I’m a Linux and free software enthusiast. I’m a photographer. Therefore, I tried to get an efficient and professional workflow going under Linux from importing images from my camera, reviewing, organizing and retouching them to publishing. As of now, I don’t think this is possible under Linux. The best I could get was digiKam. It’s a fairly nice piece of software, but doesn’t cover the needs of a (semi) professional photographer. And then there are the issues with running Photoshop CS3 under Linux (the WINE people are working on it though…).

My current solution relies on dual-booting Windows for Bridge and Photoshop (I don’t use Lightroom). Here’s a description of my current setup:

• aileen – Headless server
  
  • Gentoo Linux
  • Two 500GB external harddrives
• gentop – Laptop
  
  • dual-booting Gentoo Linux and Windows XP
  • running Adobe Bridge and Photoshop CS3

The two external drives are encrypted using TrueCrypt and mounted at aileen:/mnt/backup/{master,slave}. Whenever I’m done with processing a shooting, I sync the disks via rsync to get a redundant backup. I didn’t use any kind of real software RAID.
aileen also runs samba, so I can easily access the master disk from gentop‘s Windows installation.

So, when I get home with my camera, I boot up Windows on gentop, fire up Bridge and have it import the images (converting them to the DNG format) and save them to Z:\photos\archive\YYYYMMDD\ (Z: is the network drive connected to samba on aileen). Next I set Bridge to Vertical Filmstrip mode and apply my labels and ratings in a “binary rating system” as described by Katrin Eismann in one of the video tutorials that come with Photoshop CS3.
When I’m done, I look at the highest rated images first and start the retouching. I have to admit that most of the times I just skip Camera Raw and take the image straight to Photoshop, because I don’t like how the development settings are handled in Bridge/Camera Raw (no easy way of saving multiple sets of settings or to see a complete before and after).
After doing my Photoshop magic, I save the PSD file as YYYYMMDD_title.psd to

• released\ – if it’s some artwork I’m going to post here at my web site
• client\doe_john\ – if it’s work for some client
• private\ – if it’s a private piece that is not going to be published anywhere (yet)

at Z:\photos\.

Now I can finally reboot to Linux again (my Windows environment has nothing but PS and Bridge – no IM or eMail – to keep me focussed). To upload the finished work I mount the external drives on gentop using sshfs.

Done! Thanks for reading, I hope this can help you to further develop your personal workflow to make it more efficient and fun. =)