Photo editing/enhancing 2023

Digital photos are an important part of all of our lives, and photo editing/enhancing software is essential in today's world. From ad displays to social media channels and and posters, images need special software to customize them.

For photographers, The open source world provides some of  comprehensive image manipulation applications out there. Best of all, virtually all of them are free and open-source software. That means no, subscriptions, no restrictions no licensing fees. No matter what you decide to do with them you're in full control. 

As I have posted before All of these programs are being ran in Nobara Project version 37 running on a borrowed, Beelink GTR6.

System specs:

Soc:Ryzen 9 6900H 3.3-4.9GHz 8C/16T L2 4MB L3 16MB

Graphics Model: Integrated AMD Radeon 680M

Graphics Core Count: 12

Graphics Frequency: 2400 MHz

Graphics Architecture: RDNA2

SSD:500GB NVMe 

RAM:DDR5: 32GB 4800Mhz DDR5 (2 x DDR5

Enhance, increase resolution quality and restore most old photo/image: Upscaler by Hari Rana

Upscaler can enhance photos up to 8x their actual size. Upscaler leverages the power of current CPUs and GPUs. Upscaler by Hari Rana can add resolution where it did not exist before. It really is a great tool for those who are simply looking to restore a scanned 100 year old photos, Upscaler could be what you're looking for.

Photo management.

DigiKam is a digital photo management application for Linux, Windows, and Mac OSX that enables photographers to manage, edit, enhance, organize, tag, and share photographs under Linux systems.

Photo editing program

An alternative to Adobe Photoshop: the GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP)

Gimp is the top open-source photo editing alternative to Adobe’s Photoshop. Now keep in mind Gimp is not Photoshop. GIMP has fewer tools compared to Photoshop. It contains limited third-party plugins compare to photoshop. That can actually be a good thing because Photoshop has many tools that you will never use. This takes up space and makes the learning process much more confusing. So, GIMP is much easier to use for non-professionals. Restore old photos, change background, enhance and manipulate images, or simply create your own masterpiece from scratch, anything is possible! It is capable of the simplest edits to the most advance, so you will be required to read the included manual on disc to learn how to make the most of its many features. GIMP's performance also can’t compare with the category leader. Still, if you’re looking for Photoshop-like capabilities but don’t want to pay a dime, GIMP is worth exploring.

Photivo

Photivo is a free and open-source (GPL3) photo processor. It handles your RAW files and your bitmap files (TIFF, JPEG, BMP, PNG, and many more) in a non-destructive 16-bit processing pipe with gimp workflow integration batch mode.

Alternative to Adobe Lightroom

Darktable is dedicated to enhancing photos using the same workflow you'd use when developing and processing film. For users new to dark room concepts, this can be a shift in how specific looks or effects are achieved. However, once you get used to dynamic adjustment filters and presets, Darktable will make it shockingly easy (and fun!) for you to sort through hundreds of photos to find and enhance the best of the best. Darktable is a must-have for any digital photographer

RawTherapee: Lightroom Alternative

RawTherapee claim to fame is It is able to process photographs creating raw images by many digital cameras. Like many other open source programs it is cross-platform, with versions for Microsoft Windows, macOS and of course Gnu/Linux. RawTherapee involves the concept of "non-destructive editing", which is verysimilar to that of some other raw conversion software. 

Screen Calibration: DisplayCal

Datacolor Spyder X Elite

The Datacolor SpyderX Pro is a professional-grade color calibration solution that can help a photographer achieve accurate colors on your computer monitor. It uses a lens-based color engine to measure your monitor's color gamut and brightness, and then uses this information to generate a calibration profile that will help your monitor produce more accurate colors.

I know all that sounds like fancy jargon. However if you are serious about photography and image editing, it is very important that the monitor displays colors accurately and with the correct brightness, tone and intensity. Something like The Datacolor SpyderX Pro can help tremendously. It is easy to use, and it comes with a variety of features that make it a great choice for serious photographers and designers.

Conclusion.

Let's be clear...Professional design software like Photoshop typically it is not made to install on Linux systems. However if you are a newbie into photo editing, I feel it is always better to start with free photo editing software. They allow you to experiment and learn before you spend hundreds of dollars. Plus you are always free to alter the those programs when you need to. You legally own your work and will always have access to your work. No licenses, no subscriptions.