Star Using Linux for Photography: Where We Stand
Linked by Thom Holwerda on Thu 21st Aug 2008 16:16 UTC, submitted by jcornuz
Multimedia, AV Graphics and photography have been Apple's chasse gardee for years but for quite some time, MS Windows is on par with the Mac and the system of choice for photographers boils down to personal preferences more than anything else. But what about Linux? "My goal with this entry is to brush a big picture of where Linux stands as far as photography is concerned," Joel Cornuz explains, "What are the achievements, where improvements are needed and being worked on, and which pieces are still missing."
E-mail Print r 8   68 Comment(s) http://osne.ws/fl7
Permalink for comment 327689
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
RE: Workflow
by kaiwai on Sat 23rd Aug 2008 02:09 UTC in reply to "Workflow"
kaiwai
Member since:
2005-07-06

It really has nothing to do with Adobe or Mac or Windows it is about usability and productivity -- I can shoot with the best film or digital equipment but when I get it into CS 3 that is only the first step. At some point I need to have this image in a context, in a 'Product' if you will, and if this is Web or Print then I need to do this in the best speed with TRUE WYSIWYG. Colors are just the tip of the iceberg designers and content managers have to provide font and data access controls where one user is writing ad copy and another is doing the print layout and yet another is doing the web layout.
Yes Linux has come a long way in ten years but the Apps need to be more unified - Keyboard shortcuts and productivity tools need to behave more similarly for it to be a design tool. I mean there is no way that I would put ANY distro (or even windows) in front of a 35-55 year old who has been doing publishing since she or he was 20 - 22. They will not be able to hit the ground running.
Sheesh I remember when we switched from OS 9 to OS X similarly from Windows to The Mac or the reverse of that. These users went into vapor lock. The only saving grace is that In the Adobe apps all the keybindings are the same (cut, copy, paste- OK but delect select inverse - feather, alpha channel, new layer from selection, new document from clipboard....) and then being able to push that to a different discrete app that is also well known, well that is what workflow is and it makes or breaks an "platform"


Beautifully articulated - I would have loved to add on a point to your post, but since I have replied to this story already, I am unable to ;)

You are right; a single application doesn't make or break the platform - what makes our breaks it is whether there are the applications which complete the work flow; take Mac's for example - it may work in one organisation with one set of work flow, but may not work in another organisation because a single application is missing (and their whole work flow is dependent on that one application).

But with that being said; if one doesn't have the foundations for vendors to write their applications - then is it suprising when they avoid a certain platform? one only needs to look at how much work Apple has put into improving their application foundations; same goes for Microsoft. Third parties make or break a platform. It is about the vendor to provide the best developer experience possible so that developers are pulled to that platform. Mac for example has less marketshare but has a wonderful platform to develop on.

Reply Parent Bookmark Score: 2