Meet the GIMP!

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This week I take a trip into the future of GiMP - by visiting Cinepaint. I read in the book “Welcome to Oz” from Vincent Versace (Tip for the German audience: Wenn ihr das Buch bei einem an den Großhandel LIBRI angeschlossenen Buchhändler bestellt, ist es billiger als bei Amazon!) how to adjust colours in LAB mode. He claims that it is much more intuitive than in RGB - and he is right.
I was so fascinated by playing with these colours that I spent a long time with that. If you get bored - just switch off. The only information after the start of John Pazdan’s “Lazy Ass” music is, that I save the curve for later use with the big image.
Result of this expedition into color space: There are no dragons out there, but now I want 16 bit and I want LAB! Now!
For converting an image to LAB you need a colour profile. I got mine from here, but the whole site is worth a visit.

Some more links: Wikipedia has a lot about Colour, Colour Spaces, RGB, LAB and HP has a Colour Distance Calculator.

At the very start of the video I take up the “opacity painting” and forward you a tip from Daniel, how to select an area of uniform opacity.

I said once: “No ads here!”, but here is one:

The TOC of this Episode

Selecting areas of same opacity (update for #54) 1:30
Colour spaces 4:00
LAB colour space 6:47
LAB degrades images in 8 bit 14:22
Cinepaint 18:37
Visualisation of the colourspace by Cinepaint 21:36
Converting to LAB 22:36
Correting colours with the curves tool in LAB 24:00
Playing with the colours 27:10 (No real information after this point)
Music “Lazy Ass” by John Pazdan
Saving the curve for the large image 33:00

BTW, “hic sunt dracones” means “Here are dragons” and was used by a map maker in medieval times to mark unknown territory.

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Someone in Russia with the IP 23.142.32.11 is constantly downloading this file. More than 10000 times today. I have pulled the video off the server until the situation returns to normal. PLEASE KEEP AN EYE AT YOUR DOWNLOAD DAEMONS! (Download Master in this case).

In this first Epsiode of the second year of Meet the GiMP! I return to Cakovec, Croatia with an image from the old castle. For celebrations I made a double length show. And to celebrate the Croatian style weather here (30+C), I had the windows open and you get some street noises. Our weather is mostly so cold that only bigger shops have an AC.

Before Croatia there is an update on the Old Ink Challenge from the last show. You can download the new set of images and try your knowledge of GiMP (or any other free software program) on that. Please send the results to info@meetthegimp.org.

Of course the new Forum gets a place too in this show. Have a look!

Then I reveal the secret of painting without gaps or overlaps - to answer a question from Luis in Buenos Aires.

In Cakovec I take you with me while I shoot the image to postprocess and tell you a secret of a lot of better photographers than me: MOVE!

The postprocessing involves mostly stuff I had already covered. New is an enhancement of the sky with a masked layer in multiply mode.

A team of highly trained Penguins in the MTG-Labs invented a new TLA, the TOC. And here it is:

The Old Ink Challenge 0:40
The new forum 7:00
Painting without overlap or gaps 10:50
How to shoot a castle 15:20
Postprocessing the castle image 18:20
Rotate 18:50
Crop 20:30
Clone a powerline out 24:20
Boosting the colours with curves 31:10
Enhance the sky with a masked layer in multiply mode 33:00

Now you can skip the parts of the video you don’t like.

Edit: With an audience like you a podcaster can be lazy:

The image I mentioned in the podcast and two links found by Andrew.

And another goodie found by Mathias in the Netzzeitung

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I have to do some corrections on last weeks episode. As I wrote in the update, I had made a blunder with the last layer.
Then we have another video from Andrew A. Gill, the guy who enlightened us about CYMK. He takes on the Comic style from episode 50 and tries to copy a style used by Soviet propaganda and today by Shepard Fairey. +Link +Link
The image on top of this post has been made by Andrew. It’s not exactly Soviet Propaganda.
Then I have a challenge for you. I got set of images from Ted. He is researching family history. So he has to work a lot with reproductions of old documents. The rules are easy: You are happy about what you get and you don’t complain about quality. Here is a set of images (11MB) for you to cut your teeth in. The goal is to enhance readability. Please document your steps. Next week I’ll tell you how to report about your results.

Finally there are some news about GiMP 2.5.2.

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I shot this image on my way to Cakovec from the airplane over the Chiemsee. That is a famous lake in Bavaria. We were already so high in the air that serious haze made the image flat. It’s the one at the bottom of the image in this post.

In this episode I show how to get rid of the haze by using the curves or levels tool. And of course I have a way using layers. A layer copy in burn mode takes a lot of the haze away. Further fine tuning involves a layer mask and an overlay layer copy.

EDIT: Mathias (http://mathias.lindner.de.vu/) pointed me to an error in the layers version. The last overlay layer didn’t work well. I used a copy of the base image - I should have used a copy of the visible image after all the burning. “Edit|Copy Visible” and then “Edit|Paste” and setting the floating layer to a new layer by “Layer|New Layer” would have done the job. This image here is done that way:

Now one could start to lighten the cloud shadow in the forrest and water a bit and correct or enhance the vignetting made by the camera….. But this is not bad, considering the image where I started.

I couldn’t record in Croatia, somehow we never got a recording with sound and video. If I am invited to another such event, I’ll buy a strong enough notebook and test the setup before the trip. But aside from this it was fun and I met a lot of interesting people, most of them connected with the Croatian Linux Group “HULK”.

I recommended Akkana Peck’s book “Beginning GIMP: From Novice to Professional”. It’s the best book about GIMP I have seen up to now. If you buy via Amazon.com, use the link on her site.

You can find the files used in this episode at the usual place.

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As I should have known, Belize is a small country in middle America. Next to Mexico and Nicaragua. I should have known because our fair traded Bananas are from Belize. But this video is not about Bananas, it’s about this image made in the shadow on a bright tropical day.

You see the problems in the original top-left. The background is a bit too bright  and the woman way too dark. But two layers in overlay mode of an inverted desaturated copy of the image helped a lot. The final touches came by applying a layer for dodging and burning, also in overlay mode, and painting on it in white. All Croat to you? (Not Greek this week, see this blog entry.…) No problem, after the video you’ll understand.

Overlay mode does strange things, even the explanation in the help pages is a bit cryptic: “Overlay mode inverts the pixel value of the lower layer, multiplies it by two times the pixel value of the upper layer, adds that to the original pixel value of the lower layer, divides by 255, and then multiplies by the pixel value of the original lower layer and divides by 255 again.” I’ll think about a way to get that a bit easier to swallow.

The Linux Darkroom is an interesting collection of links and program descriptions. Definitely worth to look at - and perhaps you have something to add.

You can find the file used in this episode at the usual place.

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This 50th episode is 40 minutes long. I am not sure if this  “Double Length” is caused by the complexity of the work or simply a bit of laziness. But I declare “celebrating the 50th” as the official reason for this.

The log files of my blog show from where clicks are coming in. One of the most successful linkers is Jeff (jeffegg2) on flickr. He drops a comment with a link to this site whenever appropriate.

There is a GIMP users group on flickr that I found out about on this way. And there I found a tutorial from Shelly and Roy about making a comic like drawing out of a photography.

I was looking for such an effect for a while. My final goal is to do something like Roy Lichtenstein did - replacing every colour gradient with solid colour or a dot pattern. I think this is a step on that way.

I am not very happy with my result. It still has too much “non-comic” in it. If you compare my work with this image from Shelly and Roy, you see that I am not really there.

One thing that I found out after I made the video: these images are very ugly to scale down. So work in your final resolution.

You can find the file used in this episode at the usual place.

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As nothing catastrophic has happened this week I’ll continue trying to make simple graphics with GIMP. You see one of them on the left.

This is done with the selection tools, working with paths and gradient fills.

If you need something more complicated, go to inkscape and the tutorials from Richard and heathenx. You know the proverb about screws and hammers….

One tip: Always use layers. If in doubt, add a new layer and work on that. It gives you some of the flexibilty of a vector based program, you can move, rotate and scale parts of the image without much effort.

This hat is here with a purpose. I had to shell out more money for this project as planned. And a lot of you have offered assistance. So here I am putting the hat on the street.

My account at PayPal is under the ID “rs@gorfnet.de”. I tried to make a button here, but the thing always bombs out with some decryption errors. Perhaps Wordpress messing with the code?

Does somebody know a different micro payment system? Perhaps a better one? A GeekBank would be a nice thing….

If you want to give me some money via the European bank system, ask me for the IBAN/BIC number per mail. I don’t want to put them up here. And as I said in the video, I like stuff from ThinkGeek.com and Amazon.DE.

More about lowering the running costs by sharing the server will follw in time.

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This one is really short and made in a hurry. I show you a surprise parcel and my plan for a vacation in Croatia. Then it is a bit about GIMP - how to draw simple figures. I start with a straight line and end with a curved path. While editing I found a lot missing that should have been told here. Well, there will be a next episode.

You can order the DVD from Derek Shaw. Price per DVD is £5.00 pounds sterling plus £1.50 pounds sterling for postage and packing. They will be on eBay too soon.

The Free Festival (festival of free technologies and new community practices) in Croatia is here. There will be also a guest speaker from the Blender crew, a great program.

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Just to get you over the gap in the flow of videos here is the last one before the server dies. And it’s the first one on the new server - this posting was not in the backup because the provider killed the server one day early. All your comments are lost too.

It covers CYMK modes for printing in a video of Andrew A. Gill. He tells us the why and how and what can be done with GIMP and what not.The discussion with more links is here.

I show you how to install and use the “Save for Web” plugin.

Hope to see you again soon! 2 weeks from now on!

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This week I’ll answer the first search term that led according to the logs someone to „Meet the GIMP!“. “Getting rid of people in GIMP“ was the question. And here, about 9 months later, is the answer.

I took two shots of the same scene with my point and shoot camera to remove some moving cars (the runner shown here was just an accident. But I like the idea and will do a “real” one soon). I used a technique similar to that shown in episode 44, only this time a bit more sophisticated using layer masks instead of the eraser.

But I had no tripod and no beanbag. So unintentionally I moved and rotated the camera between the shots. Registering (adjusting them to a perfect fit) is the largest part of the work to be done. This involves the selection of a point of reference, moving the top layer, setting the centre of rotation and finally rotating the top layer. With more than two layers this has to be repeated for each layer.

I hadn’t thought that this would work out so good and easy. You can just shoot any public place without moving traffic if you make enough images. Imagine a big crossing, all traffic lights red.  And you don’t need the tripod. OK, it’s better with….

Some links, as promised:

The exhibition in Hannover’s Sprengel Museum and the formidable book from the museum, in German and in English. Helen Levitt in Wikipedia, an interview with her on NPR and some images on “Masters of photography”

The file with the images from the podcast is at the usual spot.

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