Editing Your Digital Photos
You don’t need a Mac to edit your digital photos. Linux and some free software can unleash your inner Ansel Adams.
Monday, February 13th, 2006
There’s a good chance that during the holidays, you were gifted (or gifted yourself) a brand new digital camera. Because advanced CMOS technology is now a commodity, just about anyone can get really stellar photos out of a consumer digital camera. For example, the camera I bought over the holidays, the 7.1–megapixel Canon A620, which features 1–centimeter macro focus capability and the latest–generation DIGIC II image processor, has a modest street price of around $350–$400. Its 5–megapixel sibling, the A610, is about $100 less, yet takes great pictures as well.
You probably noticed, however, that your camera comes with Windows or Macintosh software — that doesn’t do much good on your Linux desktop platform. When combining your digital camera and Linux, there’s good news and bad news.
First, the bad news: While there’s been some advancement in the last several years in natively interfacing digital cameras with Linux, the variety and quality of programs on Windows and Macintosh are currently superior to what you can find on Linux, where many programs and support libraries are in a beta or even an alpha state. Furthermore, if you have a newer digital camera, chances are that you probably won’t be able to interface with it directly. The good news is that there are workarounds to get the Windows camera software working in Linux.
But let’s start with native support first.
Getting Your Camera Connected, Not!
