switching from Windows to Linux

I have finally taken the plunge and I am going to make the switch from Windows to Linux.
I bought a System76 Gazelle Pro laptop with a beautiful ips panel.

This switch also means that I have to switch software. I mainly use Silkypix for proceossing raw images and I have grown into it quite nicely.

I now have to switch to something else and I have tried RawTherapee and Darktable but it is really hard to accomplish the same results I am getting with Silkypix.

Has anyone made this switch as well? I am really interested in how you achieve the same results in terms of sharpness, noise reduction and exposure (including the dodging and burning effects).

I'm trying out RawTherapee now (on Windows 7 64bit), and if the Linux version has anything like the same functionality, range of control options and sheer editing grunt then you should have plenty to be getting on with!

When you compare 'results' between Silkypix & RawTherapee, what is it specifically that you can't reproduce? I've been particularly impressed in RawTherapee with the Highlight control and white balance. But I'm also looking forward to trying out its batch processing capabilities (following a party shoot I did recently with 600 shots bagged).

I do feel its easy to go overboard though in the amount of fine control we try and exert purely at the RAW level. I find its best to get things sorted fairly quickly in RAW conversion software - treat it more like an optimisation of the actual shooting input, then get straight into another editor for better selective control.

Especially the sharpness and noise reduction work very good in Silkypix and it is hard to replicate for me at the moment.
When I am working through 800+ images I want to do as much as possible in de raw converter so I don't have to put each image through another editor as well.

Why did you switch to Linux if you were happy with your results from Silkypix on windows?

Am I missing something?

Lightroom is perfect for that process. A shoot of 800 images means it's likely many of them will be similar scenes. in lightroom it's easy to select as many similar pics as you like and do most of the adjustments on all of them at once. then you can select individual pics and fine tune where necessary. Saves a ton of time.

There are to many things I do not like about Windows. Silkypix alone is not nearly reason enough to stick with Windows.
Photography is maybe 25% of what I do on my computer. For the rest there are more then enough alternatives which rival or outperform Windows software.

Considering that Microsoft has not denied that each copy of Windows has backdoor access by PRISM (amongst many other things), a good move on your part!

I'd still have a backup Windows machine though.

I personally have each computer dual-booting into a flavour of Ubuntu on my end. The oldest one running Lubuntu (and it flies!).

Sounds good, except it doesn't seem to be available for Linux. I guess most people stay with Windows or Mac (to a lesser extent) because of the better range of software and the availability of the main players (eg Adobe).

I can see some OK open source options (and I've started to enjoy RawTherapee) but I won't be able to leave Windows - too many of the excellent programs I use for both Photos & Video are only on Windows.

It'll be interesting to see how RawTherapee's batch processing stacks up against Lightrooms - I'll have to draw up a list and post it soon.

I used (and still use) Linux for server and development stuff. But it was so much 'tinkering' to get things working for desktop apps.
In the end I ended up with BSD Unix... on Mac. Best of both worlds IMO. Hate Windows even more after 4 years of relatively trouble free Mac LR4 and CS5 really works well.
Unfortunately I haven't found anything Open Source close to Silkypix, or LR (which is better still). Bu that may change eventually...
Matt

There's no reason why you can't have both Windows and Linux on the same machine and just use a boot manager. That way you can use windows for the image editing apps and linux for things you want to use Linux for.

I don't use linux, but I always multiboot my PCs. I have Win XP, Win 7 64 and Win 7 32 on my current machine. Win 7 64 is my main working partition. Win XP for legacy stuff and Win 7 32 is there for stuff which only has 32bit drivers.

There will be a VM with Windows for the two pieces of software that do not have Linux versions and will refuse to work with Wine. Both are for updating and managing gps devices.
I have decided to do the vacation images on the old windows machine. After that there is enough time to tinker with Darktable. I have been digging into Darktable a little more and I should be able to do just about everything I want with it.

I will report on how it works out

I'm running Ubuntu 12.04 on my laptop, Ubuntu/WindowsXP dual boot on my desktop.

I find RawTherapee very good for what I want, though admittedly I've never used Silkypix.

Good luck with your foray into the empire of the penguin, I switched before Vista came out and I've never looked back, I only keep WinXP on my desktop to keep my wife happy and play very occasional games.

Well, I have been working with the Penguin for quite a long time, but allways in a dual boot environment. I started out with RedHat 5.2... But I never reached the point before to switch completely.

This might do what you want in Linux and it's free.

http://lightzoneproject.org/

I've used the Windows version and it runs ok but not had enough time to explore the s/w fully.