I look curiously at an agenda at a photography workshop in Pune. An hour devoted to the powers of Adobe's software suite for manipulating photographs. Photoshop. Lightroom. And what not. Being the perennial pauper that I am and with my faith in open source, I decide. I need to explore what my open source toolkit needs to be to work with my photographs.
Well, that was about an year ago. The journey has been quite good. My needs are small. My experiments have not been that many. And I have a toolkit ready, that does a load of things for me. Efficiently. Painlessly. Economically. And, I can take pride in the fact that I haven't used anyting that Adobe's excellent teams have developed, that I have not paid for.
I am a purist. So, I do little post processing with layers and all that gimmickry. Its beyond me. Too much technology that takes away the joy of capturing the moment efficiently. There and then. I think digital photography has in a certain way damaged the skills that made photographers perfectionists. Now there's so much freedom. Freedom to take as many shots. Freedom to change the photographs later on.
Hell man. I'll wonder about the composition later!
Not that I do not believe that cropping the photograph does wonders later on. I have been working on a simple principle that is popular within software development (but as usual, rarely practiced).
KISS. Keep It Simple, Stupid!
And, this has been my main message in the photography club at office. Define the theme of the photograph. Don't be afraid to fill the frame. Don't dilute the message. Don't get too many elements in.
Recently about an year back, much about the time I explored the various open source tools, I started exploring RAW photography. After exploring various tools such as UFRaw, I narrowed down to my favorite tool that I use. RawTherapee. You can download it here. The list of features is truly impressive. Here's a sample of what you will get.
Other stuff that fills in the bits and pieces of my toolkit are:
There is of course a lot many tools available. Maybe sometime later I shall follow it up with an update on other tools that I start using. But for now, the current toolkit is sufficient for the stuff I do.
Well, that was about an year ago. The journey has been quite good. My needs are small. My experiments have not been that many. And I have a toolkit ready, that does a load of things for me. Efficiently. Painlessly. Economically. And, I can take pride in the fact that I haven't used anyting that Adobe's excellent teams have developed, that I have not paid for.
I am a purist. So, I do little post processing with layers and all that gimmickry. Its beyond me. Too much technology that takes away the joy of capturing the moment efficiently. There and then. I think digital photography has in a certain way damaged the skills that made photographers perfectionists. Now there's so much freedom. Freedom to take as many shots. Freedom to change the photographs later on.
Hell man. I'll wonder about the composition later!
Not that I do not believe that cropping the photograph does wonders later on. I have been working on a simple principle that is popular within software development (but as usual, rarely practiced).
KISS. Keep It Simple, Stupid!
And, this has been my main message in the photography club at office. Define the theme of the photograph. Don't be afraid to fill the frame. Don't dilute the message. Don't get too many elements in.
Recently about an year back, much about the time I explored the various open source tools, I started exploring RAW photography. After exploring various tools such as UFRaw, I narrowed down to my favorite tool that I use. RawTherapee. You can download it here. The list of features is truly impressive. Here's a sample of what you will get.
- Demosaicing algorithms - AMaZE, DCB, fast, AHD, EAHD, HPHD & VNG4.
- Advanced color handling
- Denoising methods
Other stuff that fills in the bits and pieces of my toolkit are:
- Panorama - Hugin. That's one useful tool for the landscape photographers that need to stitch a series of overlapping photographs.
- HDR - LuminanceHDR. I've not done much of HDR photography. Need to get my hands dirty on this. High Dynamic Range photography basically is a method in which you take photographs at various exposure levels to increase the dynamic range you get after merging them. The human eye has a much bigger range than photographic gear.
- CMS - Here I'm not usually limited to one software. I have LProf and Little CMS. But, I have to admit, I haven't extensively used them.
- Image editing - well, there's no doubt that GIMP is everyone's favorite here. It's not Photoshop, but for the amateur photographer, I think there's plenty of muscle here to get things done.
- Batch processing - If you're the kind of person who can dabble in a little bit of scripting to process your photographs, I would recommend ImageMagick. For those unfamiliar with this software it can do a range of editing activities ranging from format conversion to resizing to feature extraction to decoration. The stuff it can do is endless to list. If you're not too fond of working on the command line there are 'frontends' available.
There is of course a lot many tools available. Maybe sometime later I shall follow it up with an update on other tools that I start using. But for now, the current toolkit is sufficient for the stuff I do.
nice photos. love the black face shot particularly
ReplyDeleteThat's my favourite too! The aim was to emphasise the silver streak that defined the profile.
ReplyDeletethanks for this informative post....
ReplyDeletehave always found Adobe stuff a bit too much to handle...
I use ViewNX and liking Picnik nowadays
Wow good thanks for share
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