converting raw images from Canon EOS 600D

In article , Floyd L. Davidson
wrote:

The OP seems to be well aware that a more functional OS is
eventually going to allow him to produce better results...]

except he said he didn't want to switch to a more functional os.

There ain't none, sonny.

nonsense.

windows and certainly mac os x are far more functional because of the
vastly wider selection of apps, as well as the more advanced internals
(mostly os x on that one).

some of those mac and windows apps are extremely capable, such as
photoshop and lightroom, as well as aperture, dxo and numerous others.

another plus is compatibility with mobile devices and having images
automatically sync, and in some cases, carry over the edits done on the
mobile device.

linux only wishes it could do that.

In article , sid
wrote:

The OP seems to be well aware that a more functional OS is
eventually going to allow him to produce better results...]

I am curious how you come up with this. To me, it's like saying a
better developing pan will lead to better photographs when working
with film.

the advantage of a more functional operating system is the availability
of more functional apps which can produce better results.

His OS of choice does not at all improve or hinder his ability to take good
photographs. In your opinion his OS may limit his ability to post process
his photos but in others opinion it does not. There is little point in
having the whole photoshop vs gimp discussion here again is there?

it's not a matter of opinion.

linux has the fewest number of apps available, which means it is the
most limited.

better apps can also greatly increase productivity, which means fewer
hassles in producing the results, leaving more time to concentrate on
photography itself rather than the processing.

There are any number of good programs available for his OS allowing him all
those advantages too, why do think that's not the case?

that number is tiny compared to what's available for mac and windows
systems.

In article , Alan Browne
wrote:

Also be aware that with Linux if you become proficient at writing
shell scripts there is just no end of ways to improve productivity.
The ImageMagick tools are fabulous for editing. And there are
many ways a shell script can speed up your workflow. For example,
I preview my images, as JPEGs, with a very customized version of XV which
can
sort them into various directories. The JPEG images I don't want to
convert
with UFRAW go into one special directory, and then a shell script moves
the RAW files to the same directories where the JPEG is now at. Then
I run UFRAW and it never loads a file I don't want to process. Plus
when I want to run the batch on all of them, I use a script that does
odd things like automatically setting wavelet noise reduction depending
on the ISO it was shot at, and it determines how many CPU cores are
available
and proceeds to keep each CPU busy with a different process (which with
as many as 12 cores can make a huge difference in how fast a few hundred
RAW files can be converted to TIFF files).

if that isn't proof that linux users do things in the most difficult
and most convoluted way possible, i don't know what is.

Well put. (Except that Linux users can make things even more difficult
and convoluted when they really warm up).

To a Linux user the above inanity is a badge of honour.

no kidding. they think it is somehow a good thing.

meanwhile, mac/win users can do the same in almost no time, without
needing to write and debug a script. drag lightroom to the apps folder
and start processing.

once they do that, they can go out and do something more interesting in
all the time they have left over from not needing to hack up and then
debug a solution.

In article , ray carter
wrote:

I have proudly used Linux exclusively for over a decade - I've yet to
find anything important to me that I can't do with it and in the process,
I've saved thousands of dollars.

then you are completely unaware of what other operating systems can do.

In article , sid
wrote:

[...] most importantly I have a feeling your hardline choice
of OS is your real problem, and it is distracting you from paying
attention to improving your photography.

...and having to think about how to maneuver around the arcane
mechanics of an OS to process digital images rather than the mechanics
of the style and subjects of our photography is an impediment &
distraction.

What "archane mechanics" do you suppose one has to maneuver inorder to
process images. Clicking an icon is way easier with osx I take it?

certainly easier than writing and debugging a script to process images,
such as what floyd suggests.

In article , Alan Browne
wrote:

I have proudly used Linux exclusively for over a decade - I've yet to
find anything important to me that I can't do with it and in the process,
I've saved thousands of dollars.

Meanwhile in the professional world of graphics design, including
photographic editing, the "creatives" choice remains OS X coupled to
application suites from Adobe and others.

Linux "market share" for desktop continues its decline as OS X rises
(Macs being more affordable than ever has a lot to do with that...).

In desktop use, as of 2013 OS X stands at about 6.5% (up from a few
percent at the start of the intel switch) and Linux has declined to 1.6%
from a high of around 2.5% or so.

that's overall market share.

mac market share for graphics professionals or photographers is much
higher than overall share.

nearly every ad agency, for example, uses macs. roughly *half* of
adobe's sales are for the mac.

Linux remains a strong choice for servers, embedded systems and so on -
but it's pretty lame for desktop since the major productivity apps are
not produced for it (bandaids like WINE are a PITA). There are narrow
cases like thin clients for data entry and the like.

it's great for servers, but not necessarily the best choice there
either.

not looking at all of the options is always a bad idea.

In article , ray carter
wrote:

I will say this, you should be seeing a difference, a big difference
in the image quality between files produced by your G2 and your 600D.
If not, the problem might lie in some peculiarity in your photographic
technique, but most importantly I have a feeling your hardline choice
of OS is your real problem, and it is distracting you from paying
attention to improving your photography.


There is much more that goes into the selection of an OS, at least for
most of us, than the impact of one application.

I have proudly used Linux exclusively for over a decade - I've yet to
find anything important to me that I can't do with it and in the
process,
I've saved thousands of dollars.

Meanwhile in the professional world of graphics design, including
photographic editing, the "creatives" choice remains OS X coupled to
application suites from Adobe and others.

Many of us are not "professionals" in "graphics design" - quite frankly,
I don't have the same requirements, so it does not matter much what they
use.

you don't have to be a professional or graphics designer to use good
tools. anyone can use them.

the point is that people who do this every day, where productivity is
important, do not choose ****ty tools.

you can use the very same high quality tools as they do, or you can
choose the ****ty tools. why someone would intentionally choose the
latter i don't know but some people do.

Linux "market share" for desktop continues its decline as OS X rises
(Macs being more affordable than ever has a lot to do with that...).

In desktop use, as of 2013 OS X stands at about 6.5% (up from a few
percent at the start of the intel switch) and Linux has declined to 1.6%
from a high of around 2.5% or so.

PROBLEM: There have never been reliable numbers for that. How, for
instance, would one even pretend to know how many desktop machines have
Linux installed?

who needs to pretend? linux market share on the desktop is tiny and
shrinking. whether it's 1.6% or 2.5% or even 6% doesn't matter. it's
tiny.

BTW: Linux is probably the most used OS on the planet. All those Android
platforms run a Linux kernel and Java VM.

android may have linux at its core, but it's not running linux apps and
therefore is not counted as a linux system. linux geeks like to include
it because that's the only way they can pretend that linux is more
common that it actually is.

android is running android apps, written to the android api, running in
the dalvik and now art virtual machine.

android users don't know nor care there's linux under the hood. they
didn't buy it because it has linux, they bought it because they wanted
a particular phone. google could replace linux with something else and
nobody would know because the apps run out of the vm.

many consumer devices run linux and don't even have apps, such as
watches and thermostats.

In article , Alan Browne
wrote:

BTW: Linux is probably the most used OS on the planet. All those Android
platforms run a Linux kernel and Java VM.

Which is beside the point - the numbers provided are for desktop
environments. There are also stats for smartphones:

iOS: 55.9% (belying your claim above)
Android: 30.6%

and the others. (Same source as the first stat).

(Don't forget that while sales of smartphones has been tipping away from
Apple, there are about 700M iPhones out there, the vast majority still
in use.)

a lot of android phones are glorified feature phones that have android.
they aren't smartphones. there are even refrigerators that run android.
nobody is going to do photo processing on a feature phone and certainly
not a refrigerator.

even the low end android smartphones can't run the likes of photoshop
touch, iphoto, etc.

a stat from yesterday was that 80% of black friday purchases made on a
mobile device were done on ios. in other words, ios users actually use
their phones, rather than just brag that there's linux in it,
somewhere.

In article , sid
wrote:

To process photography on a Linux machine requires more awareness and
expertise of the OS v. OS X or even the Redmond abomination.

That, as you like to say, is horse****. Clicking an icon is exactly the same
no matter what OS you have chosen to use.

there's a *lot* more to processing images than clicking an icon.

if it were only that simple.

On 2013-11-30 17:28:31 +0000, sid said:

Savageduck wrote:

On 2013-11-30 15:20:07 +0000, Tony Cooper said:

On Fri, 29 Nov 2013 20:21:05 -0800, Savageduck
wrote:

On 2013-11-30 02:45:26 +0000, (Floyd L. Davidson) said:

Savageduck wrote:
[...] most importantly I have a feeling your hardline choice
of OS is your real problem, and it is distracting you from paying
attention to improving your photography.


...and having to think about how to maneuver around the arcane
mechanics of an OS to process digital images rather than the mechanics
of the style and subjects of our photography is an impediment &
distraction.

What "archane mechanics" do you suppose one has to maneuver inorder to
process images.

I refer you to Floyd's response providing what can best be describes as
"arcane":

To be found in:
From: (Floyd L. Davidson)
Date: Fri, 29 Nov 2013 17:30:23 -0900
Message-ID:

"Note that UFRAW is a lot more than and "interface" using DCRAW.
It uses DCRAW as the basic converter engine, but has it's own
processing for many other of the enhancement tools you need.

However, it is a RAW converter, not an image editor. Hence
there is more to post processing that it can do alone! The next
step is to process each image with GIMP.

This is certain to get a bit lengthy, but let me walk you
through some suggestions for your workflow.

First, you want UFRAW to set a "base" configuration that you
start with. That's a little complex because when working you
want it to save all setting each time you save an image. When
you start work on a group of files, the first thing is to check
the configuration of UFRAW. Here are my defaults, from top to
bottom:

---- Pre-Configuration ----

At the top:
Enable Raw histogram

2nd line:
Set Exposure to 0.0 (see Note)
Set Restore Details for Negative EV to "HSV space for sharp detail"
Set Clip Highlights for Positive EV to "digital linear"
Set Auto Adjust Exposure to disabled (see Note)
Note: Clicking the last icon will set exposure to 0 and disable
Auto Adjust.

3rd line:
White Balance -- set to either "auto" or "camera"
Grayscale Mode -- None (which means color)
Lens correction (optional, may not exist) -- None
Base Curve -- Straight Line (use reset button on right)
Color Management -- A. Input ICC Profile: No profile
B. Gamma: 0.45
C. Linearity: 0.10
D. Output ICC Profile: sRGB
E. Output intent: Perceptual
F. Output Depth: 8 (16 sometimes)
G. Display ICC Profile: sRGB
H. Display intent: Perceptual
Correct Luminosity, Saturation --
A. Contrast (Optional, may not exist): 1.00
B. Saturation: 1.30
C. Manual curve
D. Click on both left and right bottom reset buttons
Lightness Adjustments -- Does nothing on mine (if it exists, set
everything to 0)
Crop and Rotate -- Click on two reset buttons, and "lock" icon.
Note that there
are bugs associated with the functions in this
menu, and on
occasion odd crops may show up that require
these resets to be
reset to get a normal view.

Save -- THIS IS IMPORTANT!
A. The "path" should be your current working
directory.
B. Select the output file format (I would
recommend only TIFF).
C. Set JPEG compression level as desired
(less than 92)
C. Enable JPEG progressive encoding
D. Enable TIFF lossless compression
E. Enable Embed EXIF
F. ** Set Create ID file to ONLY **
G. Set save image defaults to Always
H. Disable remembering output path
I. Enable overwriting files without asking

Bottom of page:
Enable Live Histogram
Check the indicate box for Overexposure
Uncheck the indicate box for Underexposure

---- End of Pre-Configuration ----

Obviously there are some items you might want to set
differently. I would suggest waiting until you work with those
for awhile first, and then slowly start changing things to match
your specific needs *after* you get an idea what the purpose is
for each. However, it is also true that sometimes you'll want
something different for a specific set of images, so if it
actually makes a difference, change the default on a case by
case basis.

The effect of setting UFRAW to only write an "ID" file is
important. I start UFRAW like this:

ufraw *.nef

You will want to change *.nef to whatever suffix is appropriate
for your raw files. But it will do each raw file in sequence.
If you don't want to do a given file, click on "cancel" instead
of "save" and it will skip to the next file. Clicking on "save"
will *only* write a *.ufraw file, which happens almost
instantly. It then goes to the next RAW file. You don't need
to wait for it to convert each file.

When you've gone through all of the files you want to process,
convert them to TIFF format files with a batch process like
this:

ufraw-batch *.ufraw

You can then take a coffee break, read Usenet, or whatever while
all of the time consuming number crunching is done.

But lets go back to the first RAW file you process, and follow a
typical sequence for making the adjustments. I usually just put
the exposure slider somewhere near correct, and then adjust
White Balance. You can switch between different presets, or go
to manual and adjust it yourself. Then I click the "Color
management" icon and adjust gamma and linearity plus exposure to
get the look I want. If the image is going to be processed by
GIMP, leave the output bit depth at 8. If you will process with
software that can deal with 16 bits, change it to that.

The next step will be processing with an editor. If you use
GIMP or any other 8 bit editor you'll want to get the gamma and
brightness very close to perfect with UFRAW, because changing
either in GIMP can cause posterization. But GIMP is fine for
cropping and most other edits. You can do minor adjustments to
contrast and brightness, in particular to local area selections.
Local sharpening and blurring is also done with GIMP, and then
before writing the final output file to disk it should be 1)
saved as an XCF formatted intermediate file, 2) scaled to the
appropriate size, 3) apply Sharpen and Unsharp Mask, and finally
4) saved to disk (perhaps as a JPEG format).

Your first efforts may not match the perceived quality of images
produced by the cameras JPEG engine, but... rest assured that
with practice you can develop the skills needed to always
produce a better result than the camera does. The reason is
fairly simple too. Your computer can at least equal what the
camera's computer can do, but it has the advantage of 20-20 hind
sight too. The camera has to be configured before you make an
exposure. You only get one guess at what is right for each
exposure, and that's it. With post processing you take the
exact same raw sensor data the camera used, but you get to try
any and every possible variation on configuration until you get
not just something close, but rather the precise configuration
you like the best. Many times every single shot is slightly
different, and you do get better results for each one!

Just don't expect to do that immediately, and do expect to save
your raw files because I guarantee that in 2 years, not to
mention 5 years, you'll be better at editing!

Also be aware that with Linux if you become proficient at writing
shell scripts there is just no end of ways to improve productivity.
The ImageMagick tools are fabulous for editing. And there are
many ways a shell script can speed up your workflow. For example,
I preview my images, as JPEGs, with a very customized version of XV which can
sort them into various directories. The JPEG images I don't want to convert
with UFRAW go into one special directory, and then a shell script moves
the RAW files to the same directories where the JPEG is now at. Then
I run UFRAW and it never loads a file I don't want to process. Plus
when I want to run the batch on all of them, I use a script that does
odd things like automatically setting wavelet noise reduction depending
on the ISO it was shot at, and it determines how many CPU cores are available
and proceeds to keep each CPU busy with a different process (which with
as many as 12 cores can make a huge difference in how fast a few hundred
RAW files can be converted to TIFF files)."

Tell me that isn't arcane.


Clicking an icon is way easier with osx I take it?

Is that supposed to be some sort of OSX put down?

You aren't familiar with OSX, Lightroom, or Photoshop are you?
I sure as Hell don't have to jump through the hoops Floyd has set out above.

I have a workflow in Lightroom & Photoshop which might come as a
surprise to you, is smooth and efficient, without a thought as to the
under pinnings of the OS, I am sure the same is true for those using LR
& PS in the Windows environment.
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/1295663/Fil...enshot_422.jpg
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/1295663/Fil...enshot_423.jpg



--
Regards,

Savageduck