Meet the GIMP!

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Brand new tech- nology meets stuff from the Stone Age, ehm… the 70’s.

Rawstudio’s 1.0 release sits on the lab bench for a test run. I am impressed by the workflow and the overall appear- ance. The output in the video has some noise in it, but that was my fault.

I had my camera set up to store a RAW and a JPEG image and have put both files and the camera profile into the companion file to this episode. Now you can try to get a better image out of the RAW file than the processor of a Nikon D200.

In a lot of discussions and tutorials you read the term “lith” or “lith film”. One is running in the meetthegimp.org photogroup at 23.hq. I found an old box with real lith film and take you back some decades while describing how I have worked with these sheets of plastic.

Then I try to rebuild one of the effects that were done with lith film in GIMP. I just emulate the effect, but I am working on a process to really simulate the process done with film. You can find the file to this part of the podcast also in the companion file.

How did you like the concept of these two last shows? Not one monolithic block but several shorter segments? I want to offer a mix of different topics in each episode, covering different levels of experience and different interests. I have put up a poll for you to vote on the side bar. If you want to give me more input than just a click, write to info@meetthegimp.org or post a comment here in the blog.

This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Germany License.

Marcin (Martii) pointed me to this RAW conversion program. It does run under Linux and Windows XP/2000. No mention of Vista or Mac.

The screen shots look nice, but I haven’t tried it yet. Shall I cover this program in a show? It doesn’t seem to be open source, but free to download. Where shall I draw the line?

HINT: There is a Donation button on his site. Use it, if you like the software.

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I shot some autumn scenes with a Lensbaby in a very mixed light condition. And I haven’t checked the histogram after this shot. It is the only one with the focus right on spot and a dreamy flair. The leaf in the center was overexposed in the JPG image - blown out highlights ruined the image.

This is the final image - not the one with the blown out highlights….

But I had shot in JPG and NEF (Nikon’s RAW) - so I used UFRaw to produce a TIFF file with the right exposure of the leaf and blended it into the image with a layer mask. This is basically the way (pseudo-) HDR works. Take different parts of the image from differntly exposed photographs.

A slight correction with the hue/saturation tool was necessary to adjust the colours. Cropping was done twice - a mistake made a correction necessary. So I covered some advanced options in cropping.

I promised some links:

• The Lensbabies site
• The Ret Hat Magazine tutorial
• Epsiode 11 about RAW conversion
• The Meet the Gimp! photogroup at 23

Don’t forget to make a triptych and post it in the photogroup. I’ll draw a winner for the one year 23Plus membership sponsored by 23 in show 16. So you have still time to Oct. 18 to submit an entry. The pictures there are already worth to be looked at.

Get the files used!

The files from this episode.

Contact me!

You can leave your comments on this blog or write me a mail.

This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Germany License.

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I try to explain the stuff that influences the quality of your images. File formats, compression, sensor size. Each solution has pro and cons - you have to decide what you need and want.

All the file formats are explained at Wikipedia.

Some stuff about sensor sizes. Quite old but still true.

And this are some of the guys with the big sensors.

Get the files used!

The files from this episode. Beware!This are 55 MB!

Contact me!

You can leave your comments on this blog, write me a mail or go to the Tips from the Top Floor Forum.

This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Germany License.