[Digikam-users] How to best save images

[Martin (KDE)]

Am Sonntag, 24. Januar 2010 schrieb Daniel Bauer:
> On Sunday 24 January 2010 12:12:43, jdd wrote:
> > Le 24/01/2010 11:28, Andrew Goodbody a écrit :
> > > Converting from raw to anything you will lose data. Converting
> > > from raw includes various processes such as de-mosaicing and
> > > applying white balance.
> > >
> > > Storage is cheap, data is irreplaceable. However you must
> > > choose where your priorities are.
> >
> > not so cheap and don't underestimate the time and work necessary
> > to scan all a collection, finding the various repositories...
> 
> If you want good photos you will have to apply some time on them...
> 
> > For various reason (unrelevant here), I have to shoot many
> > images. 500 for one evening is common. Most of these are
> > unusefull and are very soon deleted. On the rest most are for
> > family fun and don't need any real quality. Some only mat once
> > have to be edited with max quality.
> >
> > I don't have yet a real solution. When I had an OES 350D, I only
> > used jpeg fine. Now with my new EOS 50D,I can have raw+jpeg.
> 
> I shoot raw+small jpg. I copy all on computer in a folder away from
>  digiKam. Copy all raws on external hard drive plus dvd. (opinion
>  what is a "good" picture may change in time and then it's nice to
>  still have all raw files...)
> 
> I import small jpgs to digikam and do the selection (which pictures
>  to edit). Delete the rest of the small jpgs. Move the
>  corresponding raws to my Virtualbox shared folder.
> 
> I must confess: I use Canons Software (on Win XP in Virtualbox) to
>  "decode" the raws. Although I really dislike Win, the Canon
>  Software is very good and easy to use. I put the setting for all
>  the images, save those settings (it will not alter the raw files)
>  and then let them convert in a batch process.
> 
> Finally copy the processed files back to the shared folder, convert
>  them to png and import those into digikam. This is where I do
>  cropping etc. and give them the final color aspects.

Yes, Canon software is not that bad. But there are steps (like rotate 
2° left and clip, which canon software is not able to do (at least my 
version is not). And I don't like the close source way.

In my point of view current version of UFRaw is equal to or even 
better than canon software (for my EOS 30D files). I use colormatix as 
profile and for some photos a nonlinear base curve. And newest UFRaw 
can even correct lens flaws (but my lenses are not that bad).

In the last months I played a lot with IT8 targets to create my own 
camera profile to get colours as correct as possible. While I have 
some progress with this, I am not completely satisfied with the 
result.

> 
> Finally I do retouching on the pngs in Gimp and then convert them
>  to jpgs.

Yep, that's my way, too except I don't use pngs.

> 
> > But it's an enormous amount of data. Simply copying it from the
> > camera to the computer takes ages
> 
> This is true. But I have a negative/slides archives that takes much
>  more space (and costs) than some external hard drives and dvds.
> 
> > What I would like is a centralized file management: for example
> > be able to remove both raw and jpeg on one action (now I have to
> > scan file names).
> 
> I leave the original file-name intact thru all the steps. So I can
>  use find to scan an album and create a list. Then I edit this list
>  to the according wishes (move/delete/copy etc.) and let run this
>  list as a shell script.

I have raw and non raw files side by side. In digikam I can select 
which one i want to see and so finding my photos is much easier. Once 
I had raws in seperate directories but this was to confusing.

> 
> > however I have to say when I bough my 50D, digikam couldn't open
> > the raw files, this stopped me a lot and I have to rethink things
> 
> Never stop thinking, the world is changing all tme time :-)
> 
> Daniel
> 

Martin