Submitted by 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.”
Eventually Adobe could have one codebase for Win/Mac _and_ Linux. And all of them 64bit.
But I think Adobe is not that clever.
Then you’ll be happy to know that Adobe *does* use Qt in some of their products:
http://trolltech.com/company/customers/coolapps/adobe
Maybe they are clever enough, but one can not port a whole codebase overnight. Or maybe the evaluated Qt, but concluded that it is not OK for all of their products.
But you’re ignoring the main advantage which Adobe has over other products on the market – Adobe has the whole work flow of products under the one roof. From photo editing to website and content creation – and everything in between; it is a formidable package. Simply porting one piece of software will not help in the slightest. It would be like getting sold a car and when it arrives – all you have are 4 wheels.
What there needs to be is an eccentric billionaire who can dedicate $2billion to re-creating the whole Adobe chain of products using Qt. This is why Quark has continued to loose its position in the market; the failure to realise that no one *cares* about purchasing one application from one vendor, and then pray that all 5 different titles from five different vendors will hopefully work together. People want a completely integrated solution from the top downwards.
Personally, I think that the open source world could do a lot better job than Adobe if it got its act together. For example, why not have one common engine sitting at the core of a whole line of products? a set of core libraries on which products can be built – taking the parts of each library that are relevant to the given application and implement them. It would reduce to the over lap between different applications and ensure a consistent presentation each step along the way.
Quark has sufferet from being underdeveloped.
InDesign was simply *better*, not only better integrated.
Now the Quark fixes this, but I think they’re too late.
As for integration: The new Quark has integration up to par with InDesign.
That being said: I Agree with you for the most part.
But let’s face it: Linux is not a drop-in replacement for Windows or MacOS for photography yet. Far from it. You can use Linux for serious photography, but critical pieces are still missing or are too kludgy for efficient work; you need to be willing to accept sacrifices.
This neatly summarizes the situation; there are lots of good pieces but some need more work, and something is still totally missing. Anyone developing photography applications should check this article out for good pointers as to what should be improved. You do know that you should ask your userbase what they need, don’t you?
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.
It’s universal truth that commercial products for linux never does well and very rarely pays itself off.
Most linux users are cheapskates.
Don’t fool yourself: most users are cheapskates, and that has nothing to do with whether they use linux or not.
Going with linux at home is not really about saving money, as most linux users probably have at least one or several windows licenses already.
Regarding buying software, there aren’t that many titles worth their price compared to free alternatives from the repositories (talking about home users here), and I’d say most users would rather give blender a try than pirating maya (much unlike the windows pals, IMO).
Software that really adds some value over what’s available for free does get used and paid for, but most of it is expensive profesional software (smoke, houdini, maya…).
Except for games, I don’t use paid for software – although I do have a bunch. I stopped using Nero, too bloted, too buggy, even though I bought it for Linux but don’t use it there either. I bought an FTP server but since it hasn’t got free updates I went with Filezilla after a while with my basic needs, etc… Maybe I bought like 20 apps, but I don’t use any of them anymore, except Winrar, which has life time updates. For the home user, there is loads of stuff; sometimes I get a cover mount magazine, e.g. for an older QuarkXpress version, etc…
This hasn’t to do with being “cheap” – should I pay hundreds only to pay someone’s lunch and for not being called cheap..? There is no added value in most apps. I could call most commercial proggers ‘crap’ in turn… maybe they offer me something above and beyond free software for not being called that anymore..?
I agree that most windows shareware is only marginally better then the freeware out there (read: one is slightly crappier then the other), i completely disagree when it comes to osx.
These two apps specifically beat every other competing product I have used, and I have used a hell of alot of ftp clients and text editors
http://www.panic.com/transmit/
http://macromates.com/
One was 30$, the other 60$, and I would pay double that and still consider it worth it.
http://linux-foundation.org/weblogs/press/2008/03/30/adobe-joins-li…
Irrelevant – read what Adobe is joining for – web based applications. I’ll spell it out for you – W.E.B. They’ll never port Photoshop to Linux.
Dave
I disagree , and let me correct any wrong idea and misconception you might had :
There is far more to Adobe then a single software , namely “photoshop” :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Adobe_software
* Adobe Acrobat family
o Adobe Acrobat Capture
o Adobe Acrobat Connect (formerly Macromedia Breeze)
+ Adobe Presenter
o Adobe Acrobat Distiller
o Adobe Acrobat Reader
* Adobe Audition (formerly Cool Edit Pro)
* Adobe Bridge
* Adobe Captivate
* Adobe Central Output Server
* Adobe ColdFusion
* Adobe Creative Suite
o Adobe Acrobat
o Adobe Acrobat Connect
o Adobe After Effects
o Adobe Bridge
o Adobe Contribute
o Adobe Device Central
o Adobe Dreamweaver
o Adobe Dynamic Link
o Adobe Encore
o Adobe Fireworks
o Adobe Flash
o Adobe Illustrator
o Adobe InDesign
o Adobe OnLocation (formerly Serious Magic DV Rack)
o Adobe Photoshop
o Adobe Premiere Pro
o Adobe Soundbooth
o Adobe Ultra (formerly Serious Magic Ultra)
o Adobe Version Cue
* Adobe Creative Suite 4 (in development)
* Adobe Digital Editions
* Adobe Digital Negative
* Adobe Director
* Adobe DNG Converter
* Adobe Document Server
* Adobe Document Policy Server
* Adobe eBook Reader
* Adobe Flash family
o Adobe Flash Cast
o Adobe Flash Lite
o Adobe Flash Media Server
o Adobe Flash Player
* Adobe Flex
* Adobe Font Folio
* Adobe Graphics Server
* Adobe InCopy
* Adobe Integrated Runtime (or shortly Adobe AIR)
* Adobe Kuler
* Adobe LiveCycle family
o Adobe LiveCycle Assembler
o Adobe LiveCycle Barcoded Forms
o Adobe LiveCycle Designer
o Adobe LiveCycle Document Security
o Adobe LiveCycle Forms
o Adobe LiveCycle Form Manager
o Adobe LiveCycle PDF Generator
o Adobe LiveCycle Policy Server
o Adobe LiveCycle Reader Extensions
o Adobe LiveCycle Security Server
* Adobe Media Player
* Adobe Output Designer
* Adobe PDF JobReady
* Adobe Photoshop family
o Adobe Photoshop Elements
o Adobe Photoshop Express
o Adobe Photoshop Lightroom
* Adobe Premiere Elements
* Adobe Shockwave
* Adobe Source Libraries
* Adobe Visual Communicator
* Adobe Technical Communication Suite
o Adobe Acrobat
o Adobe Captivate
o Adobe FrameMaker
o Adobe RoboHelp
* Adobe Thermo (in development)
* Adobe Type
* Adobe Web Output Pack
* Macromedia FlashPaper
* Macromedia JRun
* Macromedia Web Publishing System
* Serious Magic Ovation
* Serious Magic Vlog It!
PLUS THE LABS PROJECTS
Obviously there was a need to list them all since you and your friends/other fake identity , don’t know what Adobe as beside Photoshop.
So , not only was I right in replying that to ” adope will never do linux ports ” , you where completely wrong as usual in calling me irrelevant.
You also missed :
“Adobe delivers key RIA technologies for Linux users, such as Adobe Flash Player and now Adobe AIR, to deploy RIAs in the browser and on the desktop€”
Finally , Photoshop is already ported to GNU/Linux. It’s not available to the main public and it’s an old version. But you can access it with codeweaver :
http://apcmag.com/google_behind_photoshops_new_linux_compatibility….
http://www.codeweavers.com/compatibility/browse/name?app_id=8
Also look up :
http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&safe=off&client=firefox&rls=Flock…
http://www.smileycat.com/miaow/archives/000267.php
http://www.smileycat.com/miaow/archives/online-image-editors.php
http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/252227/First_Look_Adobe_Launc…
http://www.splashup.com/
http://www.phixr.com/
http://fotoflexer.com/
http://www.picnik.com/
ETC …
Do you see the relevancy now ? Are you able to now ?
Edited 2008-08-24 00:54 UTC
And your point is? At this stage, only Acrobat Reader and flash player have a Linux variant. At one stage several years ago, I would have agreed that Adobe would end up porting to Linux, but these days I just don’t see it. The difference between now and several years ago? Well, now I’m not a one eyed Linux freak.
As to this codeweavers project, ffs man, it was *not* ported. They simpled forked Wine to allow Photoshop 6 to run under Linux (normal GPL’d Wine did not run Photoshop 6 at the time). That’s *all* they did. Nothing more and nothing less. Why do people keep on insisting on:
a) mis-reporting things
b) bringing up old, irrelevant information?
Why? I live in the *now*, not the past.
How many Linux users would really pay for a Linux port of Photoshop? mmm? Considering what many others have said, Linux users don’t like proprietary software (ethical reasons), so that rules out a lot of potential already. Secondly, many Linux users don’t use Linux because of ethics, but because of monetary cost. If they won’t fork out money for a Windows licence, I doubt that they’ll fork out money for a Photoshop licence, especially considering it’s a lot more expensive. Thirdly, most “average” users will probably be happy enough with The GIMP and use that.
It would not be economically financial for Adobe to port Photoshop to Linux. Period. The few users like myself, who would use Photoshop on Linux, and pay for a licence, and prefer it to The GIMP, and not have ethical problems in using proprietary, closed source software, who would even *need* what Photoshop can do, are few and far between. And with Linux having 2-3% of the desktop market, the numbers are just not viable.
You can keep dreaming [about Linux becoming a desktop force], or you can join the real world. I prefer to live in the real world, dreams are nice but they don’t get the work done, and they don’t get you anywhere.
Dave
“only Acrobat Reader and flash player have a Linux variant. ”
100 Million Euro say your wrong … gather your little friends and other fake personality when you have 100 Million Euro in escrow , we will talk.
Oh please – no wonder Linux evangelists are unpopular. Linux is not the be all and end all of the world, never was, never will be. Get over it, take a chill pill and move on and get a life.
Dave
There’s a difference between an evangelist and an advocate. Likewise there is a difference between good advocacy and bad advocacy. You properly used the word “evangelist” and I am not criticizing or correcting that. But I did want to delineate a bit in this area.
Good advocacy is not insulting, and meets the other person, if not halfway, at least somewhere reasonably close to it.
One cannot walk up to a stranger, slap them in the face, and say “Kiss me, you fool!” and expect to be particularly persuasive.
Edited 2008-08-26 04:40 UTC
Amen. Look – I’d love to see Adobe put Photoshop natively on Linux – I think it would *perform* better than on a Windows platform. I just cannot see Adobe doing it, the numbers [of users] are far too small to justify the expense in porting. It’s a pity really.
Linux has its own issues, and I’ve stated what I believe they are in other threads, and I do honestly believe that these are what is causing Linux to not reach critical mass. Linux has huge potential, but the very nature of open source, and the reasons why people use it, protract from it ever becoming mainstream.
Dave
Sorry was that a “I don’t have 100 million to back up my known lies” ? I even offered you an out by grouping with other liars … who agree with you.
I will personally match 1 to 1 up to 100 million Euro anyone who financially back you up in your lie by putting money into escrow over this argument that :
“only Acrobat Reader and flash player have a Linux variant. ”
1. No Gimp or gimpshop or replacement only Adobe own apps.
2. No older Photoshop ported for major Film studio.
3. No Crossover.
4. No Adobe AIR.
It’s suppose to be easy money for you …
But then your insolvable and irrelevant , I was talking about Adobe , you kept attacking me about GNU/Linux , not once did I reply to all your lies and nonsense about GNU/Linux.
You can’t keep up with Adobe application portfolio , you certainly can’t keep up with the GNU/Linux industry and community offers …
When you have real money to back up your lies , give me a shoot …
Will you stop talking like a rabid dog?
Photoshop was NOT ported to run on Linux back in 2001, Adobe worked with Crossover (aka Wine) to get it working (up until that time, Photoshop was not working on Linux via Wine).
I never said Crossover didn’t exist – because obviously it did, and still does.
I am not sure what you mean by your first point – but I do realise that English is not your native tongue, so perhaps it is a result of a language miscommunication.
I’m not interested in gambling, let alone with you over an insane argument, or arguments. I also don’t appreciate being called a liar.
Dave
http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flex/flexbuilder_linux/
http://www.adobe.com/products/acrdis/
There are Film studios who own a older ported version of Photoshop on GNU/Linux , it’s not Adobe work , it’s not from Codeweaver either … I did not link to it either.
Wine is not crossover …
GNU/Linux is not just the desktop or what you want …
Adobe is more then just Photoshop.
Off course YOU don’t have 100 million to back up your lies and incompetence , it’s an emphasis on Why Adobe contributing code and software and being part of the Linux foundation will end up saving us in development in the long run at minimum.
They are not irrelevant in this case , you are. You where wrong too.
And people wonder why Linux evangelists do more damage than good to the Linux world…you are living proof.
Wine is not crossover and vice versa, but they are related. Heavily so.
I had a look at flexbuilder and it’s simply similar to java in many respects, but using flash to deploy Adobe based applications online, as opposed to standard installations physically on a hard drive. Whilst in the long term, Adobe might make Photoshop available in this manner, it will take severe performance hits I suspect – having it web based will slow down processing of graphical data, making it almost unbearable to use for the serious user – I shoot in RAW and convert to 16 bit tiff (48bit colour space) and my files on an 8mb Mark IIn are near 50mb in size. Open a few layers and voila…you could have memory sizes etc near half a gb. I severely doubt that using net deployed online flash applications is not going to be a good answer.
Of course, I realise that Adobe is more than Photoshop, as Linux is more than the desktop. On a server space, Linux does rather well – the ISP that I work for doing IT support uses Debian GNU/Linux for the vast majority of its servers (we do have some Windows hosting as well, some customers do want it, and prefer it to Linux hosting).
Lose the rabid responses, and you might find that your reputation as a nut disappears.
Dave
Some would say that makes Windows and Mac users are sucker then, if I had the money I wouldn’t buy a Mac or spend £200 on Vista.
I think it’s just a matter of time before Adobe port Photoshop, lightroom, Maya has been ported for years now and it maybe Adobe are just to tight, stuck up to port it.
Linux doesn’t have to be your choice of platform for professional photography apps, this sort of thing takes years to get together and develop for a platform.
WTF? Maya was ported cos nearly all of the goddamn rendering was done on Linux. That’s why. The ONLY reason. Linux’ support for colour spaces is shyte, that immediately takes it right out of the pro arena for photography.
Dave
Maya wasn’t ported from Windows to Linux though, it was ported from Unix to Linux. And most of the people who ended up using Maya on Linux weren’t people moving over from Windows, they where coming from Irix and wanted to use cheap Intel and Nvidia hardware and stay on a Unix-like platform rather than move to windows.
So on the whole the comparison between Maya and Photoshop aren’t really valid.
It was ported from Irix to Linux because it was easier to do that, than to port to Windows. Plus, Linux being “free” meant the studios loved it, cos they could get 2,000 PCs and run huge rendering farms for f*** sweet all, whereas UNIX or Windows would cost a packet. That is the ONLY reason why it happened. Well, not entirely true, 64 bit support on Linux was already present (alphas), Window was stuck in 32 bit land, so huge amounts of memory weren’t really do-able on Windows.
My comparison is entirely fair – very few people use Maya, at least compared to Photoshop. Adobe ported Photoshop to OS X because there were numbers that would use it (and pay for it). On Linux?
Why would I really want to use Linux these days? OS X has a better graphical front end, supports more commercial software (the type that *real* people use for their jobs), has a nice UNIX backend for those that want to be UNIX geeks, and better hardware support (none of this having to screw around with drivers and kernel recompiles etc).
I just bought a Creative Xfi xtreme-audio, after having been told by the shop that Creative has beta Linux drivers for it – guess what, it doesn’t! On a Mac, it’d be no problem. On Windows, no problem (even Vista x64). On Linux, I’ll probaby have to grab the very latest alsa src, compile it, build it into my kernel tree, and hope it works. Now do you see why people will not support Linux, why people are moving from Windows to OS X (instead of Linux) in droves? Getting my Nvidia 8800gt and Samsung 24″ 245T monitor working on Debian was a friggen nightmare. And I’m an intermediate/advanced level @ Linux. Imagine a newbie!!!
Dave
Only if you ignore the hardware and render licensing costs, which would probably make up about 98% of the total cost of render node. It’s been many years since I worked in the industry, but back when I did I recall that we paid more for our rendering licenses for each render node (which ran Linux) than we did for the actual hardware. Studios loved Linux for many reasons, but the savings in licensing fees compared to Windows certainly wasn’t one of them. The fact that it tended to render faster than Windows on the same hardware was a far better reason to love Linux.
I have no idea. I personally would want to run Linux since OS X doesn’t run on my thinkpad, which I far prefer to the Apple laptops. I also prefer the larger variety of hardware that Linux runs on in general. I’m also one of those strange people that even after having owned a Mac and used OS X for years, both at work and at home, still just doesn’t like the interface for all kinds of tiny reasons.
That being said I’m no blind Linux fanboy either and Linux also annoys me for all kinds of different reasons, and there are a bunch of tiny things that just don’t work there either. In fact, as much as it pains me to admit, once I’ve configured XP to the way I like it and installed a bunch of third party tools, it works pretty damn well.
And just to be clear, I’m one of those people who think that Adobe doesn’t have much if anything to gain from porting Photoshop to Linux and as such probably never will. I’m also one of those people who doesn’t much care one way or the other. While one of the main photo editing apps I use is a windows only app it works fine under wine, so I can personally switch between Windows and Linux and still edit my photos in my favorite app.
Have I ever indicated that I didn’t get it? I think you must be arguing with someone other than me.
You are 100% correct, but sadly, the Linux lovers here will NEVER admit that. Let’s look at Nero for Linux – dead. LinDVD? dead. No CAD products for Linux. Adobe would be idiots to develop Photoshop for Linux – there just isn’t the demand. A recent article in an Australian paper cited a report that had just been completed, that showed (at least in Australia) that Apple’s OS X had reached 10% of the market, with practically the rest Windows. Those that were going to OS X were doing so cos they were not happy with Windows Vista for a variety of reasons. They’re not going to Linux, they’re going to OS X.
The writing is on the wall for Linux and independant application developers can see it, plain & clear. Linux will become increasingly marginalised and I firmly believe that hardware support will actually dwindle over the next 5 years for Linux. 3rd party applications for Linux will not take off, developers will run like hell when the hear the word “linux”.
Linux isn’t bad – it just doesn’t, and will never, suit the needs of the average user. And that’s what hardware developers and software developers work for. That’s where the money is.
I do wish Adobe would release Photoshop for Linux, and for those that need CAD, that similar would happen, but I’d be dreaming.
Dave
Actually, that is 100% incorrect. Disney and some other major studios use Photoshop on Linux. How? They hired Codeweavers to make it run with CrossOver:
http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Linux-and-Open-Source/Penguin-Moves-to-Dis…
http://ftp.codeweavers.com/pub/crossover/case_studies/WaltDisney.pd…
The average Linux home user is just as likely to pirate Photoshop as a Windows user. But the usual customers (such als movie studios) are happy to pay for it.
No, the average user does not pay ~1000 Euro for Photoshop and alike. The home user market was never attractive, unless you can move ten thousands or hunderd thousands of boxes. The enterprise market is different, companies are happy to pay hundreds of dollars for a product if it makes they employees much more productive. And it doesn’t matter much if it’s on Linux, OS X, or Windows.
Edited 2008-08-23 09:43 UTC
Daniel – you are wrong. Get out into the photography community, and you will see that the vast majority of photographers pay for their Photoshop licence.
And the Disney articles, are, I believe for way back in Photoshop 6 land, very outdated, and useless in today’s modern digital world.
Dave
Professional photographers do, most non-professional photographers don’t.
The Cinepaint seems to have accurate and recently updated information:
“Studios such as Sony Pictures Imageworks and many smaller studios use CinePaint. Disney, DreamWorks, and Pixar funded Crossover (Wine) to make Adobe Photoshop for Windows run nicely on Linux and that’s what they use. Some studios use proprietary or internally developed tools. CinePaint is open source software. Nobody is obligated to tell us they use it. Studios use many Linux motion picture applications, not just CinePaint. This list of studios using CinePaint is just some we know about.”
Source: http://www.cinepaint.org/about.html
You should also know that most enteprises who rely on their software for the income often don’t run the latest and greatest versions. E.g., plenty of professional high-end rendering and modelling is being done on SGI Onyx machines with fairly old software. People use what works.
Yes, and try hooking up a digital SLR to Photoshop 6 – I guarantee that you won’t get very far. With the exception of Raw Therapee, most Linux based RAW applications are horrid in every sense of the word.
As to Photoshop, you are wrong, the vast majority of pro and amateur photographers that I know *pay for* their copy of Photoshop. Your average tinkerer (i.e. not really into photography but owns a [usually] cheap digital compact), might pirate Photoshop. Your intermediate to serious level amateur or pro will pay for it.
I’d love for Adobe to do a Linux port, but I severely doubt that it’ll EVER happen, there’s just not enough call for it. Linux driver support for DSLRs is crap, although most of that is due to proprietary lock in methods from the vendors (Canon, anyone?).
Dave
That’s because they weren’t good enough to compete with existing solutions, not simply because they where closed source. No one is going to buy your closed source app when there exists a better or just as good app for free. If you want to sell your app it has to be better than what is already out there. Nero wasn’t, Photoshop would be.
People still buy Maya for Linux, despite the existence of Blender, simply because Maya does what they need while Blender doesn’t.
Pro/ENGINEER
In the case of LinDVD, it didn’t have to compete, it was the only legal way of watching DVDs in Linux for most of the world.
Why did loki die? Why did doom 3 for linux totally tank?
Because few people use Linux, and even fewer will be wanting to play games on Linux, or watch DVDs (and pay for the DVD software). Look, personally, I think that DeCss is BS – and the DMCA should be taken to hell and left there, since not being able to play DVDs on Linux is just an abuse of authority, and pure greed. This is why every single major thing like this should be *open*, so there’s no BS patents, no BS crap to deal with. Sadly, the world doesn’t work this way.
True, Nero for Linux was crud (well, it wasn’t crud, it just looked crud when compared to K3B, which was free). However, this is the rarity imho. In the vast majority of cases, proprietary software WILL be better, and far more polished, than anything Linux will offer as an equivalent.
Your comment on CAD software being “pro/Engineer” is exactly the reason why Linux will never be adopted by the mainstream – elitist attitudes of “we don’d need $i”.
Dave
It didn’t have to be this way. I would argue that the reason that DVD software isn’t as ubiquitous on Linux as people would like has more to do with FOSS ideology/philosophy than the DMCA. Because most Linux distros won’t incorporate binary drivers without source code, it virtually GUARANTEED that the DVD issue would get mired in patent/IP hell. Face it: Whether or not you agree with the fundamental concept of DRM, there’s no getting around the fact that it exists, and there are very determined forces (RIAA, MPAA, IHVs, etc) who want to protect their copyright. Just as Microsoft has been able to secure drivers from manufacturers to playback DVDs so, too, could Linux distros. But it would mean compromising on their sources-only requirement. Personally, I don’t think that that’s too much of a tradeoff for creating a richer user experience on Linux but, well, some people value principle more than pragmatism.
When you said anything Linux offers, did you mean anything that Open Source or Free Software offers?
If so I agree to an extent. The best proprietary end user application (things like server software is different) in each category, will in many cases be better than the best Open Source. In fact I said just that. Maya still sells despite the existence of Blender and other Open Source 3D tools.
There is also however a huge pile of proprietary software in each category that is far inferior to the Open Source equivalent. Not every closed source photo editing app is Photoshop.
How exactly is it elitist to point out that there exists CAD software for Linux? Where did I say that ‘we’ (whoever that is) don’t need something. The original poster said that there is no CAD software for Linux and I pointed out that he was mistaken.
Now there’s no AutoCAD for Linux (or OS X), and I’ll happily admit that AutoCAD for Linux would be great. Nowhere did I ever claim that Linux had all the CAD software it would ever need or that it didn’t need AutoCAD or any other specific CAD tool. Please don’t make up arguments and attribute them to me. The adoption or non-adoption of Linux by the mainstream will be totally unrelated to the (often imagined) elitism of some random people on the internet.
Bad management, both financial and otherwise, helped a lot in the case of Loki.
In both the above cases they where releasing games long after they’d been released on other platforms. Most games have a very short shelf life, after 3-6 month most people who wanted the game had already bought the game.
Most Linux users who enjoy playing games on their computer also have access to Windows. And most of them when faced with the choice of playing a game they want today on Windows (or in some cases on Linux under Wine) and playing at game some time in the future (hopefully) under Linux, will chose the Windows solution. Additionally in Loki’s case many of games they ported weren’t exactly the most sought after games on the market to begin with.
Also in the case of Doom 3 I believe you could turn your Windows version into a Linux version via a free download from iD, so no doubt many people who play Doom 3 on Linux didn’t buy the Linux specific version of the game, thus skewering the sales figures.
We really need more articles like this in other areas besides photography — an honest evaluation on where Linux stands in various genres of applications, so that people interested in Linux can get a really good feel where it currently is in areas they are most interested in.
This is a lot better than the usual rhetoric of “Microsoft is evil!” and “Steve Balmer is a seal-clubbing bastard!” Seriously, give us something tangible we can wrap our head around.
I wouldn’t necessarily go that far, but there is a stigma around the Linux community that “if it’s not open source, we won’t use it”. That’s all fine and good, but handing over the source code for their flagship apps would be enough to put a lot of commercial vendors out of business, especially if they don’t have support or hardware to sell.
my philosophy is that the OS should be open source, the web browser and essential file formats (docs, video, anything on the internet, etc) should be open but everything else can be closed.
Reinds me very much of Minguel a few years ago in respects to Mono; have an opensource basis, and build value added products ontop of it.
Personally, I don’t want to see opensource anything from Adobe in way of their products – but what I would like to see is for them to opensource their flash plugin. There is no strategic reason for keeping it closed source – the value of the technology is derived from the products which create the Flash content. Same goes for their AIR runtime and technology. Build the foundations, make them opensource – and sell the products which enable one to make content to run ontop of these said foundations.
I’ve said the same thing about Microsoft; if Microsoft ported all their middleware to .NET, and made their .NET runtime/SDK available opensource under a BSD licence – I can assure you that users around the globe would be running Microsoft middleware on all manner of platforms. Heck, imagine runnig the same version of Office on Linux, MacOS X and Windows!
I wonder whether it’s all that helpful to look at Linux as an OS that must somehow emulate what happens on other OSes. Doing so could easily embroil Linux is an enormously tiring and resource-intensive features war. And since no one can actually force Adobe to port its products to Qt/Linux, it’s a war which Linux would always have to fight with one hand tied behind its back.
In addition, whether you think Gimp is good or not so good, what everyone really wants is Photoshop and greater the Abobe thing – Illustrator, InDesign, workflow stuff, etc. The article suggests reinvigorating Gimp and upping its game. Many might say that is just reinforcing failure. Gimp is not Photoshop and Gimp’s ui is never going to be fully accepted. Tough or otherwise but imho true.
Better, perhaps, to consider the approach of the right tool for the job. Linux is good at a, b and c. If you want x, y or z, and especially if you want it high-end, then better to choose another tool.
FWIW, I do very happily on Linux using xcalib, inkscape, digikam and gimp for my graphics needs, feeding through CUPS to an inkjet that produces pretty darn good prints. But then I’m not after high-end results. Still, if you just want to retouch, colour, collage, edit, whatever, pics from your digital camera without the full high-end stuff, that combination certainly works OK for me. And a few years ago, bear in mind, all of this would have seemed high-end too. It’s not as if no progress is being made on Linux. Far from it.
If I wanted the high-end stuff I’d buy a Mac and fork out the dollars. But then as I’d also have invested a far great sum, probably, in cameras, lenses and photography equipment, the extra expenditure on IT would all seem part of the package. The IT cost isn’t necessarily as big an issue as folks think. High-end photography programs on Linux sound a great idea, but I suspect it’s also chasing rainbows.
Can’t say much about photography since I am not in that industry, but in a web production house point of view, the only way to go is adobe. Its not about being high end or not, its about being professional or amateur. If you don’t have the adobe suites, you will not be able to hire anyone that is any good. If by some miracle you do get someone good, you are wasting your money forcing them to use tools that they just won’t be productive. The gap between adobe and everyone else is not a small one.
Didn’t used to be that way when corel, aldus, and macromedia were all players, but it is now. Adobe not supporting a platform (or not supporting it well) single handedly makes it not acceptable for professional use for anything remotely related to publishing.
Edited 2008-08-24 06:37 UTC
Didn’t even mention Bibble’s linux version. Which is right up there with apature and lightroom.
Bibble? Last time I looked at it (around 18 months ago), it was a pile of ****. IQ is dreadful, at least with cr2 files. I wouldn’t let it near my images.
Dave
For RAW processing, I don’t use Apple’s Aperture or Adobe’s (Photoshop) Lightroom. Phase One’s Capture One is a better tool for me. In fact, a lot of the better tools aren’t the best known tools. Yes, you must buy them, if you want to use them past the trial.
Now, if there was one GUI–or one API–that would make the whole thing palatable to developers of the software, you might see a lot of photographers jump to Linux from Windows. They really don’t care about Mac OS X or Windows. They care about having their photos go from camera to print as faithfully as possible.
The article discusses how things are coming. (Isn’t that always the case?) However, a photographer will try it once, find it lacking, and return to his platform of choice and probably never try again until the big names say that they’re moving to Linux.
Photographers require commercial solutions and there certainly isn’t any shame in putting commercial solutions on Linux.
Whilst I have Capture One Pro (v3.8), I rarely use it. Why? Canon’s free DPP does just as good a job imho. Phase One has screwed up v4 (witness how many people are dumping C1). The pro version isn’t even near being released. And Phase One’s licence is atrocious – it forbids you from selling your copy of C1 Pro to another individual. Whilst I do not think Phase One has a legal leg to stand on with such a licence, it costs money to fight it in a court of law. For that reason alone I will never recommend a Phase One product again.
Dave
There was no mention of dye sub printers. They are superior to inkjet and companies like HiTi have linux drivers.
As far as RAW converters go Raw Therapee and Lightzone seem to be the most complete but Lightzone isn’t free and is heavy on resources because it uses Java. Raw Therapee is only free as in “beer”. Rawstudio is promising but my biggest gripes with it is a lack of a denoising plugin and slow develpment pace. Rawstudio hasn’t released an update in 4 months. I’ve settled on Raw Therapee for now and to be honest I don’t really see why the author claims the interface is complex. It only took me about 20 minutes to figure it out.
Used to hear a lot about thermal transfer and dye sublimation printers in the nineties. These days it’s just high-end inkjets and color laser printers.
Canon, Sony, and Epson sell dye sub printers in most electronics stores. Kodak uses dye sub printers in their kiosks. The produce excellent quality and are readily available. The only issue I have is that it is difficult to find an affordable dye sub that will print anything larger than 6×8.
Edited 2008-08-22 14:38 UTC
Yeah, the portable/small format photo printers seem to be the only dye-subs aimed at consumers. Usually only use the digicam for pics to be shared online, so quality home color printing hasn’t been a priority.
All I know is F-spot is completely unintuitive for me. What seems to be most annoying is that you can’t go muck around in the ‘photos’ directory. And somehow I always seem to have three copies of every photo in the repo.
It makes Picasa look like the easiest thing on earth to use.
Buy a better lens?
I bought a cheap set of macro lenses to see how I liked taking macro pictures. It was fun, but fixing the lens distortion in software was a pain, so I bought a $200 Leica ELPRO2 lens. No need to do any correction now.
See the pictures on the right demonstrating cheap vs. good lenses.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromatic_aberration
My lens has 3 pieces I think, not 1.
3 lenses for Macro? You mean filters? Generally not very high quality, a dedicated macro lens is a much better option. Macro is my specialty area btw.
Your basic answer to the OP of buying a better lens is basically correct – cheaper lenses do not focus each primary colour to the same focus point. Canon’s L series lenses are pretty good, Nikon has lenses that are pro grade as well, and minimise fringing etc. There are a few software options as well. Nikon’s recent D3 has its expeed chip, which also does some software related fixes on fringing with its images.
Dave
I didn’t say 3 lenses, I said three “pieces” meaning elements or pieces of glass in a single filter.
My camera is a Panasonic FZ5. It is not an SLR so everything I use is considered a “filter” It screws into the tube that goes around the lens.
I’m sorry, but are you purposely being obtuse? Even Carl Zeiss lenses have noticeable barrel distortion, vignetting and chromatic abberation.
Buy a better lens. lol….
Linux will be playing catch up till the end of time.. that’s what it does.. The concept of linux becoming usable for entry level professional photographers is a good one.. I don’t think adobe is going to port Photoshop or Illustrator…
Just ante up and buy a damn mac.. You waste so much less time doing things when there is logical workflow..
btw.. the gimp is crap. I can’t say it enough times…
crap crap crap. also. have fun trying to get your wacom tablet working properly in linux.
Edited 2008-08-22 14:49 UTC
If everyone thought like you did we wouldn’t have Linux or Firefox or a lot of other programs because similar products already existed. Besides there are a lot of us who are hobbyists or prosumers and don’t want to buy another computer and more software for our hobby. We want to be able to edit and convert our photos in Linux. It is completely possible in Linux at this time although it isn’t nearly as polished as Adobe or Apple products. This will change though and when it does you’ll be eating your words.
GIMP isn’t crap unless you are a Photoshop fanboy. The only real downside to using GIMP is that it only supports 8-bit. That’s not really a big deal when you shoot in RAW and use a RAW conversion program. You are usually converting to JPG anyway. You can always use Cinepaint if you need 16-bit although I admit it is limited in capability compared to the GIMP. Why exactly do you think GIMP is crap or are you just jumping on the bandwagon?
As far as the tablet is concerned it isn’t really necessary for photographers although I understand that some use them. As far as I know Wacom tablets are supported under Linux anyway.
Huh? 8 bit isn’t an issue. Get out in the real world – 14 bit RAW files are becoming de rigeur now, the extra bits do help with the dynamic range.
And most Pros will convert RAW to either PSD or TIFF (usually 16 bit tiffs, rather than 8 bit btw). When you’re working with images and selling them for a living, maximum quality is what you’re after.
You haven’t even mentioned colour spaces, and calibration tools for the Linux desktop. Both are exceptionally poorly supported on Linux. Both are critical to a pro workflow for maximum image quality.
Dave
Only in fantasy land do things work like that. A lot of of photographers don’t even know what a TIFF is or what colorspace and color gamut is. The majority of photos printed are worked over by the printer before they are printed. Your argument is a common one but it just doesn’t reflect what happens in reality on a daily basis. There are rare photographers that handle their digital prints from end to end but they are few and far between.
Gee, you obviously must not know many photographers then. Your basic “I’m a photographer who knows jack about it but just uses a point and shoot” might be like you’re describing, but your amateur using a DSLR will generally (from my experience) be taking advantage of the maximum IQ and shooting RAWs. Sure, some shoot JPEGS, and that’s usualy the noobs, until they learn how to *use* their new toy more effectively.
8 bit images (jpeg in particular) *destroy* data. 8 bit tiffs are a bit different, as they are lossless, and the compression is non destructive. If you’re going to shoot tiff files (if your camera lets you, I believe only the D3 does at this point of time), 16 bit is a better choice. RAW is better still as anyone know knows anything about digital photography will tell you.
Dave
Sorry, who the hell works with a lossless format? Most photographers work with 16 bit TIFF files. You only export to JPEG if you’re publishing on the web, and even then this is done at the final stage of your workflow.
Working with JPEG = goodbye dynamic range = hello flat photos. Linux is far from a professional photographer’s platform of choice. Hell, it even struggles to make it as the hobbyist DSLR platform of choice.
Only if you don’t know what you’re doing. I’m not saying that working in jpg is preferable in any way, but to suggest that jpg=flat photos without dynamic range says more about your ability to correctly expose a photo and work with digital images than it does about the jpg format.
Here’s my point of view. If I use Adobe Photoshop and I’m happy with it then why would I want to drop it just to switch to the GIMP (which I personally don’t care for) just so I can use Linux.
It’s just my opinion based on my own experience and feelings, but I think most people aren’t going to switch to some alternative program just to use Linux. I know a lot of people that wish companies like Adobe would support Linux, but they aren’t going to switch to the GIMP or some “alternative” program just because Adobe doesn’t.
With that said. I truly wish Linux had more commercial application support from companies like Adobe. If the application I want to use worked with Linux believe me I would not own a Windows computer, but I’m not going to simply dump them just to get rid of Windows. That’s just silliness to me.
I have to agree with you. I am a Linux user and my move from Windows has been pretty easy but that is mostly because I used almost all FOSS before making the move. The apps I used the most were/are Firefox, Thunderbird, VLC, OpenOffice, Pidgin and the like so moving to Linux was easy and made sense.
I often tell people to use the best tool for the job they are doing, where Linux really shines is with 2 vastly different groups of people: Geeks and People with simple computer needs. Perhaps we as a community should start looking closer at those with simple computer needs to increase our market share and maybe get some 3rd party app makers more on board.
Bravo. That’s precisely what any and all platform advocates be they Mac, Windows or Linux fail to comprehend. Photographers do not give a toss what operating system/machine they run so long as it makes them the most productive and gives them great results. You can scream and shout about how libre the GPL is and how cool Linux + Gimp is, but then you’re not seeing it from the photographer’s point of view.
We don’t care what platform we use so long as it gives us the best result. If it’s Mac OS X, then we’ll use that. If Linux ever becomes adequate, we’ll use that too.
There’s little sense in maintaining two different code bases: one for CinePaint, and another for the standard 24 bit Gimp.
Time spent in championing the cause of a 24-bit only program for professional photography could be better spent elsewhere.
We need system-wide.icc profiles.