18
\$\begingroup\$

I'm interested in efficient processing of RAW photos on Linux. I've played with RAW a little, but so far I've always reverted back to JPG as I can't be bothered to spend hours doing post-processing. But if I could find a pretty quick way of tweaking RAW photos then I might try again.

There are many tools for working with RAW files in Linux, but which of them let you do things like:

  • correct the white balance on one photo and then apply that to a whole set of photos?
  • have a process of a couple of clicks per photo in some application?

or is RAW post-processing simply not worth doing if you don't take the time to process each photo individually?

\$\endgroup\$

7 Answers 7

9
\$\begingroup\$

May I suggest RawStudio? It has support for batch operations of the type you're asking for, and has dramatically simplified my post-processing workflow over my old approach of ufraw + GIMP. If you're familiar with similar "workflow" products on other platforms, the UI should feel pretty comfortable.

\$\endgroup\$
10
\$\begingroup\$

DCRaw is the de facto standard for dealing with RAW photos on Linux -- in fact, DCRaw is the basis for the RAW handling in some commercial applications

\$\endgroup\$
5
  • 3
    \$\begingroup\$ Can you provide a link for DCRaw being used in Photoshop? I'm skeptical. \$\endgroup\$
    – Reid
    Commented Jul 16, 2010 at 15:37
  • \$\begingroup\$ @Reid From the link already there "They can call dcraw from a graphical interface, paste pieces of dcraw.c into their code, or just use dcraw.c as the documentation that camera makers refuse to provide: " \$\endgroup\$ Commented Jul 16, 2010 at 15:41
  • \$\begingroup\$ @Reid I also believe the "about box" also references DCRaw, although I'm away from a machine with PS installed at present \$\endgroup\$ Commented Jul 16, 2010 at 15:42
  • \$\begingroup\$ You have a good answer, just delete the Photoshop part. \$\endgroup\$
    – Karel
    Commented Jul 16, 2010 at 16:40
  • \$\begingroup\$ dcraw is a good RAW --> TIFF converter on the command line, but it does not provide what the questioner requested. \$\endgroup\$ Commented May 31, 2014 at 7:55
7
\$\begingroup\$

UFRaw also provides a batch processing command - just open the first image, apply your settings, then save those with the option "Create ID File" set to "only". Then you can use ufraw-batch to apply the settings from this .ufraw file to your images.

\$\endgroup\$
6
\$\begingroup\$

I recommend darktable. It has the features you need, plus some more. It is not overwhelming though. I like it, because the original photos are not modified. A recipe file with the postprocessing instruction is stored instead.

You will need decent amount of memory (8GB+).

\$\endgroup\$
3
\$\begingroup\$

RawTherapee is available for download for different Linux platforms. If your platform doesn't have binaries for download, you can download the source code and build it yourself. It's open source

\$\endgroup\$
1
\$\begingroup\$

An amazing piece of software that is able of batch-processing RAWs (amongst many other things) is http://www.digikam.org/

Digikam allows not only to manage your photos, but also to (batch) edit them. Its feature page is huge and impressive: http://www.digikam.org/drupal/about?q=about/features

I've been using Digikam for years, since 0.8, and I love the fact that all your workflow is integrated in one application.

\$\endgroup\$
0
\$\begingroup\$

[Bibble Pro][1] is a commercial application, but it allows you to copy settings from one image to another. It also has a very advanced batch processing mode that simplifies the process of exporting a large number of RAW files to JPEG, TIFF or any other format that Bibble supports.

\$\endgroup\$
1
  • 1
    \$\begingroup\$ Bibble was bought by Corel and is now being sold as AfterShot Pro. \$\endgroup\$
    – Blrfl
    Commented Oct 4, 2012 at 20:42

Your Answer

By clicking “Post Your Answer”, you agree to our terms of service and acknowledge you have read our privacy policy.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.