Claude Code does the heavy lifting to get Adobe Lightroom CC running on Linux
Posted by somerandomxander@reddit | linux | View on Reddit | 81 comments
Posted by somerandomxander@reddit | linux | View on Reddit | 81 comments
RB5Network@reddit
Davinci has just developed a Lightroom alternative and is natively supported on Linux. Adobe also really really sucks as a company and their software is the buggiest shit imaginable.
I have used Davinci and Adobe professionally for years, and I have no idea why anyone would willingly go with Adobe for anything other than After Effects at this point.
ea_nasir_official_@reddit
Affinity also works, which is much easier to run and is entirely free since Canva bought it
Xygen8@reddit
If it's free, you're the product. And it's only free until it isn't. Watch them make it a subscription service at some point, and then you can't open your existing projects without paying.
ea_nasir_official_@reddit
Adobe collects your data and isn't free, who's really winning the comparison here? Also you can pay for AI slop and canvas integration
foochon@reddit
It's a photoshop alternative, not lightroom
ea_nasir_official_@reddit
its both. It basically became an all in one app
TheTrueBlueTJ@reddit
Also we have Darktable, which from my experience is very solid as well.
sequesteredhoneyfall@reddit
Also Rapid Raw which is quickly approaching these others already mentioned.
trashcatt_@reddit
I really wish I could import my Lightroom presets into darktable.
billyalt@reddit
I'm actually disgusted enough by Adobe that I will not even use their products. And I think every artist should feel the same way.
Karol-A@reddit
Davinci support on Linux is... Not great. The only officially supported distro is Rocky 8, and everything else is very much gambling
RB5Network@reddit
I really think this is overstated. For years I used it in a container because that's what I was told I should do on an Arch based system. I decided to install it natively, and minus the audio recording support with pipewire, it's worked great.
I believe this used to be a much bigger problem in the past.
RanidSpace@reddit
really? i feel like it's getting worse. the dependencies of davinci resolve hasn't updated, it still needs gtk2. a lot of stuff relating to it was moved to the AUR.
cachyos has some of it precompiled, would you happen to be using that?
Debisibusis@reddit
All you have to do is use the appimage installer from the blackmagic homepage and after installation add these environment variables to the launcher:
Time_Way_6670@reddit
I use Fedora and it works fine. You do have to delete some of the dependencies when you install it though.
They could easily solve the problem of dependency hell by using Flatpak for distribution, I'm not sure why they don't do that.
RB5Network@reddit
Yup. I use CachyOS. That might explain it then. It's been rock solid minus not being able to record through the audio inputs.
Other distros been having issues?
Mr_Lumbergh@reddit
I was able to get it installed on Debian but it hard freezes when I try opening an existing project. Creating new is no problem. It may be the age of my graphics card and available libs, but that’s still an issue.
RAMChYLD@reddit
Also terrible codec support. Sadly if you can't open a H264 video with AAC audio you are alienating 95% of the world who use cellphones and camcorders to shoot their footage.
natermer@reddit
Distrobox.
Let the baby have its bottle. Why fight it?
< installing davinci noises >
(or whatever .desktop file davinci creates for adding the app to the menu).
OR... do the even better thing and just let somebody else do all the work.
https://github.com/zelikos/davincibox
Note that I don't use davinci and never tried it out... but I use distrobox heavily and even used it for doing things like using aws official vpn on unsupported distros with great success.
DeltyOverDreams@reddit
I've been using it for years on Fedora and earlier Pop!_OS and I have no idea what are you talking about.
The only time I remember it having issues was that awkward phase when Wayland was not quite supported and there were some artefacts in UI when running it on NVIDIA GPUs.
Arvi89@reddit
I couldn't install on fedora though.
FattyDrake@reddit
Fedora is one of the easier distros to install Resolve on because of how it relates to Rocky.
You install the libxcrypt-compat package then follow the directions here.
It's mostly a matter of removing/moving 3 files in the resolve/libs directory because they're outdated, and it will use the system ones instead.
Xlaits@reddit
And even then, Blender can replace AE.
RB5Network@reddit
As someone who has used Blender, I don't think it's a real replacement. Fusion (in Davinci) is much closer to After Effects. Blender is much more suited to direct 3D workflows than normal animation and compositing.
Xlaits@reddit
I've seen insane things come out of Blender. Wabie does all their 2D animation and compositing in Blender, and even has a tutorial on how they do it.
Is it easy? No. Can it do what you want? Yes. If not, mention it to the Blender Devs, start a GitHub issue, garner some use case and community support, and wait. It'll eventually be added based on community want/need.
Or make a plugin that does do what you want. Or use Blender's python hooks to add in a feature...
Is it more suited to one type of work? Yes. Blender was made to be a 3D Modeling engine. Can it do basically everything artistic? Also yes, because all workflows for animation and video editing work are inexorably interlinked, which is why it has an animation editor, video editor, and compositor.
Jacksaur@reddit
These are all wonderful views you have.
But as long as it doesn't do everything AE does, then it's not a replacement for AE.
Xlaits@reddit
Then lean how and write the plugin yourself. I already made mention of this.
RB5Network@reddit
Yeah, Blender can definitely do everything. Arguably the most impressive piece of software ever made in my opinion. If you're working on a video in Davinci, it would be a nightmare to export it to Blender to do basic compositing for every composition. That would eat up so much time.
(I do really wish Davinci would allow layer based compositing. I don't hate nodes, but After Effects workflow works best for me.)
astrobarn@reddit
I tried DaVinci for photo editing and library management. The former is OK the latter is not a feature it offers and the biggest reason I use LR Classic on windows and Darktable on Linux. Darktable is great.
RB5Network@reddit
Davinci's Lightroom replacement just hit beta. You tried that already?
astrobarn@reddit
I did, yes. Did you?
Zebra4776@reddit
Basically just what we're used to. I've tried almost every alternative (haven't had time for Davinci yet). None of them match the workflow for what I expect. I suppose I could invest more time into some alternatives but I just don't feel like it.
dholmcarriage@reddit
Agreed. I plan to test the shit out of their next version and I hope the upcoming Photo page will prove up to snuff. If so.... Goodbye Adobe and good fucking riddance.
iamapizza@reddit
Similar lines, I saw a Reddit thread showing how to get on1 photo raw working in Linux. We need to be staying away from Adobe as much as possible.
KnowZeroX@reddit
I heard lightroom was working for a few months now, minus some of the AI features like denoise. Did something change here?
theredwolf43@reddit
Classic claude, they are not doing something new in most of the situations and mark all the work as AI regardlessly the developers who works on those projects.
Jannik2099@reddit
This was not done by Anthropic, but an independent contributor using Claude Code.
Y'all just have a hate boner for AI, it's embarrassing
stevecrox0914@reddit
Phoronix reporting the generation of stub DLL's on top of Wine Staging. Going to the code: https://github.com/sander110419/lightroom-cc-on-linux/commit/84b2ac1330f959211cee795414580ece14016f2a#diff-ca4b9c4d21f7b1e365881eab76ad28d80fdbf4e952c0598299e5f90a0f533e6e
It adds MFCreateSampleCopierMFT as a stub and appends it to mfplat as an export location.
Microsoft publish the header file that has been stubbed: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/api/mfidl/nf-mfidl-mfcreatesamplecopiermft .
mfplat itself is also documented: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/medfound/media-foundation-headers-and-libraries
So AI being has probably pulled the documentation together, which is neat but... you do have to wonder why the Wine project hasn't pulled down the Microsoft documentation to auto generate all DLL files and includes basic stubs with them.
I suspect copyright is the issue and AI will have violated the copyright.
SangersSequence@reddit
Well, the "AI" companies like Microslop seem to have decided that copyright doesn't matter for "creating" their AIs so... turnabout is fair play I guess?
rohmish@reddit
doesn't matter as long as it's for their benefit and you're not ripping off their copyrighted work.
AestheticalGL@reddit
"Y'all just have a hate boner for the machine that lies, uses up enormous amounts of resources, steals from people and generates dogshit tier code, it's embarassing"
Jacksaur@reddit
Yeah but it's ✨the future✨ so...... You're a luddite or something, apparently.
dioden94@reddit
The luddites were texture workers who took issue with automation because they were concerned with output quality and worker wages. The comparison is apt and honestly should be a point of pride
Jacksaur@reddit
Exactly what I've been saying myself. They sound like great guys.
YourUnusedFloss@reddit
And, most importantly, they were right the whole time.
alex2003super@reddit
Wow so based
coldblade2000@reddit
Sounds like my team's intern
Icy-Concentrate2076@reddit
Nooooo leave the multi billion dollar industry alone!!!
Infinity-of-Thoughts@reddit
I really can't wait for wankers like you being out of a job, complaining about immigrants being the problem.
And yeah, I've checked your posting history: it's mostly devoid of substance. Some rust, some docker. You're mostly useless.
Infinity-of-Thoughts@reddit
Imagine sucking so much AI dick that you can't distinguish between right and wrong.
BigArchon@reddit
keep licking that boot or whatever
leonredhorse@reddit
Getting details wrong to dunk on an AI company is bad, but I think being an unapologetic AI stan is more embarrassing. Like, sure, as a tool it might augment some people’s ability and speed up stuff… but you know what else it is? A drain on resources for little real tangible gain. Sure it can spit out homogenized bad code that does things like take down thousands of Amazon orders or delete production databases. Sure it is leading to mass layoffs of senior devs and leading to a generation of coders that don’t really know what they’re doing. But have you considered it is cringe to not like it?
LumpyFlint@reddit
You could have actually read the well detailed repository for what was broken and what workarounds were required, but who bothers.
KnowZeroX@reddit
Well, for me personally, AI or not aside if it wasn't clear, what I wanted was an article that gives a basic breakdown on what has changed since the last article it was claimed to be "working".
I don't use lightroom myself or care for it, but I know some people do insist on it specifically, so my care is at the level of "Nice to know, will read a summary, ain't going to go find the repository to shuffle through". I am sorry if asking the op for more details is too high of a bar.
By subreddit rules of this place, such a blog post with little actual content is considered "spam blog" and low effort.
l-roc@reddit
Wouldn't you need an offline installer until now, which a normal person would only be able to aquire through illegal means?
ccapitalK@reddit
This is pretty cool, but having to step through instructions from a repo to set it up is somewhat annoying, could you please consider making a bottle/lutris app/whatever to make these self contained/easy to distribute? Or better yet, submit this to the people trying to build/maintain Lightroom ports on those platforms already. IIRC there is already a convention for bottles where you need to provide the installer yourself as a file on your computer.
tryfap@reddit
Hot take, but this is actually bad for Linux. Linux wins when resources are directed to alternatives that respect users freedoms like DarkTable and RawTherapee. Letting people continue to use these kinds of non-free applications only increases their lock-in and staying power, like how Office alternatives are forced to support the monster that is Docx instead of the community converging on better alternatives that aren't encumbered. A lot of people are stubborn and imprinted on Windows and these apps, but that results in a mindset that will never be happy because everything will constantly be compared to this baseline.
dog_cow@reddit
I agree. Having good FOSS alternatives to proprietary applications is a win. But on the other hand, I think operating systems should be separate to applications. And indeed they are.
tornado99_@reddit
Darktable is stubbornly awful though. It looks like the interface you might use to analyse particle data from CERN.
Asmordean@reddit
So it not just me that thinks this way.
Nexis4Jersey@reddit
A lot of people have that opinion and to be fair the developers are open to overhauling the interface, but they need a small team to do it and no one has stepped up..so nothing changes.
tryfap@reddit
I grew up using Photoshop and didn't have much trouble using Darktable and Gimp. You just have to adjust your mindset out of the Adobe way and meet these tools where they are. People get easily frustrated here and then blame the tool, whereas I've never felt held back editing my raws using Darktable. I'd say it's pretty powerful too considering you can apply the effects in so many ways from basic opacity, to specific ranges, to masks.
tornado99_@reddit
except that not all great photographers are highly numerate or have techy minds.
darktable forgets that photography is an art. you shouldn't have to think like a nerd to edit your photos.
PyroDesu@reddit
I literally just replied to someone who said they were waiting for Linux compatibility for Adobe programs to switch from Windows, "why wait to break one chain, just so you can still be chained?"
Arvi89@reddit
Except pro will never use something else. So no, it's a win, because entire companies could actually switch, then when the user base is bigger, we could see alternative.
0xc0ffea@reddit
Every part of this, same for Photoshop.
An overwhelming majority of studios and professional workflows are dependent on Adobe products. Switching out to anything else can be risky, expensive and time consuming.
Unless Linux native apps can do what Adobe does, faster, cheaper and more reliably. No commercial enterprise is ever going to switch.
In fact it's actually worse. Businesses aren't even interested in alternatives at the moment, they want magic AI tooling that replaces both Adobe and the skilled employees.
tryfap@reddit
I wouldn't say this is an absolute. History is full of things people thought would never be replaced.
INITMalcanis@reddit
Well said. Adobe can get in the sea.
Minexys@reddit
I've been using RapidRAW for the past few weeks and it runs quite well. Used Darktable before that. So I am unsure how much Lightroom is needed...
crazedizzled@reddit
Nice. Port photoshop next
asdf_lord@reddit
Why not use Claude to make a feature for feature tool? Patents?
If AI is so good this should take a few hours right?
CarVac@reddit
Don't support the Adobe monoculture.
mooky1977@reddit
I understand why people use Adobe products, because the alternatives are hit and miss, but their terms of service on training their models (I know they walked it back but still, can they be trusted) is disconcerting to say the least.
BlankProcessor@reddit
I just use the web app, seems to work well. But I'm not a pro.
-Outrageous-Vanilla-@reddit
I hate Adobe policies and predatory pricing.
INITMalcanis@reddit
Running until Adobe "accidentally" break it.
JG_2006_C@reddit
Intresting aproach to this work guess native porting is less anoying
daninet@reddit
These "running well" statements are usually coming with a huge asterisk, if you are on wayland with and nvidia card these patched adobe softwares are so buggy you close them in few minutes and never look back.
Farados55@reddit
Good point. Doesn’t even say if it’s X or Wayland they tested under.
Infinity-of-Thoughts@reddit
Really.
chrsphr_@reddit
For me the biggest sticking point for moving to Linux was the lack for Lightroom.
In the end, I just spent the time learning to use Darktable, and actually found it to be a better tool for my photography than Lightroom!