GNU/Linux's Missing App for the Masses
GNU/Linux is great. But it is suffering in one area. I realized this when I started using Mac OS X and noticed that this kind of thing existed and worked well. I've now noticed it even more since I moved my mother over to GNU/Linux last week and found out she is not very pleased with this one part of GNU/Linux. What is it I am referring to? Photo organization and downloading tools!
They stink, for the most part, in GNU/Linux. Badly. Bring out the Glade Plug-ins bad. Open the windows and leave the house for a week bad.
iPhoto blasts away the competition, but fortunately, I'm not trying to get Mom moved over from a Mac. I wouldn't have even contemplated a move if she had a Mac. On a Mac things “just work.” But, she didn't use a Mac, she uses (well, used) Windows. She has a “Kodak EasyShare” camera with a camera dock, and she used Kodak's software that automatically downloads the photos and organizes them when you press a button on the camera dock. Needless to say, that software doesn't exist for GNU/Linux.
Linspire (fka Lindows) has been working on something called Lphoto and I thought perhaps that would work well. Mandrake's “dynamic” tool automatically sticks an icon on your GNOME or KDE desktop to launch gtkam or some such, but that isn't anywhere near automatic downloading and gtkam's interface is horrid at best. So, I edited the hotplug config to make Lphoto come up automatically. Kodak had made a poor clone of iPhoto, so I was hoping another poor clone of iPhoto might do the trick. Unfortunately, at least for now, Linspire's clone is worse than Kodak's. A lot worse.
But, it seemed to do the trick. Until yesterday, when I found out that it wasn't working right any longer. I went to check out my mother's computer and lo and behold, it took about 30 minutes to download 177 photos. I doubt I need to point out that such “speed” is pitiful. I tried some various ideas, including checking out flphoto (another gphoto2 based tool, like Lphoto). Flphoto, which has no relationship to Lphoto is way faster, which is bizarre since they both use gphoto2, but it has no way of keeping a list of albums together.
Finally, I've run into digikam, a program for KDE, which seems to run fine under GNOME too. It finally seems like something that is half way decent with some basic enhancement and effect tools and quick downloading. But its interface, like most KDE programs (click to read my editorial on that issue), is cluttered by too many features. Lots of features are nice, but it needs a cleaner way of displaying them, at the very least; iPhoto offers lots of functionality, but it isn't overwhelming even for a newbie. For now, I think it will work much better than any alternative I can find, but it seems amazing that no one has bothered to write a decent photo tool that mimics the iPhoto (or the Kodak Easyshare) interface and actually works right.
Well, maybe I'm being harsh on digikam. It looks like it has some nice stuff, but after one has used iPhoto it is hard to tolerate lesser programs. While Kodak's Easyshare software might not merit critical praise for its UI, my mother feels the same way about her migration from Easyshare to the abyss of Linux camera software. GNU/Linux developers really should quit developing the umpteenth Tetris clone or text editor and instead consider improving gtkam, digikam or Lphoto so that users will actually have a photo tool that the average user can deal with and everyone can enjoy without being envious of Mac OS and Windows users.
I'll post in a week or two if digikam improves the situation at all.
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RE: GNU/Linux's Missing App for the Masses
Color me confused on this subject.
I’ve never used iPhoto so I am completely in the dark on this subject. I have a Canon A70, I installed all the Sw to my W2K machine and had it “d/l automagically”. But that just kills the batteries and I wasn’t to happy with the interface. So I picked up, for $1.99 (after rebate) a USB flash card reader. I can d/l pictures to any machine in my house, Linux included, organize them how ever I like using what ever folder set up I need. I name them in a certain way to make finding them very easy and I have GIMP loaded on all machines so I can edit them when ever needed. I’m not trying to bash iPhoto, but after reading their site (http://www.apple.com/ilife/iphoto/)I feel like I am missing something.
The only features I would like to have are the Smart Album (more for my wife since she does scrap books) and that quick scrolling insta view thing. I don’t have iTunes so the slide show sharing thing isn’t needed and the stars rating system would not work with me since my tastes change over time. (To many times I have gone back through old photos and found a great one that I almost tossed.)
Please let me know what I am missing. thanks
RE: GNU/Linux's Missing App for the Masses
Well, consider the Mac downloading experience to understand the best part about it.
You insert a memory card into a card reader or connect your camera to a computer and instantly iPhoto pops up and offers to transfer your photos and clear your camera for you. It then downloads them, automatically putting them in a coherent directory structure of ~/Pictures/iPhoto Library/2004/08/15/ (for example). This is great for the average user who doesn’t understand copying files, especially from a USB mass storage device to a hard disk. This requires no mounting, no dragging and only one click of the mouse (hitting the import button after it tells you how many photos it can download).
It also keeps track of files that have the same name and date, and brings up a comparison window so that you can compare them and determine whether they are the same or not (and act accordingly: replace, replace all, rename, skip, skip all). It puts the photos in folders according to the date they were captured, not the date they were downloaded.
After you’ve downloaded them you can view your entire collection in a flat view (it ignores the subdirectories), by film roll (i.e. each media card is separated), by the date (you might have more than one day within one media card or more than one card within one day’s time), by rating or by manual organization.
In addition, photos can be put into albums (and remain in the main view). From a file system view, iPhoto makes a bunch of symlinks, but the user is oblivious to it, it just works. You can also view in one view all photos from the last year, last roll or from any previous year. Smart folders are dynamically generated like Evolution’s dynamic folders, you can base it on exim information, comments, date of the photos, etc.
iPhoto can also do slideshows based on any of those types of views with just one click (and the transitions include the famous 3D cube flip like Apple uses for fast user switching thanks to Quartz Extreme). It can even add music to the background of the shows. It can also easily upload to .Mac for an album or slideshow, make a photo DVD, order prints online, etc. It can also do 1 touch red eye removal, enhancement or retouching, plus a few effects like Sepia tone.
Plus, with Rendezvous iPhoto Sharing, you can share your iPhoto gallery with the other computers in your home or office and they will automagically see your albums on their list of available albums (unless they tell their computer they don’t want to see them).
Essentially, it just makes photo editing easier. Like I said, in the background it creates the same kind of logical folder arrangement we might do if it was done manually, but the front end doesn’t expose the file system to the user.
So that’s iPhoto in a nutshell.
RE: GNU/Linux's Missing App for the Masses
Sounds better when you explained it.
RE: GNU/Linux's Missing App for the Masses
I can’t say that I share your enthusiasm for iPhoto… I think my version is a little bit old, so perhaps its improved, but the existance of iPhoto is one of the things that I dislike about the Mac.
I remember finding a nice photo program for Linux back when I was using SuSE (I think that it may have been non-Free), but I can’t recall its name offhand and I’m no longer using it.
RE: GNU/Linux's Missing App for the Masses
Hmm, I don’t remember seeing one on SuSE. What version of iPhoto are you using? I’ve mostly tinkered with iPhoto from Panther and (even more so with) iPhoto ‘04.
RE: GNU/Linux's Missing App for the Masses
I’m personally a fan of digikam, but I haven’t managed to teach my wife (the real photographer) to use it yet. Mostly a time issue.