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.
I seem to have destroyed my Ubuntu system with too much experiments. It is running, but stuff crashes, especially UFRaw. So I have to repair that before I can do the next show.
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.
After a lot of work in the last two weeks I went a bit under the weather this (for me long) weekend. I think I’ll be fit again when school starts. Sometimes I think it would be smarter to move the schedule of the down time from free time to school time….
But there are two nice places to check out for you in the time until the next show.
And if you have caught yourself wanting to print a logo on a plain T-Shirt after you made an image from it - here is the solution in Spanish and English made by a young woman in Venezuela. There are 5 more videos to watch. (Thanks to medyr for the tip.)
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.
And here are, as promised, my settings. Compare if you have problems, my setup is running, but I am not sure why….
Playback – check for “Stop playback locks up” if you encounter stutter – uncheck “Play every frame” for performance
Recording – Important is the last point about images
Performance
Interface – Check “Show Thumbnails”
About – for version information
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.
Now also RawTherapee qualifies for a show in Meet the GIMP – they have opened their source and published under GPL. A very early Alpha of the new major version (3.0) has been published and I already got some promising reports from viewers. Congratulations!
I’ll try RawTherapee when they have put on a more mature Alpha and make a podcast about it.
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
If you ever wanted to look an image forensic specialist over the shoulder while looking at some nice “enhanced” imgages – have a look at the Hackerfactor. Be sure to look for the link to the sequel and finale and also check out this nice Bikini model. Poor girl – some bones are missing and her fingers have been hit by a magic spell – they cast no shadow. This page also has a follow up.
Running the Server costs 20-30€ a month and this is covered by your donations up to December 2010.
Everything that is donated from now on until I put the hat on the floor again in November 2010 will be used to finance books and other stuff that goes into the show.
The GIMP project is also happy about your donation!
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