Lightzone available free

[Bender the Robot]

My apologies if I'm posting this in the wrong place, or if it has been posted before but, did you know that 'Lightzone', (application info here - http://www.lightcrafts.com/index.php) which costs $140+, for the 'Windows' version, is available for 'Linux' users absolutely free here - http://sonic.net/~rat/lightcrafts/ . The phrase "too good to be true" springs to mind, but, it appears to be a genuine offer.

[Engnome]

Interesting find. Downloaded and it works :KS Thx for letting us know.

Guess they figured: There is no money to be made on linux user but it only takes a few hours to make version for them so why not?

[Bender the Robot]

Colour profiles (.icc) are available here - http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/iccprofiles/iccprofiles_linux.html

[maniacmusician]

wow, that looks brilliant! i'll try it when I get home. Thanks a lot for the heads up. It's definitely better looking than picasa (damn you, google, for using wine)

[M7S]

too bad it's closed source. :(

[chadk]

Are we sure this is ligit? I don't see linux mentioned anywhere on the developer's site.
Who is rat? http://sonic.net/~rat/lightcrafts/

Smells a little bit like piracy. Though, where he'd get the source, I guess... who knows.

[Polygon]

thats a pretty beastly pirating job if he got ahold of the source code and took the time to port it to linux....

but im thinking its legit

[spinflick]

Ok I downloaded it, now how do I get it to work? :confused:

[Bender the Robot]

It appears that Anton Kast, who runs the site, is one of the developers so, going on that it's probably legit. Spinflick - just untar to wherever you like and double click on the 'Lightzone' file to get it going - it's not the fastest app to open (almost as slow as 'Capture NX - waiting for that to render is like wading through treacle) and they say you need 1 gig of RAM for it to work but I'm using it with just 700+ meg and it's working no slower than on my 'WinXP' machine, which has 1+ gig of RAM. The results tend to print-out slightly lighter than the on-screen image (on my PC, anyway) so you may need to take that into account when commiting to print.

[maniacmusician]

the color and saturation differ for every PC. It depends on the settings of your monitors. you can either try to adjust your monitor to compensate, or take it into account while printing.

[Bender the Robot]

I guess I'm just spoiled. My other PCs are set up as darkrooms (or should that be lightrooms) and properly calibrated but the monitor on this PC is seriously old and, as I don't normally do any image processing on it I've never bothered to get it calibrated. However, now that I've got 'Lightzone' on it:D , I may need to think about calibrating this one too. In the meantime I'll just fiddle with the gamma for a bit - see what transpires.

[akast]

I am Anton Kast, the guy who maintains LightZone for Linux at http://sonic.net/~rat/lightcrafts. There's an active email list for this project at http://kast-dev.com/mailman/listinfo/lightzone.

LightZone for Linux is not pirated. It is an authorized port of LightZone for Mac and Windows, given away for free by Light Crafts Inc., which is the copyright holder. I work at Light Crafts, and I maintain the linux port on my own time.

The discrepancies you've seen in displayed colors are at least partly be due to the fact that the linux port does not use display color profiles. On Mac and Windows, you can ask the operating system for the color profile for each display device, and LightZone uses these to correct images displayed on your screens. On linux, there is no standard for discovering display profiles, and so LightZone just uses a default.

[Bender the Robot]

Hi akast, thanks for the explanation as regards the displayed colours. It's a great app and, since downloading the 'Linux' version, I think I may be revising my opinion as to the suitability of 'ubuntu' for photo-finishing. ;)

[PapaWiskas]

Anton, thank you for maintaining this on your own time.

And tell Light Craft Inc. THANK YOU for being willing to provide this to the Linux community.

[roderikk]

I have just explored this app a bit and it looks absolutely wonderful! Just what we need. I see there is also a version 2 beta version, might give that a bit of a spin right now! Thanks.

EDIT: Wow! I really like this workflow. Some good thinking has gone into this program. Thanks for making this available. Is there somewhere (besides the 'very active' mailing list) where we can receive notices on updates of this program?

[maniacmusician]

I am Anton Kast, the guy who maintains LightZone for Linux at http://sonic.net/~rat/lightcrafts. There's an active email list for this project at http://kast-dev.com/mailman/listinfo/lightzone.

LightZone for Linux is not pirated. It is an authorized port of LightZone for Mac and Windows, given away for free by Light Crafts Inc., which is the copyright holder. I work at Light Crafts, and I maintain the linux port on my own time.

The discrepancies you've seen in displayed colors are at least partly be due to the fact that the linux port does not use display color profiles. On Mac and Windows, you can ask the operating system for the color profile for each display device, and LightZone uses these to correct images displayed on your screens. On linux, there is no standard for discovering display profiles, and so LightZone just uses a default.
I'm oddly touched that you've done this, even though Light Crafts is a corporation; Thank you so much! It's nice to have something else we can shove in Windows's face. I think this could set an example to other developers...I mean, this has to be the best photo editing app available for linux, hands-down. And it's free! I think that's absolutely amazing. Great job, sir. Google could take a few hints from you...your effort is definitely not unappreciated.

[spockrock]

I am giving this a whirl and I am loving it so far thanks for the time you are putting into this anton.