Digital BW, The Print

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, Roger L Sopher
<rlsopher@c...> wrote:
> Peter Nelson wrote:
> 
> >
> > --- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, Roger L Sopher
> > <rlsopher@c...> wrote:
> >
> > > I routinely moved images back and forth from PC to linuxbox using
> > one of
> > > those USB key chain units. Worked with no problem and was fast.
> >
> > What about converting Nikon RAW files?
> >
> >
> >
> Can't speak to that -- For digital I use a Pentax 1stD and Minota 7i. I 
> would think that if you had the raw plugin for PS  the conversion would 
> go without problem. I didn't have the raw plug in for PS 701 and did
the 
> conversions using the vendor supplied utilities on my PC and
transferred 
> the files as tifs. Now that I think about it I never tried running the 
> conversion utility using crossover - dumb...  If my memory is
accurate I 
> think you can get a trial version of crossover that will run a week or 
> so to see if it will do the job for you.
> 
> Roger

After a few hours of work, I got QTR to work on SUSE Linux with a
1280. I have made a few prints and they look very good. I have Picture
Windows working with wine, and Photoshop 7 working with Crossover. 

There is a program called gphoto2 (http://www.gphoto.org) that may be
useful for getting images from your camera. I use a CF card reader,
and Canon´s utility (which runs well under wine) to convert RAW files.
There is also a program called dcraw
(http://www.cybercom.net/~dcoffin/dcraw/) that can do the conversion
from RAW to 8-bit and 16-bit/channel pnm format files, but the 16
bits/ch are very dark so I prefer to use Canon´s utility. Other
utilities can take the png file and produce jpg and tiff files.  

Setting up everything does take some time, but I like Linux stability
and the availability of many quality programs for free. 

For 18 months I used windows with the UT and UT2 inksets and Paul´s
curves. In fact, my perceived lack of a feasible b/w workflow under
Linux was the reason I was using mostly windows. Now that I have QTR
and the other programs working under Linux, I will use it for a while
to see how it goes. Initially, however, it seems to me that all the
components nedded to produce good b/w prints under linux are available.

I hope this helps,

-- Manuel