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.

  • folekaule@lemmy.world
    7·
    9 hours ago

    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.

    • NeatoBuilds@lemmy.todayEnglish
      1·
      6 hours ago

      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@lemmy.world
        2·
        4 hours 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.