this post was submitted on 21 Jan 2025
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what is your linux workflow? (sfba.social)
submitted 1 week ago by [email protected] to c/photography
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what is your linux workflow?
@photography

I moved to linux about a year ago and have been putting off my photography for some time.
Im now motivated to get back into it and have been trialing some workflows and accidentally deleting all my pictures in the process, luckily I had a backup.

currently my workflow is to use rapid photo downloader, although I ran into an issue with that not being able to load some old dng images but they seem to work fine in darktable.

then I was using dark table only but I deleted all my photos somehow by using the import tool I guess incorrectly,

now Im using digikam for managing my entire library since it feels like it is much quicker than darktable at doing that, and with a selfhosted mysql I can use it on multiple machines, then when I want to edit I just have it open in darktable, but I dont see the edits in digikam afterward.

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[–] folekaule 8 points 1 week ago (2 children)

I've only moved to Linux a couple of months ago. I always had a simple workflow. I only make minute adjustments, crop things, etc.

On Windows I used Lightroom for everything. I recently cancelled my Adobe subscription and moved to this workflow:

  • Import everything (raw images) with digikam onto my NAS
  • Add additional metadata tags and run face recognition if needed
  • Look for shots I want to develop further and flag them
  • Do my adjustments in Rawtherapee. Save in sidecar file. (Digikam will not see the changes.)
  • Export edits to jpg in different sizes for posting online. These are not imported to the catalog because I can just export them again anytime.

It's not ideal but it works and it's simple enough for my use.

I tried using darktable but I found it too confusing. It may be better for power users. I am still trying to learn RT.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 days ago

Do my adjustments in Rawtherapee. Save in sidecar file. (Digikam will not see the changes.)

It will if you store the images locally rather than remotely, or if you rescan the folder in digikam.

I store my photos on a NAS drive, but I mirror them to my local PC using unison and do all of my work from the local versions, so any updates I do in external apps automatically appear in digikam. I also unison sync my (JPG) photos to an externally hosted photoprism instance for offsite backup. Aside from needing more storage, its working pretty well!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

so when you edit in rawtherapee, if you go to edit it again later on all the changes are still there because of the sidecar file? do you have to manually hit save for that?

the issue I ran into when going from lightroom to darktable originally was that darktable doesnt support video, so I used rapid photo downloader to copy everything into folders by file extension then dates, thats when I hit the issue of rapid photo downloader not taking some of my images for some reason, then it was a mess trying to figure out what copied and what didnt, Im still working through that now. digiKam seems to support video so if I would have started with that I probably could have just imported my whole lightroom library in one go, or if I was smart I would have done it in a few batches and verified my backups before hand

[–] folekaule 4 points 1 week ago

Yes, Rawtherapee, like Lightroom and other tools that use a non-destructive workflow basically just save the steps you take to edit something and save it separately. In my case, in the sidecar file. So my changes are there, but saved separate from the image.

Lightroom does the same thing, and I had it save my edits in a sidecar as well, but because every editor is a little different, the results will not be the same if I were to try and have RT reproduce the steps that LR used (if they are even available). Basically, if I want to revisit my old photos processed in LR, I have to develop them again.

The sidecar files are just XML. You can open them in a text editor and poke around to see what it looks like.

I don't really shoot much video, so I can't speak to that. With digikam I mostly just use it to find photos and videos by date and/or metadata. digikam creates fingerprints for assets that it uses to locate things. I think I tweaked some settings to make digikam only compare the file hash instead of trying to match things visually. I'd rather have two copies of something than not importing a separate image.

I have used kdenlive for some basic video editing, but there are many options. You can even use Blender for video editing.

[–] ZkhqrD5o 7 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

My Personal Workflow

  1. Offload everything from the memory card to my trueNAS into a descriptively named folder.
  2. Darktable import and colour grading
  3. Export and sharing
  4. (Maybe if necessary VFX with GIMP)

You're not seeing the edits you do in Darktable in Digicam because Digicam is a library application. You take a finished JPEG there and it will sort it by tags or things it sees in the image through machine vision, etc. Digicam cannot read the instructions Darktable gives in its sidecar ".xmp" files. Export from Darktable to JPEGs and put it into your Digicam folder. Then it will work out.

Edit: Fixed typo.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago

You won't see your darktable edits in digikam unless you export a jpeg of your edit. Digikam can't run darktable's processing pipeline to show you that edit.

My workflow is as follows:

  1. Script that uses exiftool copies and renames all images from SD Card to my local disk in format YYYY-MM-DD
  2. Add all images to git-annex
  3. Retrieve GPS logs from phone and copy the GPX file into the correct date folder.
  4. Add GPX file to git (not git annex)
  5. Open Geeqie and look thru new pictures. Press D key to open an image in darktable if I want to edit it.
  6. Once all images culled in geeqie, move over to darktable. Edit and tag. apply geolocation using the gpx file. Export when the edits are finished.
[–] karpintero 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Also interested in this topic. I have an old windows 10 PC that's not connected to the internet and is solely used for Lightroom, Photoshop, etc. However, I'd like to move everything to my Linux machines that I use daily.

Would also be nice to have a program that can quickly convert ARW (Sony raw) files to jpeg for easy sharing if I don't need to post process them

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago

yeah Im using digikam right now mainly as a lightroom replacement, but the editing on there isnt really robust but for rotating, cropping and converting to jpg to share it has a neat batch edit feature for that