Fstoppers: Someone Please Save Us Photographers From All These Subscriptions

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I read an article from a Japanese Zen teacher who used photography as a metaphor from the analogue era I’m still working on the deeper meaning

he had two portraits taken of himself one by somebody who was technically obsessed and had all the latest gear and knew all the latest techniques but didn’t take a very good photo whereas the flattering photo he liked was from someone who turned up with a battered old camera and wasn’t so interested in technique

so I think you can use open source in a way where your emphasising the intuitive and creative and by doing this you will become like the second photographer in the example above I think other people have made this point on this forum somewhere

also on this forum, and we’re all grateful to them, are people with above average technical ability

and you do get people like Leonardo da Vinci who can be expert technically and creatively interestingly in his time the distinction between the two would not have been made

at my time in school I think you would have got corporal punishment for saying you wanted to study chemistry, art and physics

few years later from this I came to the conclusion that professional success was 90% getting on with people and 10% being good at what you do and not much has made me change my mind
Might explain why some peoples work gets worse when they go pro, Artists like Miro seem to imply it is not good for creativity to try and exploit this, what does it gain a man …

so while I would argue from the creative standpoint open source would be professional if sufficient other professionals disagreed you might have problems for the reason above

so I do think I can honestly say that I think open source is as good most of the time, better in the context of what I have said above and the possibilities it offers for the Leonardo’s however apologies if that is misleading for people who want to be cutting edge technically, who though is telling you what is

also if I’m being totally honest I tend to use gimp and the free Sony capture One, no longer available in a similar way to the way that people used Adobe camera raw and Photoshop several years ago

I don’t think this is being less professional for the social photography I do commercially because most of the other people tend just to shoot in jpeg and to be fair to them get some good results

if somebody wants to use affinity photo good luck to them and I’m sure they might get some excellent results

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22

Good work and bad work can be done with FOSS and proprietary software. Good work and bad work can be done with expensive gear and with cheap gear. Good work and bad work can be done by technical wizards and by solely-intuitive artists.

The point I was making was not one solely of technical capability differences (although differences do exist, both ways) but of the realities of cooperatively working with the rest of the professional photographic world in a production commercial environment. An analogy could be a fluent and skilled, but German-only, writer who took a job with the Mongolian Times in Ulaanbaatar. As skilled and inherently capable as (s)he might be, an unavoidable requirement would be to use the predominant local language.

FTR, in my case I have these free / FOSS products installed (if there’s any question of loyalty :stuck_out_tongue:)

  • Aladin
  • ART
  • C2A
  • Cartes du Ciel
  • CDBurnerXP
  • darktable
  • DeepSkyStacker
  • eM Client
  • Falkon
  • FastStone Image Viewer (free version available, but I elected to buy)
  • Firefox
  • FreeCOmmand XE (free version available, but I elected to buy)
  • GIMP
  • G’MIC
  • Greenshot
  • Inkscape
  • Joplin
  • LibreOffice
  • Mp3tag
  • MusicBee
  • MyRadar
  • PDFsam Basic
  • PSPad (free version available, but I elected to buy)
  • PuTTY
  • Python
  • QCAD (free version available, but I elected to buy)
  • Raw Therapee
  • Revo Uninstaller
  • Siril
  • SyncBackFree
  • Vim
  • VirtualBox
  • WinSCP
  • WizTree
  • XnView MP
  • Xournal++
  • ZTree Win (free version available, but I elected to buy)

(and other small utilities)

By contrast, my installed commercial / proprietary software:

  • Windows (duh)
  • MS Office 2010 (last version I bought – w / an employee discount – installed for compatibility purposes)
  • Affinity Photo 2
  • DeLorme Street Atlas USA
  • SkyTools 4
  • SpyderXPro
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23

The interesting thing about all the software above, including the commercial ones, is that behind them are enormous amounts of unsung apps, with which they are bundled, all of which are open source. For example, ImageMagick is in the Photoshop directory.

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Yep, Affinity Photo uses a number of FOSS libraries.

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I think before Photoshop dominated there were rivals that for certain styles or certain jobs were better I like the warp sharping in gimp not seen it elsewhere

I guess you need the technical still skill to know what you have to ignore or listen to

I think having a variety of software is a good way to go or having patient friends who will let you use their stuff from time to time

the whole AI issue comes into this for increasing resolution etc some people might not like being given an AI makeover with the software. Impressed gmic do upscaling, looked ok from a quick test not had time myself yet to be able to recommend for commercial work, must start the tax return

it is a valid point about working with other people though I am hoping that the tradition of basing judgements on a portfolio which was around in analogue times rather than hearsay will carry on with digital, everything is negotiable I hope, ,you can as a freelancer work directly with clients

A quality tiff for print or jpg for online is hopefully universal even if produced by open source

Good communication skills are important as I teach from negative example from time to time

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I find the “predicament” posed by the article false: no one is forcing photographers to subscribe to any of these tools. All of them have FOSS alternatives and they are not hard to find or install either.

I would assume that schools get a campus license, as long as you are a student you can use the software.

That said, I think that students should learn concepts of digital photography, and then treat their software implementation as an accidental detail. Once the concepts are understood, it is easy to switch from one product to another.

Also, let’s not forget that while digital post-processing is part of photography these days, it is not necessarily the most important skill. I would say that composition and lighting are far more important — if I wanted to learn to be an artist, I would badger my teachers to tell me about these. Digital processing can be learned from a lot of other sources: tutorials, YT videos, etc.

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Without dismissing nor minimizing any of the choices available, I’m a little more ready to admit the “soft” yet very real implications of compatibility and interop – in direct and indirect ways – that manifest themselves in the commercial world.

Let me say a dangerous thing, so to speak: By going in a non-mainstream direction, you run the risk of becoming an island. Now, it may be 10,000% very worthwhile regardless – I think most of us here would agree. But if you don’t want to “risk” that, for whatever reasons, or if your simply like the mainstream, then it’s the way to go. And that’s where they’ve got you. And I think that’s the focus of the article – For those who choose “Adobe”, enough of the subscriptions already.

Anyway, I’m definitely not advocating Adobe, subscriptions, etc , but I’ve seen many times in the Real World where known “lesser” solutions were chosen because they were more viable in the end result, all things considered.

Actually I’m glad I’m not in the article’s predicament…

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I don’t understand in what sense you think this happens. As a photographer, your input is light, and your output is images, usually in JPEG or similar. Everything in between — your camera, your software, your computer — is a choice up to you.

The customer does not care about your software choice. It could matter when images are edited collaboratively, but then you are presumably in a company who buys you whatever software they want you to use.

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The “Island” can (not necessarily will, but certainly can) result if the tools and techniques you use differ significantly from others, which is some respects is true here. While there’s certainly a high level overlap, technical details and specifics can be lost or mistranslated between products.

I came up in a print shop and advertising agency environment, so the group scenario you mentioned definitely applies. Fortunately as a hobbyist now that no longer applies. But I still find myself having to translate a lot of instruction from mainstream to more niche products. So to a small degree I’m an island. Not a totally deserted island, mind you, but smaller than the mainland, if I can stretch the analogy.

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Niche is such a relative term. Almost all tools discussed on this forum are “niche” in terms of relative market share, but in absolute numbers they have enough users to form a community. That’s what matters.

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I can see both sides here. There’s a big enough community online (pixls, specifically) so it’s all good.

Still, Adobe is everywhere. The local photo group chat about LR exclusively when they do talk about processing (little). Any short digital course at the local photo gallery on landscape or street or whatever will normally have at least a few hours on LR. The distance Open University has photography foundation and bachelor courses with big chunks of time spent on Adobe. Other online photo forums also almost exclusively discuss LR/PS when it comes to processing, even though I know there are some FOSS users there.

I think DT is niche obviously in the sense of the number users but also because it’s starts off with as flat an image as possible, which is why I love it. But LR users, to generalise, expect to have a basically ok looking image and then just tweak this and that to their taste.

DT draws inspiration from video editing with a flat log profile. Most Adobe users don’t want that, I’m guessing, so there’s not much discussion to be had. My efforts, at least, have met with incomprehension.

Other random musings are available…

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Same with ON1.

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That’s my point. I don’t have the numbers at my fingers but I think even the largest FOSS “raw photo” community pales in comparison with Adobe’s footprint, particularly in the professional realm. One could (rightly) say it’s a vivid illustration of the truth that popularity doesn’t necessarily equate to technical superiority. No argument there from me at all.

But I have to admit as a former (and still current “casual fiddler”) of darktable personally I’ve found that given my photography – landscape – I literally don’t need the impressive degree of control darktable offers. Others obviously do and great for them!

Yes, I know I don’t have to use every module, but for me personally a simpler approach works more smoothly. In fact, now that I’ve been using ART for a year or so (and more importantly, not ‘deeply’ using darktable frequently), I find it difficult to get good results with darktable on my images. That’s entirely my ‘fault’, not a criticism though. It’s the classic “use it or lose it” situation.

So I can totally understand the desire for a simpler approach, vendor / product notwithstanding. That said, I think any serious photographer who’s working in an area where darktable (or indeed, any other product) really shines does themselves a disservice by not at least giving it a fair shot. It comes down to the best tool for the task at hand, and ‘best’ has a lot of underlying factors (not just technical).

At any rate, probably way too much pontification on my part. :slight_smile:

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I guess a lot of people coming from other software would find ART easier as it has more conventional controls and provides a starting point closer to the OOC jpg. Probably less people use it because it is more difficult to find in a web search.
I like tend to use darktable more because I enjoy fiddling and it keeps getting new toys added to it. Definitely not the attitude of a professional!

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Yeah, that’s a substantial limitation UMO (“been there” myself) but Alberto has been clear that he’s not doing ART as a mass-market project. Still, he’s responsive and helpful.

And FTR I’m not a former LR user myself but I’ve been in the environments when it’s used.

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Some cursory web search (with terms like “foss lightroom alternative” etc) takes me to pages like this and this, and many similar ones. Almost all of them mention Gimp, Darktable, and Rawtherapee, while ART and Filmulator is also listed quite often.

So while I agree that it takes some effort to find these tools, it is not a lot. The significant cost is the initial investment of learning one of them. The dilemma is whether one should spend hours learning something new which might not be up to the job eventually. Fortunately there are a lot of videos for all FOSS editors which show usage in action and should be informative.

I think that the issue is not specific to RAW photo editors, but applies to all FOSS. Specifically, a dedicated group of people can write a well-designed, mature, feature-complete operating system, text editor, photo editing software etc, the majority of users will still pick the commercial one because companies selling it invest a lot of money to make this happen. Marketing campaigns, paid endorsements, educational tie-ins and similar do work.

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There’s also an underlying factor in volunteer projects: There’s no boss saying “you do this, you do that and you do the other – or you’re fired.” No one likes that situation but it’s often necessary to get things done. Most (not all) FOSS volunteers will naturally tend to work on what interests them. And collateral material is not interesting to most people, especially developers.

darktable, RawTherapee, GIMP and a few others are the exception in my experience – at least in terms of going beyond the “what”, into the how and why. Graphics software tends to be technique dependent: First you learn what generally needs to happen and why, then what the software does, then how to make it do what specifically needs to be done. I find much documentation never gets far past what the software does. Again, dt, RT, etc. area different in that regard.

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Indeed:

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image2381×923 147 KB

I find it interesting that they don’t list the commercial alternatives first.

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True… although I have a strong suspicion that many newcomers to the editing world have never heard of the terms FOSS or open source. :smiley: Which doesn’t help!

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I have some experience of much of this as I work with Adobe and other tools. As a kid in the mid nineties i used pirated versions of most fancy software and learned how to use them. Early Photoshop and 3d Studio Max for instance, but also learned 3d modeling using Doom (I and II) map maker tools… I did some work designing magazines and publications using Quark express (on site) as a side job during my first (abandoned) stab at university. I then left the country to live elsewhere and ended up studying a more creative field there. Continued to use pirated software to be able to complete the courses.

I had already been in offices where they bought software because I was skilled in them. I became really pissed off by all this. I’m taking risks illegally using their software to learn as a student. All this under threat by the software companies but my risk taking both locks me in skill wise and makes the software companies money.

Then Adobe bought it’s only competitor Macromedia and Autodesk bough Alias or atleast Maya. That was just the drop. The f:ed up lock in system was getting worse. I just decided to start using Gimp and the then rudimentary Blender as much as possible. Determined not to invest my time learning skills that were at the whim om these companies. When changing jobs I can always use my tools if the work is such that no one else needs to work on my files. Things I’ve produce with these tools have been used in some pretty “important” circumstances related to the Olympics and huge art institutions.

Now not all software I need is available if foss and I’m old and flexible enough to use the tools required for the team when I’m not working solo. I’m slower in Photoshop and I avoid Lightroom as much as possible but it works.

The point I guess is that the learning is the big investment and it really pays off to understand the principles rather than the gui quirks. The value of having the software ready to install at any circumstances (foss) is huge but not being able to use mainstream solutions is a big problem.

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