I find myself using rawtherapee quite a bit at the moment. Both of these are great for processing raw files, but I also use rawtherapee for cropping and minor edits of jpeg files (SOOC) when there is no need for raw processing.

---------- Post added 05-30-22 at 08:22 AM ----------

ART (Another RawTherapee) is a great stripped-down-to-the-essentials fork of RawTherapee. With the added bonus of local editing.

Fully agree here, the addition of local editing is wonderful.

[tduell]

Darktable is a good choice if you tend to shoot in raw:
https://www.darktable.org/

I'd second that.
I've been using darktable for sometime now and it has proved to be very capable and easy to use.
I do use Gimp occasionally for cloning/healing. darktable has improved abilities to do this too but I've yet to try them

Cheers,
Terry

[k0og]

Welcome!

I also run Linux, but still do my photo processing on a Win system. A decent CPU can run Win applications in Linux nicely with wine. Here is how I have run Faststone Image Viewer on my Linux machine: Install wine (the exact process depends on your Linux variant), then download the latest version of FastStone Image Viewer from here: FastStone Image Viewer, Screen Capture, Photo Resizer .... If you download the installer (.exe file), you can install it in wine (double-click the .exe installer) and you should be presented with a desktop icon to click on to run FastStone. Or, you can download the portable version of it, extract the .zip file into a directory, drill down to that directory with your GUI file manager and double-click on the FastStone .exe file. It's fairly seamless, and seems to perform well, even on my old machines.

This process actually works well with *many* Win programs on Linux, especially if you have a fairly well provisioned CPU (# cores and RAM).

-Joe-

[VadikToronto]

I use digikam on linux to organize photos. It has basic edit capabilities. For raw processing I use darktable/rawtherapee and gimp. I've switched recently from darktable to rawtherapee.

[vector]

I have been using Linux as a primary desktop system since 2000. My career is in supporting Linux servers by the thousands. It's a great OS and I wish the raw photo editors for it were better. There is really no excuse in 2022 for the major software vendors not to offer a Linux version. I am going to be the detractor in this thread. Neither Darktable nor RawTherapee cut it for me, and I have given them second, third, fourth and more chances. With all the money and time I have invested in cameras, lenses, and outings for photos, scrimping on the post processing would be a shame. I avoided Adobe like the plague for years and wasted time and money learning other editors. I am just going to put this out there and then shut up and leave the thread alone, but there is a reason professional editing is done with the likes of Photoshop, Lightroom, Capture One, DxO, etc... They are worth the money. I keep running a windows desktop (dual boot Linux/Windows actually) just so I can use them.

In the DarkTable vs RawTherapee race I find the UI of DarkTable more appealing and easier to use but I find RawTherapee to have some more advanced capabilities. Both work well for basic edits when you don't need to push things too far, neither is as easy to use or as capable as Lightroom which they both try to mimic. Gimp is a great tool, and a good PhotoShop replacement for 90% of the general tasks PhotoShop is used for. That last 10% especially the tooling around layers and masking, is a big deal though, and Gimp just can't fully replace all that Photoshop can do.


Good luck.

[sjp]

Stopped using M$windows long time back,as i'm new,what does one recommend for post using linux,GIMP is far to complicated at the moment,anything else out there?
Thanks

I would also recommend Darktable. It's capable and relatively easy to use. Here is a YT link to a Darktable introduction that might be useful:

You Tube

You Tube

(No affiliation)

[DougieD]

Both Darktable and RawTherapee are very good in my opinion, although I tend to favour RawTherapee myself. But if you're looking for something simpler than GIMP, I'm not sure either Darktable or RawTherapee qualify. I had been using GIMP for a long time before I tried RawTherapee. My initial reaction to RT was "Holy moly, what is all this!?" Lol.

[reh321]

I have been using Linux as a primary desktop system since 2000. My career is in supporting Linux servers by the thousands. It's a great OS and I wish the raw photo editors for it were better. There is really no excuse in 2022 for the major software vendors not to offer a Linux version. I am going to be the detractor in this thread. Neither Darktable nor RawTherapee cut it for me, and I have given them second, third, fourth and more chances. With all the money and time I have invested in cameras, lenses, and outings for photos, scrimping on the post processing would be a shame. I avoided Adobe like the plague for years and wasted time and money learning other editors. I am just going to put this out there and then shut up and leave the thread alone, but there is a reason professional editing is done with the likes of Photoshop, Lightroom, Capture One, DxO, etc... They are worth the money. I keep running a windows desktop (dual boot Linux/Windows actually) just so I can use them.

In the DarkTable vs RawTherapee race I find the UI of DarkTable more appealing and easier to use but I find RawTherapee to have some more advanced capabilities. Both work well for basic edits when you don't need to push things too far, neither is as easy to use or as capable as Lightroom which they both try to mimic. Gimp is a great tool, and a good PhotoShop replacement for 90% of the general tasks PhotoShop is used for. That last 10% especially the tooling around layers and masking, is a big deal though, and Gimp just can't fully replace all that Photoshop can do.


Good luck.

I do minimal post-processing, and gimp - running on Linux - is fine what I do.

[house]

neither is as easy to use or as capable as Lightroom which they both try to mimic.

I think you'll find that they don't try to mimic lightroom. It's constantly repeated in support forums to users expecting conceptual or GUI similarities to Lightroom. Both RT and darktable are very different to Lightroom. They are only similar in so far as they are all raw developing tools

[Lord Lucan]

It's constantly repeated in support forums to users expecting conceptual or GUI similarities to Lightroom.

Isn't that true for so much about Linux - complaints that it or its apps don't work just the same as Windows ones

I have the opposite problem. I have used Linux and its apps for 20 years, except when I need to sort problems on Lady L's Windows laptop. I find Windows and its apps infuriating, lacking the facilities I am used to having to hand especially when it comes to trouble-shooting. I suspect the facilities are there in Windows somewhere, but I can't find them.

[MossyRocks]

Personally I mostly use RawTherapee. It is a a big heavy program but can do wonders. Others recommend darktable and it is probably more similar to Lightroom but I have grown accustom to RawTherapee and some of the tools I really like. The learning curve for Darktable is shallower than for RawTherapee so that is something to consider. GIMP is really more of Photoshop replacement and has lots of things it can do but is very different in how it functions from Photoshop so it takes a lot of unlearning if you are use to Photoshop.

One thing about the open source tools is that their GUIs kind of suck but that is mostly because they are designed by non UI people and a lot of the developers will still do things on the command line, god knows I do.

[kanyck]

As for Darktable. I've been using it since v0.6 IIRC. Last couple of years it augmented with a dedicated developer who is a photographer, a programmer and a mathematician. He has practically developed another developing path within the DT that is more in line with the physics of light, thus gives more natural and pleasing results. (You may still choose "old" vs "new" process in the settings. You may almost dump the old LAB path because LAB is known to misbehave with high dynamic images). The price to pay for this is that UI became sometimes quite complicated because of low-level features that cannot be adequately represented by customary UI without loosing the advantage of using them. Thus, to benefit from this new shiny features one have to dip into the manual (who wants to do this!) and probably see this dev's YT channel to understand how to use new modules and why they cannot be simplified without loosing the final IQ. Also, new modules may behave arbitrary in some situation and you may have to get used to them to be effective: DT won't masquerade the errors (negative RGB values and such) for the sake of usability. You need to understand what you are doing. In spite of what I'm telling here the simple development is still easy with DT. You'll need this advanced stuff if your RAWs are complicated (high DR, mixed light conditions, etc.) So the DT learning curve lately became quite steep, but having made a commitment, I'm personally quite happy with it and I've been redeveloping my old shots to get a better look for them. Because I can see the difference. Because now I can make marginals look normal. And I can produce look I want.

And, I don't really use RT much, so I cannot suggest between the two. For editing I'd suggest Krita against GIMP. The UI of the latter is really awful AFAICT. Hope it helps.