Lightzone: A Powerful Camera RAW Editor for Linux
If you’re finding DigiKam or F-Spot, two of the many photo organization and editing tools for Linux, a bit limiting you may want to give Lightzone a try. The software isn’t free, and curiously, isn’t available for purchase either, but judging by the 20-day demo version currently available, it could end up a serious contender in the hybrid photo editing/managing market.
Linux used to be a second class citizen when it came digital photography, but that has changed in the last couple of years with high quality photo editing and management tools now available. However, digital photography is rapidly evolving and workflows change, for many the preferred way to shoot images these days is RAW and the preferred management/editing package is something like Photoshop Lightroom or Apple Aperture.
Lightzone is clearly modeled after Lightroom and Aperture and looks a bit like both with a single document pane that is at once both a photo organizer and an editing suite for RAW images. It’s worth noting that Lightzone can manage nearly any file type, but RAW images are clearly its specialty.
Under the hood Lightzone appears to be using the DCRAW package, which is perhaps the most widespread RAW option for Linux. Thus if you’ve used DCRAW in other software you’ll be familiar with most of the options, though the UI tools for working with each may be slightly different. For instance, where many programs use a simple slider for adjusting the black-point in an image, Lightzone uses a vertical, visual slider that moves through a grayscale range which looks something like the old grayscale cards used in studio film shoots.
But aside from some differences in UI, most of the functionality found in Lightroom or Aperture is also present in Lightzone with options to adjust exposure, white balance, tint, noise, luminance, temperature and dozens more. And thanks to a well designed interface finding and adjusting what you need is relatively easy. There’s also a whole panel full of various adjustment presets which you can use a jumping off point for your images.
However, as with other programs of this sort, if you’ve never worked with RAW images before the amount and variety of options at your disposal can be a bit overwhelming. Luckily Lightzone feature some very nice documentation that explains each of the tools and how to use them.
Lightzone seemed to handle different RAW formats without too much trouble. I tested images from Panasonic, Canon and Adobe’s DNG format, all of which opened with no problems.
One area I found wanting in Lightzone was the actual file management options. Once you’ve manipulated your RAW file and have it looking the way you want, you’ll save those adjustments by converting the image to either a TIFF or JPG file. Lightzone uses a special “Lightzone” file to store your settings. The Lightzone file is an ordinary Tiff or JPG which you can open in other editors but it also serves as an editing state in Lightzone.
While this is fine, eventually you’ll need to convert your image anyway for printing or displaying on the web, it would nice if there were also an option to save your settings in an XMP or similar sidecar file which would make it easier to move to other programs with your settings intact. Of course that’s a personal preference and to be fair Lightroom and Aperture store their settings in databases, which are no more portable.
My other main gripe with Lightzone in Linux is that it’s not the snappiest program out there. In fact, it’s dog slow, but it is a beta so for now I’ll over look that. I should also note that the program crashed on me several times, which would seem to confirm that the beta label isn’t just a moniker.
Overall Lightzone isn’t quite ready for prime time, but it does show promise and has a very nice, usable interface. If you don’t mind paying for proprietary software for Linux, then Lightzone might be a compelling option for you RAW imaging needs if and when it gets out of beta.
In the mean time, if you’d like to test the Lightzone beta, you’ll need to fill out a short form on the site here’s a direct link to the download.
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