Gowator Posted March 10, 2006 Report Share Posted March 10, 2006 What's the matter with using GIMP? I have a usb flash card reader that I use to read the cards I put in my HP PhotoSmart camera. Then I use GIMP to edit them. Gimp only does 8 bit color. It cannot read 16 bit jpegs as are produced by high end cameras or processing software. John sorry mate its not clear what the problem is exactly ... Do you lack the ability to copy the images or are you just not happy with the tools for managing/editing? Are you trying to use the camera tethered (control it from the PC)? etc. The PtP and mass storage settings are not compatible so it needs to be one or the other. Most of the gphoto type stuff is for PtP ... as is the control software. Its confusing ... I had all sorts of issues till I sorted out in my mind what I wanted to do.... Now I use a paid for software and for what I need (high end digital SLR) it works really well and I no longer even use JPEGS but shoot in raw and process... It sounds like you have a few issues which are maybe mixed up because of the different modes? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AussieJohn Posted March 10, 2006 Author Report Share Posted March 10, 2006 Thanks Gowater. I did not know that very important piece of information. I can fully understand why a lot of graphics people claim that Gimp2 is not up to Photoshop. I used to think it was mainly snobbery. Coveup I have installed it and will try it out later. Scarecrow, I have set the camera to PictBridge and it duly inserts the digiKam icon into the Devices folder on the desktop. The snapshot shows the error message. At the same time, the cameras own screen goes from showing the PictBridge icon, to showing the usb icon and under it a line message saying "communication error". In the 2nd snapshot, as you can see, I managed to progress a little to the point shown but as you can see the images won't download (giving the same error message for each one). I'l keep plodding along courtesy of everyones help, afterall we are making progress. Cheers. John. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AussieJohn Posted March 10, 2006 Author Report Share Posted March 10, 2006 Hi Gowater. No I am not trying to control the camera from the PC. What I am aiming at is almost as shown in the snapshots. Namely that when I connect the camera to the PC via the USB cable and then switch the camera to ON, which is the first switch position, that it automatically open DigiKam (or maybe some other Application) and show the images as is shown in the other snapshot, that I can then start moving and manipulating things from there. In other words being able to do things in a similar manner to the Fuji application in Windows and Mac. Now if DigiKam could be taken past its present hurdles then we would be there. This kind of kerfuffle will be one of the reasons people will continue to keep away from Linux. My friend who dual boots Win2000 and Mandriva2006 just like myself, detests the fact that she has to boot in to windows whenever she wants to download and manage her digital camera pictures. She especially hates to have to use this, that and every other thing (her words not mine) to try to work with her pictures in Mandriva, compared with the ease of using her cameras Windows application. I don't entirely agree with her but now I am starting to understand her frustration now I have had a digi camera for a couple of days. What really pains her is that she wants to get rid of Windows entirely. Cheers. John. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gowator Posted March 10, 2006 Report Share Posted March 10, 2006 OK, For my camera I tend to set it as USB mass storage and then just copy the whole folder over... I never played about on other modes.. I connect the camera or stick the card in my reader and it opens on the KDE desktop. What internal modes does the camera have? It could well be that digikam is OK but the internal settings are not, Im not sure what PictBridge does it could be a PtP setting ? I don't think there os any advantage to not using it as USB mass storage if you don't want to control the camera from the PC btw... so if you haver a mass storage setting then it might prove easiest ... It looks like you are real close ... perhaps its just a minor setting Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
devries Posted March 10, 2006 Report Share Posted March 10, 2006 Digikam has an 'import folder' option. You could just download the pics to your PC from your camera and then import them into Digikam. It's an extra step but if it works... :) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sjaglin Posted March 10, 2006 Report Share Posted March 10, 2006 Hi John, I am a recently (about 12 month) Linux User and mainly use Mandriva 2006. I am also passionate about Photography and have quite a bit of gear (Nikon SLR mainly and a fez lenses etc...). I used to use Photoshop but not anymore. When I switch my camera on (plugged in usb) KDE3.4 imediately opens a dialogue box where he asks me if I want to import the Photos. I then download the whole lot (copy NOT NOVE) and put them in a "buffer" directory named "raw". Then I pre-visualise the photos with DigiKam and erase the "rejects" (when I go out for shooting I take on average 200 shots a day). If some photos need just a bit of colour correction or a siple croping I use DigiKam. For other work I use Gimp 2.2 which does just the perfect work. Then I move all the final photos from "raw" into a more definite directory like "Maderira-2005" etc... ONLY THEN I remove the photos from my camera by formating because believe me, it will happen, enter at the wrong time and you start swearing, but a bit late cause the perfect photo is gone in the bin! Hope it helps, Enjoy your Kamera! Stef Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AussieJohn Posted March 10, 2006 Author Report Share Posted March 10, 2006 Thanks Gowater and Devries. Yes it is close, and so close that I think it is worth it to try and get to the end. The extra steps is just one of the things we are trying to eliminate in this whole exercise. We have an application that seems in principle to be likely to control the digital cameras photos output in one neat package but still can't make it. Reading the Manual, it seems that the PictBridge setting is for printers that have pixbridge inputs so that printing can be done without using a PC between camera and printer. I guess that DigiKam needs some way to fake being a PictBridge printer. In the list of cameras there are 2 FinePix cameras listed so maybe they are already doing that kind of thing with those. Yes, I know the alternative roundabout ways work because I have already used them. Calling NEDDIE. What do you type in to the Camera Mount Path in Digicam ----------> Camera ---->Add Camera ---> Add , that you mentioned you used to get your camera running ???. We shall keep on keeping on. Cheers. John. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
neddie Posted March 10, 2006 Report Share Posted March 10, 2006 John, what you want digikam to do is exactly what it currently does for me. I plug my camera into the USB using the cable. I switch it on. I see the following dialog: I click 'import' and digkam opens showing me thumbnails of the photos on the camera. I don't have to care in which subdirectory they're saved on the card, it's just a flat list of thumbnails. I click "select->new" and the new ones (the ones I haven't previously downloaded) are selected. I click "download->selected", choose the album to put them in (or create a new one) and press ok. Done! Then I tag them, show slideshows, or whatever. For me it's pretty perfect how it does that, I don't want it simpler or more complicated. Now with my new camera it's almost the same except that I couldn't use 'autodetect' to find the camera, but rather specify a USB mass storage camera instead. Then everything works as above. I don't know enough about your camera to say why it doesn't work, but if you put the camera in normal USB mode, and tell digikam it's a mass storage camera, it should work the same as mine. Your screenshot said "USB PTP Class Camera", have you tried any other settings? Mine says Title:Mass Storage Camera Model:Mass Storage Camera Port:disk:/mnt/removable Path:/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AussieJohn Posted March 11, 2006 Author Report Share Posted March 11, 2006 Now I have good news and I have bad news.The bad news first is that despite uninstalling and reinstalling the 2006-official DigiKam and also the updated versions of DigiKam, I still could not get it to work with the camera set to Pictbridge even though that seemed more promising. But here is the cloud with a silver lining. I went into my 2005-LE and installed DigiKam. Plugged in the camera , switched it on, opened DigiKam and selected Camera--->Add----> Auto detect (same as I did in 2006-Official) and it again came up with USB PTP Class. Ok. Then went back to DigiKam--->Camera and clicked on USB PTP Class. It opened up as shown in the new snapshot. YES IT WORKED. You can see the major difference is that now the jpegs are actual thumbnails and can now be selected and moved, so I did, into DigiKams select albums as shown in the background part off the image. I checked that everything else worked in editing and so on. All did. It looks like Mandriva has screwed up another once working operation with its changing around of mounting, unmounting, udev and whatever else. It looks very much like I am going to be spending most of my time in 2005-LE for quite a while because there is nothing 2006 can do that 2005 can't but a lot of things 2005 can do that 2006 is proving it can't do, as others have found out with other things. :sad: Lets see if we together can solve this. There has to be a solution when the same criteris and same application and same hardware is used in both OSs yet a program ALMOST works ( but unusable) in one but works TOTALLY (and correctly) in the other. Cheers. John, Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
coverup Posted March 11, 2006 Report Share Posted March 11, 2006 (edited) John, I am surprised it has worked for you under 2005LE . On my 2005 system udev is broken to an extent that even an USB stick needs to be mounted manually. My other 10.1 system as well as my previous 8.2 and 9.2 systems had no problems with USB (oh sorry, I had to install updates to get the 10.1 system work with the stick). From my experience with mounting USB devices using a broken udev, I noticed that they are usually detected and kernel creates an entry for them in /dev/. What fails is adding the device to /etc/fstab. That is the device is usually detected, but for the KDE to create an icon for the device, it must find a mount point for the device. I suggest that you try the following steps. First, reboot your 2006 box with the camera connected and turned on. Let harddrake do its job, and then check if you have an icon for the camera on the desktop. If you do, then the entry has been added to the fstab and you should find from that line the device in /dev fore your camera. If nothing appears on the desktop, simply list the content of /dev with the camera turned on and off. By comparing the directory lists, you will find the device. You should now be able to mount the camera manually, that is, let's try Gowator's suggestion. Edited March 11, 2006 by coverup Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AussieJohn Posted March 11, 2006 Author Report Share Posted March 11, 2006 There are two situations. The camera has a choice of USB or PictBridge outputs. When USB is chosen, it it seen by 2006 as a mass storage device and is opened as such. The images can be selected and copied to where ever you choose. Therefore there is NO problem with USB as such. Never has been right from the beginning. Sure you can open DiigiKam and copy them into there etc etc. When PictBridge is selected as output then Opening DigiKam in 2005-le results in one being able to detect the device as a camera. then selecting the detected camera which is shown as USB PTP Class Camera results in the images, thumbnails, being shown for immediate viewing and editing. The big impasse with 2006 is that it gets as far as detecting the camera the same as in 2005 but when the camera in DigiKam namely, USB PTP Class Camera, is clicked it shows only the image file (no thumbnails) but will not download the file into DigiKam. I just tried your suggestion, Coverup, but it made no seeming difference to anything. With Harddrake activate and camera on during a reboot made no change to fstab. When the camera is switched on it opens a popup which looks like the enclosed snapshot but asking it to open in a new window gets the error message shown. Also when the camera is switched it causes a DigiKam icon to appear in Desktop Devices but clicking on it brings up the devices error shown DigiKam was obviously designed to be convenient and useful. In 2005-LE it works precisely as was intended and is exactly as i desire. In 2006 it almost gets there but some vital instruction is missing in the chain of things and THAT is what I hope someone can find or suggest. I am sure the solution will be helpful to a lot of other people as well. So please no more suggestions about setting up the camera as a mass storage device no matter how much you like that approach and note that I don't knock it. It just isn't relevant to trying to fix the current situation. Extreme thanks to everyone who has contributed to this topic thus far. Cheers. John Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gowator Posted March 11, 2006 Report Share Posted March 11, 2006 (edited) John.... I think I got an idea. The pictbridge thinks its printing... perhaps you have to actually press a button on the camera... looking back the PtP mode where you can control the camera probably issues this command to the camera but for some reason its not working with yours. Its probably in some config file as an escape sequence or something that sends the command and in the case of your camera it is perhaps the wrong command? You might find the difference in the two versions if you can find the file with the settings and just copy them from 2005 to the newer one manually :D @sgaglin I use bibblepro for color correction etc. it does a way better job on raw than photoshop of GIMP. There is a 1 month trial and then you can pay... I tried it as a short term solution thinking I would solve the prob by the time the trial expired but ... I was sold. It works like a processing lab but you can apply settings to batches etc. and take a white balance ref photo and then apply that white balance to a sequence. If you like Ill pm you (or anyone here) a link to an album with processing examples I did for a friend. Edited March 11, 2006 by Gowator Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AussieJohn Posted March 11, 2006 Author Report Share Posted March 11, 2006 Thaks Gowater that certainly iss something I can try. Seems funny though that the camera and Mandriva interconnect works in 2005 but not 2006 doesn't it ??? Yes I would like to see some of your work but I'll PM my email address to you so you don't get quite so limited in what you send. Cheers. John. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sjaglin Posted March 11, 2006 Report Share Posted March 11, 2006 (edited) Hi Gowater, Yes Please I wiil be interrested, plz mail me the Link ! Stef PS A few mins later... I tried bibble labs' RAW converter and photo manipulation program, seems really good and powerful, I just though I d put the link for anyone interrested http://www.bibblelabs.com/download.html Sorry to mess up your thres John! ;) Edited March 11, 2006 by sjaglin@yahoo.co.uk Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AussieJohn Posted March 12, 2006 Author Report Share Posted March 12, 2006 No worrys. Its all associated so so far as I concerned it's quite OK. The batterys in the camera have gone flat in the camera aand I've just discovered that I only have 3 spare and not the required 4 so I will have to wait till Tuesday before I can try out your sugestion. Cheers. John. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.