Basically it’s an image processing assembly line. You set the parameters, throw your RAW file in on top, wait for a moment and catch your image when it falls out of the machine.

Today I give it a try and rescue an image of a kite with it. It’s an impressive tool with a quite unique but understandable user interface. I’ll explore this further, perhaps it will enter my workflow.

The companion file contains both used RAW files and all the setting files created by Photivo.

Sorry, there is no TOC up to now.

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The human skin isn’t as smooth and even as it used to be. At least if you are older than 12 or so. One way to keep up the illusion of eternal youth is image manipulation. Today I explore one way to smooth skin and keep it looking natural. That’s the problem with overly done make up and postprocessing – if you overdo it, faces look like made out of plastic.
There is a difference in size between “good” and “bad” skin structures. The Wavelet Decompose plugin can divide an image into “scales” and a “residual”. Each scale contains a part of the image with structures of a similar size. If you work on one of these scales, you are changing only these structures, not the smaller and larger ones. The plugin website does a better job of explaining this.

The show starts with a look back at Photivo and some comments I got in their Flickr group. “What’s wrong with some people?” – Well, some people haven’t read the Nettiquette……

The TOC

00:20 Photivo revisited
01:25 GUI setup of Photivo
03:00 Right mouse button everywhere!
03:00 Detail curve depending on colour
05:20 Portrait “Make up”
06:40 Smoothing skin with Gaussian Blur
07:40 Masking out the eyes of the blur
08:20 Wavelet decompose
09:35 Plugin registry
11:35 Decomposing the image
13:20 A lot of ways to proceed
14:00 Painting with gray to hide details
14:40 Changing the opacity of some of the scales
15:15 Adding a layer mask
17:00 Looking at the scales in normal mode
17:25 Increasing contrast with a curve …
18:50 …sharpens the image
19:00 There is much more!

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There was a question left open in the last show: How to create a random pattern of particles that follow a gradient in density.

I got three answers. One from Benton – just use a brush with absurdly high jitter. Then I got the help that I asked for from Philippe and finally thought about a way myself. I started with Philippe’s tutorial for making a starfield.

The TOC

Sorry, not here up to now.

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I go through the whole image processing with cropping and changing the colours in several layers. Nothing new technically, but the basics about layer masks explained again.

The TOC

00:20 Hi! And some comments about the state of this project.
03:25 Cropping inside out
07:50 Automatic white balance
08:40 Adding a layer group
09:50 Curves to make weird colours
11:25 A second layer for colour adjustments
12:10 Generating a layer mask out of a colour channel and basic use of layer masks
20:05 More strange colours with the curves tool colour channels
22:00 New layer, same layer mask
23:50 Adjusting colours again with the curves tool …
25:20 .. but the threshold tool is better here
27:10 Add red to the writing
29:00 Clearing up

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This time we are off into space, but still sitting in front of the monitor. I take X-Ray data from the Chandra Satellite and make a false colour image out of them. All I needed to know for that (and much much more) is on their album page.

The files I have used and the tutorial I was inspired by are also on the Chandra website.

While I was editing this show I thought about some different ways to process such an image. Feel free to comment if you also find something better. I’ll update this posting during the week.

All images used in this posting and the video are made by: NASA/CXC/Penn State/S. Park et al .

The TOC

00:30 Chandra
0?:?? Electromagnetic spectrum
05:10 Data visualisation
09:38 FITS file format
10:30 Getting the data and opening the data files in GIMP as layers
13:00 Setting the image mode to RGB
13:20 Curves tool for adjusting the contrast in the layers
17:00 Smoothing with Gaussian Blur
18:30 Choosing colours from the colour wheel
19:30 Colorize tool
21:40 Changing the opacity of the layers
22:30 Duplicate a layer for enhancing it’s effect
23:00 Hue explained
23:40 Colorize Tool
24:40 Layer modes

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I am doing some homework for school this time. Getting a balloon up into the air and making air molecules visible. All with GIMP.

We have a new interactive white board at school. And I try to make a series of images of a balloon for a physics lesson. I am using layers, paths, selections and more – a lot of stuff for some simple drawings. Philippe could have done this better, I fear.

The TOC

01:20 Setting up the UI in GIMP 2.7
03:10 Homework for my school
04:05 TOC
04:20+x New image
04:55 Freehand selection filled with colour
06:05 Naming layers
06:45 Drawing a circle
07:30 Combining selections
08:20 Storing a selection as a path
08:35 Filling a selection with a gradient
09:30 Drawing with the pen tool (straigt lines too)
12:00 Layers and layer groups
13:00 Cropping a layer group
13:55 Restoring a selection from a path
13:55 Outline for a path or selection
16:50 Painting air molecules (trying…)
19:35 Fuzzy brush with hard outline ….
22:10 …because of the missing alpha channel
23:30 Filling a layer with a pattern
24:20 The clipboard as a pattern
25:20 A bit of physics
26:20 Moving a selection or path
29:15 Making several images out of a pack of layers
29:30 Balloon physics
31:15 Saving the image – way too late!

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This episode is mostly about Linux and competition. We look at our challenge and the winning image and we have a look at the challenge at gimpusers.com. There you have to design a new splash screen for GIMP.

I mention Linux Outlaws who ranted about Ubuntu and were quite right on the points I would make too. I tried PCLinuxOS, liked it and am now trying Debian Squeeze, the old fashioned Linux Dinosaur. Quite lively for such a beast.

On this Debian installation I try (successfully ) to compile and install GIMP 2.7.2 from the current sources. It is a single user
installation, a recipe for a system wide installation can be found in the wiki. The wiki page I created in the video has been moved already
in the wiki to the right location.

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Just a short (it’s grading hell….) episode about the little icons in your browser window and the bookmarks. It was a Microsoft™ invention (yes, they invented something ) and so the most compatible file format is the Windows™ icon .ico file.

The TOC

00:40 Favicons
01:50 Getting a favicon file into GIMP
02:45 Image properties dialogue
04:20 Adding transparency
05:02 Looking at the work of others
06:50 How to 3D
08:20 Exporting to .ico

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In March I got some images from Peter in Thailand. He lives there in a country full of photogenic sites and has often only the time to take a quick shot with his P&S camera without being able to work around some of the obstacles. Specially for the show he made some with the typical problems. In this case it is to much light – or better, too much dynamic range. The difference between tropical sun and deep shadows in this temple is too big.

The blown out areas are not repairable, all the information is lost. I try to get more of the temple mood into the image (forget that I have not been there…….) by turning the overexposure into a glow on top of the Buddhas. If you can’t get rid of it, try more of it.

A special “curtain vignette” improves the image a bit further.

Of course one can take the puristic stand and say “Don’t rescue an image, do your photography properly!”. But often you’ll have no image then. Some things can be done in a hurry too: underexpose in such a situation. You’ll loose details in the shadows but gain them in the light. A good trade off in most cases. Be familiar with that button on the camera.

The show starts with a look at the level in the donations hat, which is quite high after one and a half week. To get the concept of DONATE FOR MEET THE GIMP! even further into your heads I show how I made the gauge with Wilber slowly filling up. Wolfram Alpha is used to calculate the day of the death of the server.

Then I get a bit into setting up the toolbox in GIMP 2.7 and show how to manage the docks after the “landing zones” have become invisible. And of course there is the challenge!

Again there is no TOC up to now.

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Again a trip to Thailand with a wonderful candid shot made by Peter at a school festival. There is not much to enhance, just a crop, a bit of curves and the mutation of a blue trash bag into a gray one.

Before that I talk about bracketing and “dedicated” vs. “drive by” photography. And I present the next addition to our poor webserver – a Wiki for the collected wisdom of you all. Link sits in the menu box on the top of the right sidebar. Give it a try – reading and writing.

The TOC

01:50 Bracketing to get the right exposure
04:30 Photo Session or Drive by Shooting
06:55 The MTG Wiki
14:15 School in Thailand
15:05 Decisions about blurring the background
16:20 Inside out crop
20:25 Copy the layer for backup
20:30 Curves adjusted
22:25 Removing colour with a saturation layer
25:30 Adjusting brightness with a value layer
26:50 Recap

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Finally a new episode – I never had one with more obstacles! But here it is. (And now I even have no time for a proper blog post, because I am going on a class trip tomorrow.)

I explore two new features of GIMP 2.7.2 – I am amazed at the progress.

Then I adapt the often used (and often shown here) technique of dodging and burning with a layer mask to fiddeling with the saturation of an image. I don’t recall to have seen this described anywhere – but I am sure I am not the first one to use this. Has someone a link?

Sorry, no TOC.

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This week I am solving last weeks problem with a layer group. In #150 I painted over the saturation information without looking at the original data. This time I use Mathias’ method with a layer group. Layer groups are a cool new feature of GIMP 2.7. The work is not yet finished, but they are already usable. 2.7 is “mostly stable” now, you should consider the switch.

And I put again the hat on the street to collect money for the server costs for 2011. See the right sidebar for details.

Sorry, no TOC yet.

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With Ubuntu 10.10 coming up there will be a change in the standard photo managing program. It will change from F-Spot to Shotwell. I installed the release candidate of Ubuntu in a virtual machine and gave Shotwell a try.

Not bad, really not bad.

I assume there will be more to Shotwell here soon, this was really my very first impression of the current version. The experience with the version in Ubuntu 10.4 was quite, ehm, underwhelming. But they did a lot for the new one.

I had not much time to do this show, so there are some editing gaffes and no TOC.

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Every time you have a bright light shining into your lens you get a lens flare. This can look nice or horrible. You can avoid much of it with a lens hood – and with paying more money for better coated lenses.

But when you have these nasty spots on the image – there are ways in GIMP to heal them. Some are discussed in the forum thread where I also got the image for this show.

My preferred way to tackle a problem is to understand the source of it. Solving the problem is often much easier then. (This is the theory, often I just poke around…..;-) ) So I start with a bit of blackboard – showing that a lens flare is only added light, the original image lies below and the flare can be (in theory) subtracted from it.

In GIMP I do this with comparing similar colours in and outside of the flare. A bit of layer magic and the flare is gone. Except for the fringe where my patience ran out.

The TOC

00:20 Greetings, Flattr
01:45 Lens flares
02:20 Origin of lens flares
12:10 Avoid lens flare with a lens hood and lens coating
13:05 “Digital” lenses
14:20 Solution: subtract light
16:00 Curves to correct the contrast
19:45 Subtracting light from the flare
19:45 How much light was added in the flare?
22:00 Sample points
23:05 Docking a dialogue
23:30 Mixing the correction colour
27:25 Correcting the second flare
33:00 Recap
35:15 A quick crop
36:30 Why layers?

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Sorry, the first minute or so of the video has very bad sound. It gets better then!

This week I rip apart a PDF based photography magazine using GIMP. GIMP can load a PDF and use the pages as layers or single images. You can then “steal” the content or modify it. I took Paul Wellner Bou‘s new magazine “Lighted Moments” and extracted a series of images from it. I want to use these images in a promo video for the magazine – where I plan to submit some pictures.

For using portrait oriented images in a landscape format video I had to get the aspect ratio right, so I had to change the canvas size and add new background. One image needed to be combined out of two pages. Due to an error by me I also had to explain the difference between changing the canvas size and scaling the image content.

Sorry, there is no TOC up to now.

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After finding a suitable crop I try two ways to achieve this. Changing the overall contrast and the colours with the curves tool and then a monochrome version with the GEGL filter c2g. All images used are in the companion file.

If you look at the image at the right and compare it to the original you’ll miss the pattern in the left window. It’s a moire effect that I saw in the zoomed out image on my screen. I kept it in the image by downscaling it in “linear” mode and not with one of the fancier ones that one would use by standard.

In the beginning I talked about the need for a poster for the courses of the Aurora ARTWorks. I’ll post more about this in the following week.

The TOC:

00:20 New sound stuff
03:30 Rena Church asks for help
04:25 The image to tackle
05:30 The plan
05:55 Rotate
07:10 Guide lines in GIMP 2.7 – workaround for beta
07:50 Crop
11:20 Duplicate the layer for backup
11:30 Changing the mood with curves
14:40 Second approach – Monochrome with GEGL c2g
18:00 Adding a vignette
19:30 Finetuning with opacity of layers
21:45 2 images – 1 XCF
22:05 Exporting

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This is the first episode made by Philipp (note the missing “e”) and he has done an entire hour with two topics.

First he develops a script in Python for applying a vignette effect to your images. It shows that he is a much better programmer than me.

In the second part he has a shot of a “For Sale” poster (the self made ones with the phone number at the bottom for tearing off) in Greek and shows, how to make a version with your own believable text out of it.

You can get his original image and the script in the companion file. The XCF is lost, sorry.

My only contribution is slapping the music and bumpers on and the image on the right which has a vignette and Python written in Greek. If you like Phillip’s show, shower him with nice comments here. Perhaps he will make more shows then.

Meet the GIMP will make a video publication break until the first week in September. I’ll use the time to move and settle, clear up the blog and server, work out the feed and torrent problems, get the mobile version running again and hopefully produce some shows in advance for filling weeks suffering of time theft. Then I’ll be back on a regular one week schedule – it is better for me and you.

Up to now there is no TOC for this show.

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Here I am again, but now from Berlin!

In this episode I visit an exhibition of images by Oliver from the forum. You’ll see a bit from Berlin, the exhibition, Oliver (sorry Oliver, I had to take exactly that part of the footage…. ), how to fix frames to a wall without leaving traces and about fakemulating a matte.

Then I try to make an image ready for printing including getting the size right and making a faked emulated matte.

The maps in the videos are from the Open Street Map Project.

Sorry, there is no TOC up to now.

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Parts of the old Bremen harbour (the Europahafen and the Überseehafen) have been closed and are rebuilt as a new part of the city, called “Übersseestadt”. I took an image of the border between old and new. In the video I try to make the difference stronger by desaturating and colouring parts of the image. Not much success with the image, but the saturation and colour layer mode get explained.

In the begin I talk a bit about difficulties in the forum and my thoughts about flattr.

The TOC

03:25 Subscribe to the RSS feed
04:35 flattr
06:30 An image from the Europahafen
08:15 Goal: Enhance the contrast between old and new
08:25 Rotation correction
10:15 Saving as XCF
10:45 Cropping
11:25 Fixing the aspect ratio
13:15 Duplicating the layer before tweaking the colours
14:05 Adjusting the curve to get more contrast
15:35 Desaturationg parts of the image with a layer in saturation mode
20:00 Adding sepia colour
22:20 Colour layer mode

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This show covers the single window mode of GIMP 2.7.1 with a video (which sat some weeks here) from nachbarnebenan. I just installed the new version on my machine and I like it.
Then I scratch an itch I had – Printing DVDs with GIMP.
The sound in this episode in not as good as usual. Sorry.

00:20 Berlin and you
01:45 Single window mode demo
06:00 Printing on CD/DVDs
06:50 Defining the media size in Turbo Print
08:20 Defining a new image template
11:30 Starting a new image from the template
12:20 A layer with guide lines
16:15 New layer(s) for content
16:50 Inserting a source image
17:40 Scaling down of the new layer
20:00 A gradient background
21:00 Blending the layers with a mask
24:20 Adding text
25:50 Printing
28:50 Recap and more background about units

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This is the first Microsode of Meet the GIMP. This are short(er) videos that are produced ahead of publication and cover one topic – and no chit chat about my life, the site, the forum and so on.

In this Microsode I talk about the fourth value of a pixel, the opacity or transparency. It turns up in layers, tool settings and in the concept of layer masks. The erase tool can erase to the background colour or to transparency. You can even lock the alpha channel of a layer and so keep the transparent parts while painting in the image. BTW, I think I forgot to mention the proper name of the fourth “colour” – alpha. (Edit: I did at 5:00! )

TOC

00:27 Microsodes
01:25 3 nubers for red, green, blue – and one for opacity / transparency
02:40 opacity in the layer dialogue
02:50 the checkerboard
03:10 opacity in paint tools
04:30 two modes of the erase tool – alpha channel of a layer
05:40 lock opacity
06:20 making straight lines
07:40 layer masks

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Finally there is a new show! This time I tackle an image shot at the airport here in Bremen. Before that I tell a bit about the dangers of being a teacher, an online paint program written in HTML5, content aware fill in TheOtherProgram and my new job in Berlin. I am looking for a flat there, by the way.

The image from the Hamburg train station I had planed to process turned out to be marred by motion blurr. A short discussion about how to avoid this is in the show – I hope I recall this next time.

Oh, and I’ll be in England the first week of May 2010. I may have time for a meeting in central London on May 6th – Election Day. Depends on how the kids behave. More on twitter.

The TOC

00:20 Greetings and looking for a flat in Berlin
03:30 Content aware Fill in Photoshop – http://photwalkthrough.com
04:20 HTML5 graphics program
05:30 Train Station image and motion blurr
08:10 Baggage claimage area shot
08:50 Intentions of the image
09:40 Straighten the image
11:30 Finding a crop
14:30 First try: enhance contrast and colours
16:00 Using curves for reducing contrast
21:40 Selective sharpening
24:00 Function of a layer mask
25:00 Denoise the layer mask
26:30 Sharpen the top layer
31:00 Saving as XCF for further work
32:00 Rolf is in England next week – http://twitter.com/rstein

The companion file contains the original shot in JPG and NEF and the XCF file in its present state. Still work to do. And I put the train station image in there too, perhaps somebody wants to play with it.

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I spent last week in England – but not on a vacation. In this episode I process one of the “tourist shots” made on the class trip following a workflow guide made from Bill in Belize. This guide will be published here in some time, there is still some work needed. It covers all the basic steps for polishing up an image.

The second part of the show covers a question from Bill: How to publish something with keeping your claim to fame and giving others the option to improve your work. My answer: Creative Commons. Let’s see if Bill shares my opinion. (Disclaimer: I am biased – see the button on top of the right column.)

You can license your images under Creative Commons too. We had an example of the advantages in the forum with this image.

There is a list of all possible licenses on the site and a very nice “click your license” boilerplate license generator. I used it to make the license text below.

One question I have for you: Should I drop the “Share Alike” part of the license for Meet the GIMP and leave only the “Attribution”? Please help me with discussing this in the forum.

The TOC

is coming up

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I got the planned episode 136 nearly ready – a photography trip to Hamburg. But then came an urgent job from Chicago and overturned the schedule. (No, John, it wasn’t urgent, it was convenient to have a bit more time to edit the Hamburg show).

A big portrait had to be downsized from 3504×2336 to 95×125 pixels. And of course this postage stamp then should still have some atmosphere and style. How much damage this does to the details is visible in the animation on the right.

I never have done this before in such an extreme way and found out, that scaling down in steps is really better than doing one big step.

Beware, this is not the last word about downscaling. There are plugins at the Plugin Registry and we have a discussion about this in the Forum.

For making the image interseting and informative enough for web use I tried to change the contrast with the curve tool, burned and dodged and even made some duotone images.

The TOC

01:48 Find a crop / crop tool and aspect ratio
03:00 What has to be in?
06:00 Cloning out a disturbance
08:20 Make a copy and add an alpha channel
08:40 Curves tool to change contrast
09:45 Dodge and burn to give more light to the bass
14:00 Second approach
14:15 Give names to layers
15:00 Curves again
16:15 Make a Duotone
17:00 Adding two layers with layer masks
18:30 Chose colours
20:00 Fine tuning with the opacity slider
20:30 Instructions for experiments
22:40 Scaling down
25:00 Correcting scaling artefacts
27:00 Better scaling down in steps
29:30 Why is it better?

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This time I have made an experiment. You can look over my shoulder while I select the images to keep from a trip to Hamburg. I use F-Spot for this task.

I am not sure if this was a successful approach because I didn’t talk that much while selecting the images. Can you find out what I was looking for? What are your criteria? I found out again that shooting without a goal is fun, but has not that much good results.

I mention two podcasts worth to follow. Jeff Curto’s “The History of Photography” and The World’s “Technology Podcast“.  And then there is the Haus der Photographie in the Deichtorhallen, which has good exhibitions and a good bookstore. The map in the bbegin was provided by the Open Street Map Project.

The TOC

00:20 A trip to Hamburg – Podcast Promo Jeff Curto
02:30 Where I wanted to shoot
03:50 Using F-Spot for grading images
04:30 Setting the date range
04:40 Going through the images
18:30 What were my criteria?
19:40 Discarding a lot
20:50 THROW AWAY
21:00 Second walk through the images
21:15 Fullscreen mode in F-Spot
21:45 Selecting images for more doing work on them
23:00 How to shoot good images – not like me.
24:15 Podcast Promo for the “World Technology Podcast”
25:00 Train ride home

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Download the Torrent!
(Mobile version tomorrow)

The German word “Therrorie” was coined by a kid in a Physics lesson of my late colleague Helmut Mohr in Hamburg. It is what it sounds like – and today’s video is full of it. No GIMP, no images, only the blackboard and me talking. Please consider this as a WARNING.

We had a lively discussion in the forum about the theory behind making images, circling around the term “dynamic range”. There is a big difference between light and dark parts of our world, often more that a camera can catch. And nearly always more than fits onto paper or a computer screen.

The process of squeezing this big range into the small output range is called Post Processing. Either you do it via RAW anf GIMP – or the smart chip in your camera does it while saving your iage as JPEG. What I forgot to say – if you do it, you can redo it. The RAW file still exists. If the chip does it, the RAW file is discarded and you are stuck with the version of the image made by the chip.

I got a lot of information about this subject from a wonderful paper by Karl Lang at Adobe(R). Worth to download and read, even if you decide to skip the video this week.

The TOC

02:04 Orders of Magnitude
04:00 How much light is in a scene? (Dynamic range ramp up)
06:00 There is no black and white
06:30 Dynamic range of a scene
06:50 Dynamic range of LCD and prints
08:50 Dynamic range of the camera
09:50 Exposure = slide the dynamic range
11:05 Post processing by the camera
12:15 RAW -> GIMP -> print
13:00 Slides and egatives in analog photography
15:05 A source at Adobe(R)
15:15 8 Bits – a problem (sometimes)
17:10 Why is it possible to make images? Because our eyes are no camera and our brain no computer.

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Late – but here is #135.

Darktable is a new RAW converter, photo editor and image manager for Linux and MacOS. It is in early development and has some really cool features. most of them I only have partially explored, but what I saw was promising.

You find Darktable for Ubuntu at Pascal’s ppa.

The TOC

04:10 Darktable
04:50 Overview of interface
05:30 The lighttable
06:20 Zooming
08:00 Selections
08:20 Tagging
09:00 The Darkroom
09:30 Profiles needed
10:50 Exposure
11:40 Reset
12:50 Curves
14:00 Clipping / cropping
14:40 Sharpening
16:10 More plugins
16:30 Lens correction
17:30 Colour correction
18:30 Monochrome
20:00 Equalizer
21:00 History
22:10 The Verdict

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This week I have a challenge for you. Do my homework and edit my shot from our Samba Carneval. You’ll find the JPEG and the NEF (RAW image by a Nikon D200) of a shot I did from my window. It is not a good photograph but catches a beautiful moment. Improve the image, store it somewhere on the Internet and post a link to it in the comments. You can embed a small version of it in a comment, just copy the HTML code from 23, flickr or other sites. It should be there in a box to cut and paste.

Then I’ll tell you why you always shall set your camera settings to a defined standard state before you put your camera in the bag or cupboard. I didn’t and it has ruined a whole series of shots from this occasion.

Have you ever wondered how to make a selection with a zig-zag border? Well, if you have, I have the answer. (Stolen from Saul Goode, BTW ) I was reminded that a Quickmask is an image and so can be editied much better than a selection. Making waves and sawteeth into it then is “elementary”.

And finally I reveal how I built a dust free blackboard and chalk with GIMP. The blackboard from the “Basics” series looses its mystery.

I made a TOC and forgot to save it.

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After a bit of “housekeeping”, which includes thanks to contributors and a nod over to the Focus Ring, I try to use the stuff hidden in the <Image>/Color/Auto menu. My results are not that good and I try to do it better with curves.

Why did I fail? No idea, it may be the software or perhaps my choice of image was bad. Please share your experiences with this option.

At the end of the show I lift the secret behind the numbers 1 – 1.4 – 2 – 2.8 – 4 – 5.6 – 11 – 16 – 22 …. – aperture numbers decoded.

I couldn’t decide which of the two shots I made for the show image should go into the post, so here are both.

The TOC

00:20 Starting 2010 – thanks and a guy selling GIMP
04:30 New Forum policy
05:40 New Focus Ring Episode
07:00 Exporting an image from F-Spot to GIMP
07:20 The Histogram shows underexposure
08:00 Exploring /Colors/Auto
09:15 Equalize, stretch contrast, stretch HSV
11:50 Color Enhance
12:50 The manual curves approach
15:30 Unsharp Maks (USM) for getting details in snow
17:00 Selection with layer mask
19:00 Basics: Apperture numbers explained

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This week there is only a little bit of GIMP, but a lot more about the free video editor Cinelerra. I use it to make a kind of slide show video used to illustrate a short “bumper” for Martin Bailey’s blog and podcast about his (mostly nature) photography. Martin is living in Japan and has a lot to tell about photography and Japan. Highly recommended!

Cinelerra is a full “non linear” video editor for Linux – and so perhaps a bit overkill for making a slide show. Non linear says that the program does not change the video and sound data and that you can access all your media easy and fast because only references are moved around. I forgot to introduce it properly at the start of the video. There are programs around for Windows and MacOS which do the same, I am sure.

Cinelerra comes in a lot of different flavours. I take the version from cinelerra.org.

The final version of the bumper, the used images and the Cinelerra XML file are in the companion file.

This week we have a mobile version of the video again. It’s not on the feed, because I don’t know if this version fills your needs. So feedback please!

Sorry, I could not make a TOC this time, too much school stuff around.

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In this episode, I demonstrate how to apply a more realistic looking texture to an object using Inkscape 0.46.

Using typography as an example, and with the help of The Gimp’s Render Cloud tool, I show how to turn a ho-hum texture into something a little more natural looking. While I show an example with text, you could use this sort of treatment with any sort of object you’d like to apply a texture to. Even more generally, using a cloudy mask like this is only one solution. You could generate all kinds of other masks in something like the Gimp (or your bitmap editor of choice) and other sorts of effects to your textures.

I also show how to create a faked spotlighting effect using simple ellipses, gradients and blurs, which can make the drop shadows a little more convincing but it all depends on what you’re after.

The font I used for this episode is called League Gothic and can be found at The League of Moveable Type. And of course, for the cloud mask you can download the Gimp at gimp.org or install it from your repository if you don’t already have it.

Hopefully over the next little while I can get more up to speed on Inkscape 0.47 and all it’s new features. For now though, 0.46 will do.

I hope everyone has a great holiday season and we will undoubtedly see you in 2010!

by Richard Querin

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Sorry, again a “Nerd Show”. I tackle some problems that have come up with the Python script of the last week and show my way to debug and test while making errors. My first error was to take a test case without colours – my script from last week changed all images to greyscale. Then I learn something useful about merging layers in Python.

But the top of the show is even more nerdy – the Octave plugin allows to access the Octave math software from GIMP. Caluculate your images or do a FFT with them.

The scripters crowd in the forum found a bug in GIMP, saulgoode reported it and it got fixed in a day. Take that, Adobe!

Then I try to explain why the big blobs in the image featured two shows ago are not made with GIMP but with pure physics in the camera. You can see a Blender video I made about this for #200 of Chris Marquards Tips from the Top Floor show. My part starts at about 11:40 and contains an embarrassing error. Do you get it?

This image by Nachbarnebenan is a good example for a shallow DoF.

The next show will be a simple, non-nerd walk through the post processing of an image. Promised.

The TOC

01:10 Octave Math Plugin
02:10 Number types in Python
06:00 Making a test case
06:30 Finding the wrong layer mode
08:00 Running into a wall and thinking around it
09:40 Isolate the bug
12:40 Cleaning up the code
14:40 Colour halos wit Normal Mode sharpening
16:40 When to use Octave sharpening
17:10 Basics of Photography – Depth of Field and Bokeh
19:00 Image creation with a lens
21:00 Circle of Confusion
22:30 Depth of Field
25:00 Apperture and DoF
28:30 DoF and sensor size
29:00 Dofmaster
30:00 Focal length and DoF

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This is the second time I try to get into Python scripting for GIMP. My script in the first show about scripting was simple, just saving some clicks. Now it is more complicated, variables, loops and floating points included. But no parrots!

You find a better version of the programs in the companion file. Following a tip in our Forum I included a Undo Group. So the action can be undone, a behaviour that should have been included from the start.

I mentioned some sources. Instant Python, the official Python Tutorial and the GIMP Python reference. Bert has a script page and a much better version of the Octave sharpening script.

Have I forgotten some promised links? Please complain below!

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I was out on a photo walk with a GIMPer from Bremen. One of these shots is post processed in this show. Nothing special, just adjusting the colours with a curve in two different parts of the image. Of course a layer with mask is used to separate the different areas and explained again for the new GIMP users.

The really new information is about uploading images from F-SPOT to 23 and flickr. You have to enable the exporter in the menu Edit/Mange Extensions/Export. 23 is covered by the flickr exporter, they use the same API.

You can find the final image on 23 and flickr, both uploads worked like a charm.

You can participate in episode planning in the Wave. It is open for everybody.

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A posting in the forum pointed me to a description of an interesting way to sharpen an image. This Octave Sharpening is useful when you have to do a lot of sharpening and want to avoid the typical halos around the edges.

The secret lies in a combination of 4 USM sharpened layers with different opacity. As in the recipe I used an amount of 5 (500% in the Other Program), threshold 0 and 0.5, 1, 2 and 4 in the different layers. The opacity was set to 100%, 50%, 25% and 12.5%. The more sharpening the less impact in the image. But the traces of harsh sharpening give a bit of a gradient to the edges in the final image.

Norman needs some information about old slide producers in Israel. Are you able to help?

And I have started to use Google Wave for episode planning. If you want to participate, drop me a line at info@meetthegimp.org . I also have some invites.

The TOC

00:30 Torrent for the first 100 shows
02:10 Grandfatherclock tutorial in writing at meetthegimp.org
03:10 Help for Norman
04:00 Google Wave
04:40 Octave sharpening
06:20 TAB hides the dialogs
06:50 Octave sharpening in action
08:00 50% Zoom for sharpening
08:10 Sharpen the 4 layers
11:20 setting the opacity
12:00 Looking at the result
13:15 Layer group workaround
14:30 Recap
17:10 Forum
17:00 Fund raising

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A short one this time – I upgraded to Karmic Koala and did a clean install with new partitions and EXT4 file system. And now I am getting the important stuff back on the disk and leave the cruft out. This meant that a lot of the files needed for a proper podcast are still on the external disks.

I take a look a the new Folio by Jeff Curto at Lenswork – because it’s an example of printing an image on paper with a different aspect ratio, the images are really good and Jeff is a friend and I hope he sells a lot of them.  Jeff does two podcasts in the Photocast Network, Camera Position and The History of Photography. The last is the only podcast where I have experienced a coffee break.

I use an image from “wbool63? from the forum to make some nice frames with G’MIC, the Swiss Knife plugin from France.

And I have done….

00:20 Greetings and Jeff Curto at lenswork
02:30 Using a white frame and text
03:10 Cropping an image
05:50 Getting a square crop
06:20 Eyes out of focus – no problem here
07:10 G’MIC plugin and frames

No blackboard this time – and no mobile version  yet. The upgrade broke the toolchain, I have to compile ffmpeg to get it running again. Software patents are really …….

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We had a nice discussion in the forum about how to crop. What shall determine the crop, the output paper format or the content of the image?

The two main aspect ratios used in digital cameras are 2:3 and 3:4. This has technical reasons – not artistic considerations. Then there is a flood of different formats for papers, from ancient to the modern A-series. The big question: How do you fit your camera image onto the paper?

I show two ways of getting it right. One is to leave a strip of paper white and cut it off later. Or you put the image into the centre of the paper and leave a nice white border around it. For both a bit of math is needed.

In the video I mention a script for getting images straight – a rotation tool on steroids. You find it at Ray Adagio’s Script Manufacture.

What happens in the camera when you change the ISO? This is my topic for the tech part of the show.

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There are a lot of tutorials out there for “The Other Program”, also called Adobe(R) Photoshop(R). (I hope I got the Rs right, can’t find the page where Adobe(R) told the world how to call this program.) A lot of that stuff is easily translated to GIMP, but there are some serious differences. One are the “Adjustment(R) Layers(R)”. This is a way of applying a curve, gradient, hue or saturation change…..  without changing the real image. You can come back later and tweak the curve or the slider – non destructive editing.

There is an easy way to work around this: make a new layer of the visible image and work on that. You have to redo that, if you decide to change something in the lower layers.

To show how to do this I have ripped out a part of John Arnold’s Photowalkthrough podcast and redone the same in GIMP. Photowalktrough is a really good resource for everybody who is into the digital darkroom – independent from the program used. And John has his #100 out! Congratulations!

GIMP will have non destructive editing in a year or two – it’s the main reason for getting GEGL into GIMP and making this big effort of writing a lot of the program again.

In the second part of the show I get the blackboard out and start a new segment in the show. I try to explain how  film and sensors are working. I’ll expose you to some of these lessons for about 5 to 190 minutes and will then decide upon your reaction if I should keep this on. I’ll have them at the end of the show – if you are bored you can just skip the rest.

Sorry, there is no TOC up to now.

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The results of the Book Challenge have been so interesting that I have made two shows out of them. This is the second part.

If you want to buy Akkana Peck’s book from amazon.com in the US, go to her website and use her link. She gets a bit more money out of it and you pay the same.

The TOC

00:50 Threshold tool revisited
02:40 Ityker’s image
04:00 Selective decolorisation
05:00 Layer mask for selective decolorisation
05:00 Layer mask shortcuts
06:00 Duotone
08:45 Sample points
10:00 Preventing tonal change of the colorisation layer
11:10 Sharpening layer
12:50 Fake view cam cassete shadow
14:30 Mathias’ image
15:50 Image sources
17:00 Layers for ressources
18:40 Combining different exposures
19:25 Healing spots and bra straps
20:30 Layers for sculpting the hair
22:40 The sky – overlay mode
23:50 The sign
24:00 Layer groups
25:00 Dodge and burn on a layer in soft light mode
26:00 Unsharp mask for enhancing local and global contrast
27:20 The John Arnold Style Vignette(R)

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The results of the Book Challenge have been so interesting that I have made two shows out of them. This is the first part.

If you want to buy Akkana Peck’s book from amazon.com in the US, go to her website and use her link. She get’s a bit more money out of it and you pay the same.

It’s worth to keep an eye on John Arnold’s Photowalkthrough, perhaps something special is coming up there.

The TOC

03:30 Kevin’s image
04:00 Bracketing
05:30 Darkening parts of the image with curves and layer mask
06:30 Combining different images from the bracketed shots
09:00 image composition
10:00 Spray paint
10:10 Notes in a separate layer
12:00 jd24w9’s image
12:00 Combining background and foreground from different shots
12:50 Don’t merge your layers – keep them!
13:45 Better use a different shot for the sky – fake but easier
14:25 Ted’s image
14:40 Tab toggles the toolbox on and off the screen
15:00 Divide the image in several parts and process them differently
16:30 Overlay Mode for enhancing brickwork
17:15 Making a surreal sky with multiply mode
18:45 Gimpel’s image
20:00 Threshold tool for black and white
21:15 painting over the image
22:00 Wrapping up
22:35 Server problems and PCN

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If you want to make an incredible amount of money it is a good idea to learn GIMP. Sergey Brin did that, created the logo of his startup and got rich. I downloaded the xcf and peeked under the hood. Just standard stuff – as you have seen by Philippe.

03:00 Grabbing images from the web
04:30 Elipse select tool
05:00 Copy and paste between images
05:30 Shrink (scale) a layer
07:25 Blurring with a layer mask and the blend tool
09:45 Copy and paste between images
10:35 Don’t work on the layer mask
11:25 Move the layer
11:55 Scale the layer
14:10 Rotate the layer
15:30 Revealing parts of a layer with a mask
17:30 Cropping to a square
18:20 Scale the image
18:40 Exporting to png
19:45 The GOOGLE logo in GIMP
22:10 Analysis

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This week you’ll get both hosts of the show in one package. Philippe (southern France) and I (northern Germany) discuss the results of the Double Book Challenge in the “From Scratch” section. We use Skype and the connection is not as good as we were used to it between Chile and Germany.  So expect some funny noises added to the accents.

At the end of the show we both come up with a random number and calculate in a highly scientific way who wins the two books. I’ll give you all a chance to find out in the video if you have won and contact the winners later next week. And IF YOU have won, send me your contact data so that I can forward them to APRESS, who sponsor the prizes.

All the images we talked about are in the companion file.

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This is a short show about how to extract the colours out of an image and put them into a palette. The next version of GIMP will allow the export of the palettes in a lot of designer and programmer friendly ways.

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I take my big soft lens polishing cloth out of the cupboard and give my crystal ball a good rub. Usually I use it for writing reports about kids, but today I look at the upcoming GIMP 2.8.

With the publication of version 2.7.1 and some mails from the developers mailing list one can predict fairly good what will be in 2.8. I have compiled version 2.7.1 and try the stuff that was described in the posting at gimpusers.com.

I am looking forward to the publication of 2.8, even if it is not the “big step” and “16 Bit”. But it is the last stepping stone into that direction.

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This week I show you how to simulate a Graduated Neutral Density Filter with GIMP. This was started by a thread in the forum. And as I now need more time between recording and publishing, the thread has grown considerably and Bert has already made a script for this. So check it out in the forum!

While trying to create a filter for the image I stole from Bert I tell you a bit about the Blend Tool and give (again) an introduction into layer masks. “White reveals and black conceals!”

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Today I explore the information that GIMP provides about colour. It’s the always helpful histogram, the border average which gives you a nice colour for a background for your image, the colour cube analysis and the smooth palette. The last two are quite exotic and I can think of no way to use them for me.

As I have avoided to discuss Median, Mean and Standard Deviation, help yourself!

00:20 The feed for small players
01:55 A new camera
04:10 The Color Info Menu
04:20 The histogram
04:25 Stats
05:50 Log or Linear
07:50 Value and RGB
09:30 Border average
14:30 Color cube analysis
15:05 Smooth palette
16:55 Challenge reminder

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You may have noticed the new intro at the top of the show since we turned HD. It was made by Philippe with a combination of GIMP, Jahshaka and GAP, the GIMP Animation Package. As reported by Torbjorn below Jahshaka has been given a new name, CineFX: http://www.cinefx.org/ Is this a fork?

Jahshaka is a video editing and special effects tool. I looked into it as an editor when I planned this podcast and preferred then Cinelerra instead. Jahshaka has matured a lot in the last two years but is still a pain to install under most Linuxes, but it seems to be fine with Windows and OS X.

Philippe asked me to write here that this is just a short look into Jahshaka – no in depth tutorial. But I liked it a lot while I was editing the video.

And think about our two challenges! We have already some entries for the photography department – but the “from scratch” area is still an empty canvas. Well, it takes more time dto do something from scratch and the challenge is open up to September 9th.

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You can win a book in our two contests – the exact rules will be published in the next posting.

I continue to work on my project “Access Control”. My target is a photo book by blurb.com. They accept PDF files for printing – which is important for me because most of the book making software of the printers doesn’t work on Linux. Of course there is an Open Source program for making a PDF – Scribus. It is available for all OS, even OS/2. I’ll tell you about my experience in one of the next episodes.

A bit of Magic is shown by Philippe – and I have confess that I used an old version of his script. You’ll see better ones next time.

There are a lot of photobooks to look at for inspiration at SOFOBOMO.

Then I start to edit an image. The JPEG image is a bit overblown in the highlights and I have to go back to the RAW file. Cropping turns out to be difficult and the image needs a bit of a contrast boost in some parts.

The final steps – sharpening and deciding about a vignette will be made when the layout of the book is clear. For sharpening one needs to kknow the output resolution and size – and I will have to scale the image to 300 DPI before putting it into the book. The vignette depends on the background of the page.

00:20 The Book Challenge
05:20 A Photo Book as the target for “Access Control”
07:50 Scribus for making PDF files
10:00 Photobooks to look at
10:35 Editing an image for the book
11:15 Blown out pixelss
11:45 RAW to the rescue with UFRaw
16:28 Comparing JPEG and UFRaw output
18:50 Correcting a colour cast in UFRaw
20:45 Straightening the image
23:00 Cropping the image
26:50 Improving contrast with a layer in overlay mode and a mask
33:20 Crooping more
35:00 What’s left to do

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I hope this episode plays well on all computers and programs – the encoding should be supported by Quicktime and iTunes. Thanks to Tavo for figuring this out.

There is no GIMP in this episode, there is a bit of F-Spot, but mostly it’s about a new photography project I am starting. I want to make a series of images about means of “Access Control” and thought a bit about it in the video. (The content could have been better structured, but I was with my head more in video encoding and work flows than photography.) Is this still on topic of this show? I had requests for more photography centric stuff – but what do you think? Please write a comment here in the blog.

I point you to Jeff Curto’s podcast Camera Position, where you can find very valuable material about making a photography project from episode 73 on. Jeff is a professor and his lectures about the history of photography are also online as a podcast.

If you want to discuss my project, go to the Forum!

No time for a TOC at the moment.

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I cover two questions for this is the first HD show – and it took ages to render. I will have to adjust my workflow. I start with a problem of Ivo, the producer of Autozine – an online car magazine made with GIMP. He wants to change reality a bit and move letters around in an image.His images are in the companion file.

Then I tackle selective sharpening again after I got a question about how to further control the sharpened area. In episode 6 I constrained the sharpening to the edges in the image – here I reduce it to parts of the image.

In case that you wonder why there is no sharpening while I paint the antenna – have a look at the “eyes” in the layers dialog box…..

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