It occurred to me that I hadn’t posted anything on photography for a while. All of my posts have been about Linux. Not that’s there’s anything wrong with that! As a step to add something photographic I thought I would post an update on how I handle raw images.
I have been shooting raw almost exclusively for quite sometime however I always rebooted into WIndows and used either the supplied camera software or Adobe Camera Raw to edit them and create jpgs. I tried UFRaw with the Gimp a long time ago and it didn’t work for me. I couldn’t get the images to look the way I wanted. I experimented with a couple of other raw converters too but nothing produced as good a result as the Window software.
Recently though that changed. When I updated to the 64 bit version of Fedora 8 I installed UFRaw again and tried it out. I found it greatly improved. It recognised the raw format from both my cameras, a Canon 400D and my old Fuji S5500. The Fuji in particular is not handled well in Linux. It is only recognised as an external USB device but I can still transfer images from it. As DCRaw can now handle the format digiKam and others can display the images. UFRaw can be thought of as a front end for DCRaw conversions.
The results are that I no longer need to use Windows to work with raw images. This simplifies my photo workflow and means I have one less reason to keep XP alive on my system.
Techodyssey 
Hi jd
I’ve tried UFRaw a little and as yet cannot find anything much that I could not do with photoshop. I am sure this means that I am not figuring out how to use the software properly, although it sort of seems self-explanatory. I’ll have to take some more raw images and play around a bit more. or I could search for UFRaw tutorials.
My digicam is a Fuji s5600 so I guess it is similar to your s5500. But more and more I am going back to film – I get great results from an Olympus and a Ricoh and a small expense of film and developing once or twice a month is easier than a big upgrade on the Fuji, which of course is what I would like to do … But then you can’t get RAW images from film ..
Thanks for the update -interesting post.
Hi Adam
You’re right there isn’t anything you can do with UFRaw that you can’t do in Photoshop. At least not that I know of, if anyone can prove me wrong I love to learn of it. The point is we don’t need to spend nearly a thousand (in Aussie dollars) to have a quality raw processing tool as part of a quality image editing package.
The 5600 is an updated 5500, they added about a megapixel and maybe a few other things. They are both great cameras as no doubt are the new versions, I think they are up to 5800 now. I love my Fuji and am often amazed with the quality of the images it produces. The good reviews I read at the time was why I bought it and it was every bit as good as they said.
I still have a couple of film cameras but I haven’t used them for quite a while. I still think my old Nikon 601M is the best camera I have ever owned. It was manual nearly everything but was comfortable to use and produced good photos. When I scan film I usually save it as a tiff but I might start saving as dng which is the closest thing to raw I guess.
Glad you found something interesting in my ramblings.