Linux for Designers

3 years after the 1.0 release Rawstudio 2.0 is finally available with a huge amount of changes. A Rawstudio PPA for Ubuntu is available at Launchpad too.

UFRaw
is released as version 0.16 as a standalone programm and as a GIMP plugin including more OpenMP (multiprocessor) support, updated translations and mor commandline options.

Bibble 5 Preview 2
Bibble Labs has released a 2nd preview of their upcoming RAW software Bible 5. Bibble is a commercial RAW converter.

Rawtherapee
will become Open Source Software under the GPL terms

DarkTable
is released as beta 0.3 including a improved color management.

After some weeks of the release candidate RawTherapee 2.4 reaches now the final state. The changes since 2.3 are:
* Exif/IPTC support
* Theme switching
* Improved GUI layout
* Improved filebrowser
  - Ranking support
  - Basic file operations possible (delete, remove, rename)
  - Filtering based on Exif data
  - Configurable thumbnail caching
  - Live thumbnails (showing the images in the processed state)
  - Resizable thumbnails
  - Configurable thumbnail layout (left - right, top - down)
* Basic batch processing
  - Controllable workqueue
  - Copy/Paste processing profiles (or only parts of them)
  - Direct sending of images to the workqueue
* Improved auto-exposure and spot white balance
* "Send to Editor" feature (Gimp, Photoshop, custom editor)

RawTherapee is not open source but it is your assessment what you like to donate to the author. The development of RawTherapee is healthy a first alpha of 2.5 is promised in a month.

The 2nd release candidate of RawTherapee 2.4 is available now. Just minor fixes:
* dcraw update to 8.93/1.421
* gtk/gtkmm update in the win32 version
* fixed installer/uninstaller
* fixed several small bugs
RawTherapee is not open source but it is your assessment what you like to donate to the author.

As a Xmas gift the 4th beta of RawTherapee, a imageging software for photographers, is now available. This beta brings again various bugfixes:
* crash on save-as (a new progress indicator dialog has also been introduced)
* ISO is now recognized in rw2 files
* autoexp with clipping=0 is working
* fixed the permanent delete & empty trash crash when the image in editor is deleted
* detail window label when zooming
* better jpeg error handling
* Canon 1Ds tiffs and Kodak dcr files are supported again
* new naming scheme for pp2 files (the old one is kept for loading only for compatibility)

RawTherapee is not open source but it is your assessment what you like to donate to the author.

Besides Linux Photography it seems that The p-Code Machine is another quite interesting blog about Linux and photography

Bibble Laps will introduce Bibble 5 at the Photokina (Cologne, Germany) on Sept 23rd. Bibble suuports Open RAW and is a commercial workflow software/ digital RAW converter to edit/ modify RAW files. Details about Bibble 5 can be found at the website.

Rawstudio 1.1 is out, the developers described it with "This release adds the much needed EXIF awareness. It also adds support for a lot of new cameras, as has many bugfixes."
Rawstudio is an open-source program to read and manipulate RAW images from most digital cameras. If you are using Ubuntu Linux you can grab a Deb package for Feisty, Edgy, Gutsy and Hardy too.

With Niepce Digital a new tool simliar to Adobe Ligthroom or Apple Aperture is in development. Hm, i don't know if this really a great news or just another project start.
I'm more a fan of supporting and improving existing projects like F-Spot, Gimp or UfRaw instead of have another half finished peace of software. Anyway, we will hope the best

Qtpfsgui, a graphical user interface that enables users to work with HDR images, is updated to version 1.9.2. This Version tries to fix several filename encoding bugs.