Photoshop on Linux

Software
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I know, I know! But hear me out:

My local photography school is offering a course in Photoshop Fundamentals, with a very highly-regarded instructor. I’d really like to learn his process, but don’t intend to permanently switch.

I was wondering if anyone here had recent experience running Photoshop on Linux, either through Wine or in VirtualMachine? Is that possible without too much hassle, and without overly slowing a reasonably spec-ed laptop?

I’m motivated in part by wanting to learn what this fellow does in general, but also to get enough familiarity that I can more readily translate ideas from youtubes/blogs that use PS to their equivalents in RawTherapee, Gimp, etc.

2

The VM will probably be less painful at runtime.

but tbh … if you are firm with gimp or krita you can probably just map the photoshop instructions into your OSS app?

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yeah, I was thinking that too. But I don’t want to be ‘that guy’ by introducing extra distractions, or slowing down the group with diversions.

But it would be nice to be demo some alternatives. I’ll think about that.

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I’m not sure if photoshop runs performant in a VM. As far as I know it’s quite resource intensive and makes use of GPU acceleration as well. I’m quite sure that it doesn’t run on Wine. Best scenario for performance would be a dual boot machine. But I think that would be too much hassle for a one time Photoshop course. If you have somewhere a spare drive, it would maybe be a possibility to change SSD and install Windows on the spare drive.

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I’ve run it in a VM, no video acceleration (you need to turn off use OpenGL in PSD or it’s unusable). The constant CC authorizations finally killed it for me. You might do better with the online program PhotoPea. Very similar, perhaps enough for you to participate with most of the course. If you can set up a Windows machine for the duration, that would be your best experience.

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Thanks. I’m thinking borrowing my wife’s Windows laptop might be the path of least resistance here.

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I have a refirb system for this purpose as a last resort. Sometimes I find the occasional win software that the work arounds degrade too much.

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It would be interesting to see the techniques that are tought in the course to see where they can or cannot be replicated with gimp. Maybe you can share some of your findings from the course.

I am very happy with my free/libre/open source software stack that I am exclusively using in my private life for more than 20 years (except the tax declaration software), and I hope I never have to go back. However, I see a lot of everyday photoshop features that people are using these days that have no alternative in gimp (or krita) so far. It would in particular be interesting how much the instructor will rely on these (e.g., auto-aligning layers for focus stacking, advanced non-destructive features, integrated raw editing features (camera raw) and lightroom bridging, “AI” healing/inpainting/replacement features etc.).

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If you have additional gpu (e.g. integrated+dedicated), you can tunnel one to vm and have full acceleration in both systems

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No experience, but has anyone tried running PS via WINE? Even so, doubt it will be able to take advantage of GPU for processing. Not sure how well VMs support full GPU integration, either. Really need that ability to speed things up in PS, imo. Even so, after my system crashed so many times a few years back, I never re-installed PS (last version before they went the subscription/rent model). I’m a GIMPer through and through. :slight_smile:

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I’m interested, do you have any tutorials?

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You can search e.g. “vfio guide”. This example is for asus ntb: https://asus-linux.org/guides/vfio-guide/ Not everything there is necessary.

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I wonder if you could borrow a computer from a friend or club member for the night. Over the years I have taught both GIMP and PS and my GIMP lessons were originally adapted from PS instructions so you will learn a lot from a good teacher of PS that can be applied to GIMP.

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I suspect that the biggest limitation of using Gimp would be the lack of adjustment layers.

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Adobe have been making it more of a hassle to run it in a VM. New versions of camera raw now don’t work for example. VMware has graphics drivers to use some of your graphics card out of the box which works pretty well with some software but Adobe have made sure that it isn’t supported. Last time I used it in a VM it didn’t work too bad but that was a while ago now, it’s alright for basic stuff if it’s still the same.