UFRaw (v. 0.16)
This application gets right to the point. The second UFRaw is opened,
a file selection must be made. We were able to quickly correct a
washed-out 37 megabyte RAW test file. The previewer is quick to reflect
any changes to the various sliders housed in the application.
The user interface is unconventional and completely lacks a menu bar.
Settings most commonly associated with the menu bar can be accessed
from an Options button near the lower-right corner of the
window. Zoom controls and file menu options are also located on the
bottom. The left pane is a multi-tabbed toolbar containing all of the
editing options.
UFRaw is mostly speedy enough. Just don't click zoom too many times
at once or it may hang. Overall, UFRaw is a decent lightweight RAW photo
editor.
Zoom
RAWTherapee (v. 3.0 alpha1)
This up-and-coming RAW photo editing application is probably the most feature-rich, free RAW photo app out there.
However, using RAWTherapee is most definitely not the most
straightforward experience. We found this out several months ago when we
added it to our Linux benchmarks. The user interface is the epitome of
clutter; tabs within tabs and multiple panes fill the UI. Part of the
problem is the total lack of a menu bar, placing every single option
on-screen. If you've never used a RAW photo app before, you will need
a manual to figure out how to get this application to do its job. At
the same time, after perusing the manual, you'll find RAWTherapee offers
more adjustable settings than any other FOSS app of its kind.
If you're into photography, RAWTherapee is one of the best options
there is, FOSS or not. If you need to tweak photographs only
occasionally, RawTherapee is overkill.
Zoom
Darkroom (v. 1.5.0)
Darkroom is a RAW photo processor. This
application lets you tweak settings, such as color, light, white
balance, tint, temperature, and more.
Darkroom produces a preview of the RAW
image with user adjustments applied right in the center of the UI. While
this lets the user see the effect of any changes, the lack of an undo
function makes unwanted tweaks a complete pain in the neck to discard.
Images can be saved in either JPEG or PNG format with a slider to
control compression/quality.
ShowFoto (v. 1.2.0)
showFoto is the image editing
component of digiKam, the professional-grade photo management suite for
KDE. Users who simply want the editing capabilities without the photo
manager can install showFoto by itself.
While this app can be used independently from digiKam, the focus here is definitely still on photographs and not images.
Most of the tools are geared toward improving image quality or applying
basic effects like film grain or oil paint. One nice feature in
showFoto is the ability to try different changes in a preview instead of
having to wait for effects to be applied to the actual file, or waiting
to undo them if they're not what you expected.
The user interface is standard KDE fare, complete with multiple panes
that can be rearranged within the single window or torn off to float
independently. Nearly every corner of the screen is filled with toolbars
housing various functions--if you like KDE you'll be right at home.
As with many modular KDE applications, showFoto is a perfect
compliment to the larger digiKam suite. But it lacks a compelling reason
to choose it over other standalone apps in the absence of its parent
package.
Zoom
Zoom
RawStudio (v. 1.2)
The focus of RawStudio is on processing RAW photos straight from the digital camera, before editing in a separate image editor. Features include tools to adjust sharpness, hue, tint, warmth, and saturation. Also included is a real-time histogram.
The inclusion of split view is great for seeing before and after an image is edited, without relying too heavily on undo. Images can be sorted into groups, or Priorities,
in RawStudio. This allows the user to create separate collections of
images, which can be batch processed using the same adjustments. There
are three tabs in the Tools pane for dialing in adjustment settings. You can apply just one or a combination of alterations to each image or Priority
set. Obviously, this comes in handy if you have several different types
of photos on your camera. You wouldn't want to apply the same
adjustments to pictures of your dog that you would apply to a scenic
landscape.
Zoom
fotoxx (v. 10.3.1)
fotoxx is a photo viewing,
organization, and editing application. Images can be organized into
galleries and edited. Editing features include sharpen, blur, red eye removal, trim, rotate, flip, and color correction. Batch options include rename and tagging.
This title also has HDR and panorama
options. However, Hugin is much better at automatically creating
panoramas than the panorama function in fotoxx. Overall, this application is intended
for photos and not images in general; most of the editing options are
geared toward photo enhancement.
Phatch--Photo BATCH Processor (v. 0.2.7)
Phatch is a great little batch image
editor. This application can change color and contrast, add a background
or border, copy, crop, rotate, round corners or add text, shadows, and
watermarks. But that's just the tip of the iceberg. There are simply too
many options to fit in one paragraph. Phatch even allows you to chain
these events together, potentially saving an immense amount of time in
front of a standard image editor like GIMP or Photoshop.
The addition of the Geek
action actually allows Phatch to run external commands via the terminal,
essentially multiplying the potential of what this application can do.
This is another title I wish I knew about before researching for this
series.
Photivo
An incredibly powerful RAW editor, Photivo handles nearly every RAW
format and BMP files with startling ease. The interface could do with
some work, but with literally hundreds of processing techniques at your
disposal it’s clear that the open-source project is being taken in the
right direction.
If you’re a fan of GIMP
for your photo editing (and let’s face it, using Linux you don’t
exactly have a choice) then you’ll also like the way Photivo is able to
send modified photos directly to GIMP for retouching, with correct EXIF data and colour profiles.
The developers claim that Photivo uses the most advanced image
manipulation algorithms available, though this powerful and complex tool
is geared more towards power users and those with prior RAW experience,
rather than complete newbies.
Ubuntu install, in Terminal:sudo add-apt-repository ppa:dhor/myway
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install photivo
Raw Therapee
Not the most intuitive program to use at first, Raw Therapee is a
fairly feature rich and comprehensive RAW editor that’s compatible with
Linux. At the time of writing, the team are working on a stable release
of version 3.0, which is a major release for the project.
Due to this, the team are keen to hear from anyone who uses the software and encounters bugs and such. The forum
is a great place to start, you can report bugs, learn about current and
upcoming features and find detailed discussions about compiling Raw
Therapee from source.
There are also versions of the application for Windows and Mac OS X, for those interested.
Rawstudio
Rawstudio offers a decent amount of control over your RAW photographs
and supports a wide number of filetypes. Using the sliders it is easy
to alter exposure, curves and so on, as well as colour management thanks
to Little CMS.
You can convert your RAWs to JPEG, PNG and TIFF image formats, and
what’s more you can batch process a whole collection of images in one
go. Rawstudio can be compiled from source, or download pre-compiled
OpenSUSE or Ubuntu packages.
Ubuntu install, in Terminal:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:rawstudio/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install rawstudio
UFRaw
The software is especially beneficial to Nikon users as it can easily read the camera’s tone curves (Canon and other users can still apply a Nikon curve to their image if desired). Unfortunately sharpening and the ability to embed EXIF data into images from certain (more obscure) camera brands is still not present.
UFRaw is available in ready-to-install packages for a plethora of Linux distributions and other operating systems, along with detailed install instructions.
Ubuntu install, in Terminal:
sudo apt-get install ufraw
Conclusion
Whilst these applications don’t offer you the immense amount of customization and sheer tweak-ability of Photoshop’s in-built Camera RAW editor, they should at least make post-processing on Linux a bit easier.If you yourself favour any particular RAW editing program we’ve not featured here, let us know.
Do you shoot in RAW? Do you edit RAW photos in Linux? Let us know in the comments below.
 |
Digikam | digital photo management application for KDE | |||
 |
F-Spot | personal photo management application | |||
| Bibble | Professional Workflow and RAW Conversion software | ||||
 |
Picasa | Image management application from Google | |||
| Raw Therapee | A free RAW converter and digital photo processing software | ||||
| blueMarine | open source workflow for digital photography | ||||
| LightZone | professional photo browser and editor | ||||
 |
Lphoto | digital photo manager | |||
 |
Album Shaper | Photo album creator and photo manipulator | |||
| Photogenics HDR | High Dynamic Range Photo Editor | ||||
| Qtpfsgui | graphical user interface providing a workflow for HDR imaging | ||||
