[Uncle Jaque]

The Mail Lady brought a box from Amazon this Morning, and when I got around to opening it up, there well secured inside was a smaller box marked "PENTAX K-50".

That box contained not only my new K-50 body, but a bunch of accessories like the battery, charger, manuals... and a CD for a program called "SlikyPix3Pen" - apparently some kind of graphics editor.

It didn't take me long to attach the SMC PENTAX DA 1.4-5.8 50-200mm ED WR Zoom lens, but I'm waiting on the battery to charge up before I attempt to take any pictures with it... then there's that 300+ page manual I'm supposed to read first. ... Oy!

Since I've been having issues posting to this forum from Windows, I've been using my alternative LINUX Mint 17 OS in stead...

I have yet to find a graphics editing program I really like on LINUX - Gimp just does not get it for me and gThumb isn't much better.
Fotoxx is about as good as it gets and I can't use it as well as my PhotoFiltre program on Windows.
Alas; even with WINE PF is too unstable to use on Linux and the Linux compatible version someone is working on does not seem to be ready for Beta yet, so I have to open Windows to process my images and Linux to share them here.

Just for hoots I popped in that CD in Linux mode and it came up as if it was going to install a WINE enabled version of this SilkyPix, whatever that is - but about half way through the installation process I was cued to provide a "BINARY" and an "ARGUMENT" in little text boxes. Without having a clue what those were all about, that's as far as I could go.

Could any LINUX savvy tech geeks out there suggest how I could find out how to install this program - at least sufficiently to find out if it works or not?

These pictures were taken with my little pocket PENTAX OPTIO W-80 while the K-100D's batteries were re charging. It's a little guy, but it's a PENTAX!

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[pepperberry farm]

LightZone 4.1.1 should be available for Linux - I use the OSX version (and am slowing moving to PS Elements) and find it simple, powerful, intuitive and free...

---------- Post added 07-21-15 at 01:45 PM ----------

oh - and congrats!

[paulh]

I'm also running Linux Mint Others will have different suggestions, but here's what I'm running: Cataloguing and photo management - digiKam. (It also does editing) There's a standalone editor version without the management features called showFoto. I find digiKam works very well for jpeg editing, but I'll also use GIMP alongside it for other tasks, mostly for it's clone/healing tool functions that digiKam lacks.

For RAW editing, I use the UFRaw plugin for GIMP. Open the RAW file with GIMP, and the UFRaw plugin will kick in, allowing you to edit and save to TIFF in GIMP. You can continue to edit in GIMP, but I usually import the TIFF back into digiKam for final edits, and exporting to finished jpeg. Now, digiKam can read, open and edit RAWs by itself, but I've not gotten good results that way. It seems to do much better when it opens the TIFF created by GIMP/UFRaw. Just my opinion.

Darktable is another recommended option. I'm still in the newbie phase with this software, getting to know it, but not there yet. Worth a try, though.
Congrats on the new camera, you'll be busy for awhile - good luck

[Uncle Jaque]

=pepperberry farm;3318638]LightZone 4.1.1 should be available for Linux - I use the OSX version (and am slowing moving to PS Elements) and find it simple, powerful, intuitive and free...

---------- Post added 07-21-15 at 01:45 PM ----------

Thanks, but after wasting about an hour registering on the LZ forum, having my quesitons blocked, trying several other repositories, pasting in the terminal codes to no avail, I've pretty much given up.
If I can't download an *.exe setup file and just open it and let it install the software for me, I'm lost.
Some people are just too stupid for Linux and I'm probably one of them.

---------- Post added 07-21-15 at 10:09 PM ----------

I'm also running Linux Mint ...

Oh good! Linux is interesting, but I don't think I'm quite smart enough to be using it... I might run some questions by you about it from time to time.

There's a standalone editor version without the management features called showFoto. ...

Thanks for the tip; I plugged it in to my software manager search window and *sha-zamm!*; There it was - so I installed it.
That was relatively painless!
I'll run some of my next batch of pictures through it and see how it works.

Darktable is another recommended option. I'm still in the newbie phase with this software, getting to know it, but not there yet. Worth a try, though.
Congrats on the new camera, you'll be busy for awhile - good luck

If showfoto doesn't work out I'll try Darktable.
Have tried several graphics programs on Linux which were so terrible I just dumped them.

The battery pack for the new K-50 should be charged up by tomorrow and if the weather is any decent I'll give it a whirl!
Stay tuned!

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Last edited by Uncle Jaque; 07-21-2015 at 07:12 PM. Reason: Added comment

[newmikey]

Cataloguing and photo management - digiKam. (It also does editing) There's a standalone editor version without the management features called showFoto. I find digiKam works very well for jpeg editing, but I'll also use GIMP alongside it for other tasks, mostly for it's clone/healing tool functions that digiKam lacks.

For RAW editing, I use the UFRaw plugin for GIMP. Open the RAW file with GIMP, and the UFRaw plugin will kick in, allowing you to edit and save to TIFF in GIMP. You can continue to edit in GIMP, but I usually import the TIFF back into digiKam for final edits, and exporting to finished jpeg. Now, digiKam can read, open and edit RAWs by itself, but I've not gotten good results that way. It seems to do much better when it opens the TIFF created by GIMP/UFRaw. Just my opinion.

Darktable is another recommended option. I'm still in the newbie phase with this software, getting to know it, but not there yet. Worth a try, though.
Congrats on the new camera, you'll be busy for awhile - good luck

+1 on all although I use either the CLI version of UFRaw (ufraw-batch) or the standalone GUI version (ufraw) to obtain 16-bit conversions rather than the 8-bits provided by the Gimp plugin.

Also consider:
Krita - for pixel edits
LuminanceHDR - for HDR merges and tonemapping
Hugin - for merging panorama shots
NeatImage for Linux - (non-free paid license) for noise reduction and final sharpening
RawTherapee - for raw conversion

I have played around with Windows stuff running under Wine for a while but it's generally not worth the trouble. I don't like most Windows based programs anyway.

For beginners I'd always advise to stick with whatever your distro offers as one-click installs through its repositories and its package manager - no need to become too technical that way.

[pepperberry farm]

and you may want to consider a second battery, so you can still be out shooting while one is recharging...

[paulh]

+1 on all although I use either the CLI version of UFRaw (ufraw-batch) or the standalone GUI version (ufraw) to obtain 16-bit conversions rather than the 8-bits provided by the Gimp plugin.

Thanks for the info - I'll be looking into this.

[Uncle Jaque]

Thanks 4 suggestions; I may order a battery rack so I can use AA NiCad batteries in the K-50 at least for back up, since that's what I use in the K-100D.

I'm thinking that this block battery might last longer than the AAs.
The little battery block for the Optio W-80 is still going strong after several years.
Tried to buy a back up via Amazon and it didn't fit - returning it was such a hassle I gave it away.

Good advice on the packages via SW Manager; I never could figure out the magic incantations of "sudo apt-get" etc. to make the terminal work, even when I paste the code in.
Lately is asks for my PW but when I try to type it in the cursor just sits there blinking at me and won't accept any input.
It's like it's saying "Go back to Windows; you're not smart enough to be using Linux!"

Tried hugins but couldn't get it to even open, so out that went. Right now Photoxx seems to work about as well as any of them and there is lots of stuff I can't do - or figure out how to do - in that.
At least I can do basic rotation, tweakage, and size reduction so I can post them on line or in e mail without soaking up a lot of bandwidth or hitting the Mb limit.

---------- Post added 07-22-15 at 09:38 AM ----------

Will I need to update the firmware in this new K-50 like I did with the K-100D after I got it?

[newmikey]

It's like it's saying "Go back to Windows; you're not smart enough to be using Linux!"

My 77-year old mom used it and my kids used it from age 5 onward, I'm sure you could beat both!

[Uncle Jaque]

I just took ShowPhoto for a test spin developing some images I took with the K-100D and a film lens I stuck on it (KA 35-70mm Zoom off of an old A-3000 camera I bought used a couple of days ago).

Set on AV, ISO 400 manual focus and click. Not bad for vintage glass, I'd say!

Showphoto takes a little getting used to but seems to do most of what I need a graphics program to do, as well as anything I've tried so far on Linux.

I may just scrap this CD "SilkyPix" program all toghether; it's more of a PITA than it's worth IMHO.

[newmikey]

I may just scrap this CD "SilkyPix" program all toghether; it's more of a PITA than it's worth IMHO.

Now thàt's the right attitude!

[jgnfld]

Now thàt's the right attitude!

Hint for Windows users...

One hint with SilkyPix (which I admit has a bit of a wall at the front end of the learning climb): Make your adjustments from top to bottom. That is exposure bias first, and then on down through all the sliders to sharpen. There are additional tools as well, but once you get the hang of the top-to-bottom flow in the development process, the rest comes along a bit easier.

The Japanglish manual doesn't help either, but it makes sense after a bit.

All-in-all I'm very satisfied with Silkypix now that I know how to use it.I have upgraded to v6Pro.

[Uncle Jaque]

I'm content with Photo Filtre on Windows; just looking for something to use on LINUX.
Since no one has come back with suggestions on how to install it and I'm at the end of my IT rope, I'll do the best I can with what I've so far got.
The CD is going in the bottom drawer O junk; perhaps revisit it some day... probably not though.