The inability to use Adobe Creative Cloud on Linux is often cited as a major barrier for many users considering a switch to the platform. But perhaps, just perhaps, there has already been a breakthrough in that direction.
A community developer says they have resolved long-standing Wine compatibility issues that prevented Adobe Creative Cloud installers from completing on Linux, publishing a patchset and prebuilt binaries that they claim enable installation of Photoshop 2021 and Photoshop 2025.
In hindsight, I’m so glad I couldn’t get them working on linux, because it forced me to get my head around Darktable. I couldn’t go back to Lightroom now…
Why does everyone talk like Photoshop is the only program Adobe makes? Tell me, how does Darktable compare to Substance. Or Illustrator?
It’s because most professional creative jobs require raster image editing in at least some part of the production pipeline and photoshop fulfils that need in the adobe suite, so it’s the most talked about product in that suite.
For linux, we have great:
But raster image editing isn’t in that list.
There’s things like GIMP, but it’s always behind photoshop. It only got non-destructive editing less than a year ago (which is what most serious creatives need to use), but photoshop’s had that since CS2 back in 2005!
If someone actually wanted to beat adobe (e.g. the EU or wikimedia), they would have to pay for 20 developers to work on graphite and you’d probably have something better than GIMP or Inkscape after 7 years, something better than Affinity in 12 years, and something better than photoshop in 15 years.
The only adobe software I used was photo editing, so Lightroom and Photoshop. I have no idea what their other apps do, or how they compare to linux equivalents
Honestly I feel like that’s very common with Linux. If you’re willing to deal with the growing pain of switching it ends up working out better in the end, some people just don’t want to deal with that or it’s their job and they can’t afford to deal with that. I’m sympathetic to the latter case, less to the former but that’s just my opinion
I was one of the former. Photography isn’t my job, but it’s really important to me, and photo editing was a show stopper for me for a long time. Even after I moved to Linux full time, I was using remote desktops, VMs and whatever else I could manage to get Adobe stuff working, without having to switch back to Windows. I endured, because I’d finally hit a threshold where that pain was worth putting up with in preference to Windows and its built in ads and spyware.
But when I finally gave up on getting Lightroom working on linux, I figured I had no choice but to learn a linux compatible workflow… It was either that, or go back to windows, and that wasn’t happening…
That was exaclty me like three years ago now. I stopped editing photos for like a year because I got so fed up with windows and did the switch cold turkey. No idea why it took me so long to just watch a few workflow videos on darktable but I use it constantly now I feel like I could do better but I’m comfortable
I found darktable pretty user friendly TBH. The thing I’ve been struggling with is image editing - I can’t find something that has a decent workflow. I’m not looking for anything fancy. Paint.net on windows more than met my needs when I was spending more time in windows.
If you like Paint.net, try Pinta.
My biggest issue with darktable was the masking. It’s so different in darktable, but once I understood it, all the barriers fell away
I import, sort and tag my photos with Digikam, and then open them with darktable for editing.
Any reason why you are using digikam for importing and sorting and not just daktable?
Digikam is built from the ground up to be a photo cataloger. Hierarchical tags that you can click on to expand or contract, the ability to jump from a given photo to all photos taken on the same date, or all photos in the same folder, or all photos that share a particular tag. Collapsible folders and tag structures, the ability to toggle child tag/folder recursive view on or off, image grouping (automated by filename/timestamp/burst). They also share metadata perfectly well through EXIF data, so anything I do in one is visible in the other right away.
This is digikam
This is the same folder in darktable
I find the catalogue more convenient in digikam, but it might be because I’ve used it since the beginning.
Sorry, I meant a decent editing workflow. Things along the lines of editing - adding outlined text, moving and/or removing things, etc. For example, I’ve tried gimp a few times but I’ve found myself fighting against the way it wants you to do things.
Ah, no, I use darktable for all of my editing. But sorting my photos, rating, tagging and flagging them for future editing is all digikam.
For me it was the same back some years ago - paint.net was the software I probably missed the most. Between Pinta and Krita, I tend to find everything I need. Pinta is most similar to paint.net imo, quite a bit more basic, but the same toolkit and design philosophy I’d say.
Thanks a lot for the suggestions, I’ll have to check Pinta out.
Would Pixi editor be the kind of thing you’re looking for?
I will give it a try, thanks for the suggestion.