Get full Pentax RAW/PEF support in Ubuntu/Linux

Hey folks. This is more of a public service announcement.

 

I just installed Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron)

http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/download . If you're not aware, it comes

pre-loaded with the GIMP and F-Spot Photo Viewer.

 

Out of the box, F-Spot Photo Viewer handles the Pentax PEF RAW files perfectly.

You can open, view, start slide show etc, not for real editing though.

 

Out of the box, the GIMP will fail on opening the PEF but, if you download the

ufraw gimp plug-in package from Ubuntu here

http://packages.ubuntu.com/hardy/gimp-ufraw It will works excellent! Edit and

view PEF files right in the GIMP.

 

Also, you can download the full standalone ufraw program from Ubuntu here

(highly recommended). http://packages.ubuntu.com/hardy/ufraw

 

Well, if you're thinking of a new OS and wondered about Pentax support, this is

one option. Enjoy!

I haven't used the ufraw package, but it looks pretty good. It's raw conversion is based on dcraw which is easily available for any distro -- or compile it yourself. I think it's a single source file.

 

I'm on Fedora 9, installing ufraw as I type. That was easy. I'm not a Pentax digital user (yet?) but ufraw appears to handle my Sony SRF files just fine.

 

Thanks for the info!

Gimp only works in 8 bits per pixel, so if you're trying to get the smooth tones after editing

you normally expect with RAW, you'll need Cinepaint (which hasn't been updated in a coon's

age) or Krita (which I didn't have much luck with).

Ah, the endless pitfalls of software...

Both Cinepaint and Krita will work. Though, there should soon be support for 16-bit in GIMP natively. Though, you need and entire system capable of 12 or 16 bit to take advantage of it.

Sigh... how many more decades will we have to wait for Adobe to make a version of photoshop/ACR/lightroom for linux? It ain't going to happen for many years, but when it does it really will be the final nail in Microsoft's coffin. Is there anyone else running a windows partition almost solely for photoshop/acr/lightroom use?

Mac and *nix here..

Good post, Tom.

 

I love UFRaw under Linux! Personally, I'm not so big on F-Spot, instead I use Gthumb. Which can't do PEF files (yet!), but it's lighter-weight and has lots of useful editing features as well as faster browsing.

 

Dan

What about Lightzone? It's free for Linux at the moment, and well worth a look. Rawtherapee is making progress, although Ubuntu 64 seems to have caused a few hiccoughs with it. I haven't yet tried the new version 2.4 on Hardy 64. I've heard rumour that the Gimp 16bit is undergoing test, I'm looking forward to that being released. In the meantime I use Lightzone, it does all I need as a raw beginner, but I keep an eye on Rawtherapee because I like the developers philosophy. Ufraw and Rawstudio work quite well, but they only magnify to 50%, a hassle with my failing vision.

What brought me to mention this was the following.. I leave for Europe in two weeks and last time out I had a real hard time managing my photos with regards to storage and organizing. I actually overwrote some images by accident due to the K10D rolling over the 10k mark and starting over so this since this is my next big trip I wanted to beat that scenario dead..

 

I looked at portable storage devices, 80gb units that you just slap a SD/SDHC card in and transfer to the device. Seemed like a good idea until I saw the price of a unit that handled SDHC and enabled you to view the images. Not to mention reports of heavy battery usage. Cost was between $300 and $400 for the unit that might have suited my needs.

 

Then of course I figured, the heck with it, I'll just buy 20 4gb SDHC cards.. lol.. Uh, while not a bad idea. I soo could see myself losing one, or two in my journeys, or one just failing on me.. And they are quite expensive too, at about $400 for 20 on a deal buy. (for decent fast ones of course)

 

Then I thought, hmm, maybe I'll just pick up two more 4gb SDHC cards so I have enough capacity for most days and while I'm at it I'll pick up a USB powered laptop hard drive enclosure and an 80gb HD and bum someones computer for transfers.. This was possibly the cheapest solution at about $150 all said and done..

 

Oddly enough, at about the time I was ready to go the laptop HD route with a few more SDHC cards I read the article in PopPhoto about the Asus EeePC.. WOW! At $299 for a full-blown Linux laptop, $10 for the USB laptop HD enclosure and $60 for the extra drive and I had a killer setup that was small and easy to transport, allowed plenty of storage plus full internet, email, etc via ethernet or wireless, etc.. This one got me thinking.. and looking..

 

I hit up ebay and after digging around I came across an IBM T41 w/ built-in wireless, 802.11-b&g and Bluetooth and Ir, extra capacity battery, 14" LCD, DCD/CDRW drive and 80GB HD with NO Operating System... Buy it now price of $50.. Uh, SOLD!! (There's more of them by the way).. Got the laptop, it's mint, installed Ubuntu 8.04 for free, got all the apps I like for free and everything works sweet! I even picked up a spare extra-capacity battery for $40. Between the two batteries I have 9 hours running time playing DVD's! Confirmed!!

 

So, for $90 and a little work I have what I think will be the ultimate travel tool..

 

*I can store and view and work on up to about 70gb's (possibly more, see below) of PEF/RAW photos while on my trip. And of course if I bring some CDRW's I can write disks until the cows come home..

 

*I'll have access to the internet in multiple ways including via my Bluetooth enabled GSM-phone, 802.11b/g wireless, 10/100/1000 Ethernet, or that horrible dial-up thing..

 

*I'll now have a portable DVD player which is going to be huge as these flights are booked through Air India and the typical in-flight movies are B&W with no guarantee of English as the language. Great food though ;)

 

*Finally, I decided to spend another $60 for a second 80gb HD that I've duplicated the Ubuntu install on and instead of actually bringing DVD's with me, I've already started ripping the DVD ISO images to this second hard drive. Through some digging around I found that you'll get much better battery usage if you're only using the HD instead of the DVD drive.. When I'm done with the movies I just swap my other HD in and I'm ready to play with the photos.. And judging by the fact that I'll only load 6 or so movies for the flights, I should have some additional storage for photos.

 

A long write-up for something so simple.. lol

Tom, I've been taking a look at Showphoto in Hardy, it's a basic 16 bit photo editor - could be useful. Rawstudio seems to have been upgraded in Hardy, will now zoom to 100% which helps my eyes, but still no noise reduction. Rawtherapee has a problem with saving TIFF's, and Lightzone for Linux is going to cost money. Looks like a close examination of Showphoto is in order..... Yes, I'm a cheapskate! Not really, saving up for a lens.

Been fiddling with Rawtherapee, seems that this version is stable on Hardy AMD 64 http://www.rawtherapee.com/rawtherapee23_glibc23.tgz . The deb for Ubuntu 64 is not good because of some level problems, nor is the version with glibc24, no idea about the 32 bit versions. Just my findings, others may differ. The problem with 2.4 is that is messes up TIFF's from some raw files, including PEF's, but is okay with DNG's and all other formats. Should be fixed very soon, it will be very good then.

I'd suggest Bibble with the exception that it does not yet support the K20D, for all other users, who are willing to spend money on good software that runs on linux and is miles ahead of Adobe in terms of processing performance/workflow (yeah it needs a face lift, but i prefer "works well" over "looks good")

Try Bibble Pro and enjoy.

Daniel, Thanks for bringing up Bibble Pro for Linux. While it's not a *free* tool, it certainly is nice and for only $129, it's priced right.

I use Picasa4Linux to manage my photos.

 

It still has an edge over F-Spot, Digikam, you name it. Built-in RAW/PEF support, pretty good conversion to JPEG and perfect integration with picasaweb. Not to mention excellent photo management ;)

 

For PP I use GIMP/ufraw for now. Rawstudio is also pretty versatile but it seems that it ignores something in the PEF file (embedded colorspace?) since colors are washed out and you need to PP for 15 minutes to reach the JPEG/Picasa/GIMP image level.

 

:)

In linux (ubuntu hardy heron), exported files (16 bit tif format) are very dark, they are different from original image. Instead exported files in 8 bit tif or jpg works fine. My file are .pef.

Some idea?

Thank you