F Zero Photography

Let me tell you what software I currently use to edit and organize my photos.

First – I am not professional photographer, I don’t do commissions, I don’t need to present my work to client, I don’t need sophisticated search in my galleries and so on. My usage is very simple and I currently like to keep it that way – I just want to view and edit my pictures in some organized and reasonably pleasant way.

Second – I strongly dislike Windows (I don’t want to use word hate, oops I just did) although I sorta have to use it in a way. I’ll get to that. I use linux and would like to live in world where companies have to make linux version of their app to be profitable. I feel like major companies like microsoft and adobe have totally lost their mind over time and the user is not a client anymore but is more of a hostage. No thank you.

Of digital cameras I currently mainly use one Olympus (E-1) and one Canon (5d). I like to use editing app from the manufacturer, because it seems to me I get good results that way. So for Olympus i use OM Workspace and for Canon Digital Photo Professional. Olympus app seems very good to me and is a joy to use, Canon app is the opposite, very frustrating to use, but I find it to work with Canon raw files very well.

Now the thing I do to run these only two Windows apps I use, is to keep Windows in virtual box machine and never connect it to internet. That way, with moderately good pc, I can fire up windows from inside linux, edit my photos and leave Windows when I am done. Because it is not connected to internet, it will never change under my hands along with security updates and it will never send anything anywhere. This way, it almost feels like in the good old days, when user installed and set up software and it worked and stayed that way.

There are linux raw files editors like RawTherapee or darktable and they are very powerful and usable. I just never learned how to get results I want from them. Particularly with converting scanned black and white negatives. The results just look weird to me and I don’t know why.

So for black and white negatives I just edit the .jpg file in gimp. I might get better results from raw file, but I just don’t know how to do that yet. I wanted to try Lightroom for that, but been always hesitant to lock myself into adobe prison and that feeling has cemented itself in me even more now.

For viewing my photos I use digiKam. It has way more features than I want or need, but basically it works fine for me. I organize my files in simple date format folders – camera model -> year -> month -> day_month_year.

In the beginning of this post I said I’m not professional photographer and in a way I’m very happy not to be, because I can’t imagine very well how I would explain to my client that photos, possibly private and/or sensitive, I make for them, will be surveilled by Adobe, or in the Microsoft instance, by basically anybody who gains access to screenshots of what I do on my pc. I guess I would have to try find a way to use a software that doesn’t want to abuse and exploit its users and people that cooperates with them. Oh wait, I’m already doing that, phew.