I don't write journals all too often. But yesterday I stumbled over something that is worth an entry...

Note: I happen to like writing long-winded introductions. If you're impatient and would like to skip the gibberish, please start reading at the line marked with "Start reading here".


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You know, Photoshop is the de-facto industry standard for professional graphic designers and photographers. Needless to explain what exactly you can do with it. There's only two things wrong with Photoshop:
1. The newest version costs more than $600 (and older versions don't sell for much less than about $200 on eBay, either).
2. A lot of its most powerful functions are needlessly complicated (and therefore hardly known among amateurs).

There's something you can do about the first argument: Use cheaper software. There are many alternatives, Photoshop LE, PaintShop Pro, Picture Publisher and Gimp being only the first three coming to my mind.

The second argument is more difficult. Being a graphic designer, I certainly know Photoshop inside out. And there are things that I absolutely need it for.
However, I find that there are many routine tasks that involve needlessly cumbersome manipulations: de-noising, applying curves, masking, selective adjustments, to name only a few. Don't get me wrong: I love Photoshop and its capabilities. But sometimes I wish for a piece of software that makes those routine tasks more efficient.

Now, I can think of three professional software packages, aimed at professional photographers that try to make photo editing easier and more efficient than it is in the full-fletched Photoshop: Adobe Photoshop Lightroom, Apple Aperture and Lightcrafts LightZone.
Of these three, in my very personal opinion, LightZone is the best: It's a powerful, versatile, professional software that revolutionizes the way you edit photographs. It makes the curves tool look like a technique from the last century. It received rave reviews ([link]).

And...

Start reading here if you're impatient...
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Lightcraft's "LightZone" is free!

Wait, hang on a second... what did he say?

LightZone is free!

Well, it can't be so good then, can it!?
Oh yes, it can! Because there's a catch: It's only free on Linux systems.

In my opinion, LightZone is, by all means, a great program for professional photographers. It is officially available for Windows and MacOS and costs about $250 (for the Pro version). Additionally, however, it is also officially available for Linux systems. And on these systems it's absolutely free!

Interestingly, you will not find this mentioned on the product page on Lightcraft's website. There, you'll just find "Mac or Windows". However, also on the official website, there's a hard-to-find download page for the Linux version:
[link]

Installing is easy: Just download the package, unzip and untar it, put it in some directory (I put it in /opt, but you might as well put it in your home-dir) and start the "LightZone" executable. Easy as that. For even more comfort you can also create a quick-start icon in your menus.


Oh, before I forget it: Linux is also free.


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