Seth aka W_Nightshade has made a video about making ambigrams with paths. You see the one he did here on the side. I couldn’t make a show out of his video – but you’ll get a fast version of it with music in the video and if you are interested can download the whole package in the companion file. The music is from John Pazdan, the composer of the podcast music.

I start with a book review. Akkana Peck’s book “Beginning GIMP – from Novice to Professional” is gone into a second edition. And now it’s even better than before. If you are looking for a book about GIMP – this would be my first choice. Apress has given me the second edition book – I bought the first one before starting with this project.

And I have two of the books to give away. To you. We’ll make two challenges, one from Philippe, one from me. And Apress will send a book to each of the winners.

The TOC

01:00 Switch to HD
02:30 Ubuntu script for Wacom Tablets
03:45 Book review: Akkana Peck:
10:30 Path tool: Design mode
11:00 Adding nodes and moving them
12:30 Close a path
12:50 Add a second component to the path
13:45 Expanding a path
14:30 Selecting nodes and moving them together
15:00 Delete a node
15:30 Move a component
15:50 Tweak a segment
16:15 Move a segment
17:40 Interlude: Ambigrams by Seth (Video) and John Pazdan (Music: Solistice)
21:45 Edit mode with paths
22:15 Adding nodes
22:30 Pulling out handles
23:30 Removing handles and segemnts
24:40 Joining components of the path
25:10 Straightening out the curve at the node
26:30 Read the documentation at docs.gimp.org
27:50 What does Akkane Peck write about the path tool?
29:40 iTunes help needed

Meet the GIMP Video Podcast by Rolf Steinort and Philippe Demartin is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Germany License.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://meetthegimp.org.

Bills have a complicated background for discouraging counterfeiters. Philippe analyses the background of a 10 SFR bill from his home country and then combines two images from an analysis of Linux filesystems to the intricate pattern on the right.

The  foreground of the note will be finished in his next show.

The TOC

00:20 Philippe looks at a 10 SFR bill and tells a bit about his home country
04:00 Looking for a motive for the bill – Visual expedition into the Linux file system
06:50 Draging an image from the Web into GIMP
07:00 Two ways of cropping a layer
09:30 Scale the layer to the final size
10:15 Flipping the layer (mirror it)
11:20 Duplicating the layer
12:20 More volume with “self bumping” (bump map explained)
17:00 Texture with Gimppressionist?
18:00 another texture from the web
19:20 Scaling to adjust to the rest of the image – get out the calculator
22:00 Duplicate and adjust
25:20 Reduce to image size
26:00 Making paper structure with Gimpressionist
27:15 Clipping out the dots out of the texture
28:30 Bumping the dots
30:30 A place fot the water mark
32:20 Filling the layer mask with a gradient (blend tool)
35:00 Room for text (bilinear blend)
37:00 Good bye

Meet the GIMP Video Podcast by Rolf Steinort and Philippe Demartin is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Germany License.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://meetthegimp.org.

Paths are Bezier curves and are controlled by anchor points and handles.With enough time and determination you can give them any form you want. A path can be generated with the path tool, from a selection and from a text in GIMP. And it can be stored and even exported as a SVG file.

So they do fit more into a vector based program like Inkscape. If you use them for drawing something, ask yourself if you are using the right tool.

Gimp has a good documentation about path basics , the paths tool, the dialog and the paths menu.

The last part of the video is edited in a hurry – you’ll notice some blunders.

The TOC

01:10 Path concept
03:05 Adding the Path dialog in GIMP
04:20 Adding a path with the Path tool
05:50 The Paths dialog
06:40 Turn a path into a selection
07:20 Stroke the path
07:50 Path context menue
08:40 Turn a selection into a path
09:40 Turn a text into a path and back
11:50 Put a text on a path
14:30 Don’t use GIMP for vector graphics
15:00 Wrapping up

Meet the GIMP Video Podcast by Rolf Steinort and Philippe Demartin is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Germany License.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://meetthegimp.org.

You find more about the Orton Effect in Wikipedia and a lot of other places.The one I show in the video is from Nature Photographer. Michael Orton’s homepage is not working at the moment, but you can fnd a review of his book. I haven’t found it in our library system yet – has one of you read it?

PCIN.net has a detailed description of the analog workflow. After reading that I would change my approach a bit. Stay tuned.

Even Wolfram Mathematica has Orton, I never thought of that program as a graphics software. But if you think about it – it has everything it needs built in.

The TOC

00:20 The show is late
01:40 The Orton effect
03:20 Michael Orton and his book
04:40 Cropping the image
06:00 Making bright an blurred layers
07:00 Blurring
08:40 Multiply mode set
09:20 Compare the result
09:25 Playing with the opacity sliders
10:15 Points for variation
11:35 Recap with a different image
15:00 Script?
15:30 Wolfram Mathematica Orton Effect Plugin

Meet the GIMP Video Podcast by Rolf Steinort and Philippe Demartin is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Germany License.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://meetthegimp.org.

In #39 I had shown how to make a Duotone or Tritone out of a monochrome image. And then Paul Wellner Bou showed in his Blog an easier way to do this.

It’s working, but why? To answer that, I look into the HSV colour model and try to explain the effects of the different layer modes.

A little bit about sharpening in an extra layer with “value” as the mode and a pointer to faking analog camera frames in digital images with a script and an original Hasselblad frame made by Marcus Ranum are at the end of the episode.

The TOC

01:00 Toning images
02:00 Toning enhances the visual volume
03:50 The recipe for a duotone
04:30 Adding a layer in colour mode and adding a layer mask from an image copy
07:00 Doing the same for the second tone
08:00 Inverting the mask
09:20 Switching layers on and off
10:30 Sharpening in Value mode
12:20 Unsharp mask
15:10 Explanation of Colour and Value mode
17:10 HSV colour model
20:00 A fake view camera frame
22:20 Multiply mode
23:40 A real Hasselblad frame

Meet the GIMP Video Podcast by Rolf Steinort and Philippe Demartin is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Germany License.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://meetthegimp.org.

With the money being on the back burner, Philippe made us a bowl of soup – absolutely low on calories and from scratch.

You’ll see how to get a textured plane into the shape of the soup, create reflections and steam and to control the light.

Meet the GIMP Video Podcast by Rolf Steinort and Philippe Demartin is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Germany License.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://meetthegimp.org.

His image was on a glass plate negative and was then copied as a contact print to photographic paper. The guys who took the image were a bit sloppy and left some lint and marks on the image. And then came 140 years of storage and handling.

Norman has offered to restore the images and I’ll try to help him with this and the next episode. In this one I revisit the clone tool and explore the heal tool. It’s the right tool for tackling all the spots in the image.

The show starts with greeting to Russia, A lot of visits to the site are from there and comments in Cyrillic are getting more. Google translate helps not a lot and so we are looking for some help from Russia. You speak Russian? Become an Editor for this blog and decide what’s real and what’s SPAM. And to all the Russian visitors here – please try to write in English, even if you think it’s not good enough. We will understand you better than Google translate – or ask.

Then I show a plugin that turns dull screenshots into nice reflecting 3-D product shot.

This plugin was written by Fabian A. Scherschel, the German part of the Linux Outlaws podcast. Fabian is drinking beer and talking with Dan Lynch (several cups of tea) about Linux, Open Source news, politics and more.

I think you’ll hear about a really good video podcast about GIMP there soon, so check them out.

The TOC

00:30 Greetings to Russia
02:48 Linuxoutlaws and screenshot plugin
08:25 Norman has a new problem
09:00 What’s wrong with this image from 1870?
14:10 How much to correct
15:10 Make a backup layer
15:30 Clone tool
17:30 Heal tool
22:10 Undo a whole area
23:20 Working on the face
25:30 Verschlimmbessern
26:50 Comparison of clone and heal tool
29:10 Keep the pattern of the suit
31:00 Tedious work ahead, but….
31:20 perhaps a G’MIC can help?
32:50 Wrap up

Meet the GIMP Video Podcast by Rolf Steinort and Philippe Demartin is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Germany License.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://meetthegimp.org.

But in reality this sign was made from scratch by Philippe, with a generous amout of bump mapping and applying plasma. Two things are to be thought about – making this three dimensional and getting the age effects right. Rust blooms and runs and so there are several ways to go to emulate it.

Every time I watch one of these shows I am stunned by the ease of making a three dimensional effect with some simple shadows.

Do you have any ideas for future “From Scratch” shows? Post them here in the comments or go to the forum! It’s not that we are running out of ideas really soon, but a little input from you would be very appreciated.

The TOC

will follow

Meet the GIMP Video Podcast by Rolf Steinort and Philippe Demartin is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Germany License.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://meetthegimp.org.

There is more to tablets in show 104.

At the end of the show I have a essage for the German speaking audience. There is no German Meet the GIMP, but Berhnhard Stockmann (devvv) from Gimpusers.de and Gimpusers.com has made a nice video DVD about GIMP. Also a DVD about building WEB sites. Both are available for 29.95€ in book stores and online.

I gave the GIMP DVD to Boris form Happy Shooting, a German language podcast about photography. Boris (nsonic) and Chris (Tips from the Top Floor) are well known podcasters and as a team they are simply great. Useful information and a lot of “dumme Sprüche”. Just now there are no shows, Chris is trecking in the Himalaya and the SatPhone broke down.

The TOC

00:30 The Wacom Intuos Tablet on stage
07:30 GIMP and the tablet
11:20 Using the tablet
12:35 Brush dynamics
16:00 Advantages over the mouse
17:40 Good bye to all non German speakers
18:20 Promotion for devvv’s GIMP DVD
21:30 Second end of the show

This work is licensed under a

Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Germany License.

I wanted to do something special – for example an interview with Sven Neumann. But he has had no time – you’ll hear about it in the video.

But I could help out a bit with a scientific project – finding out how much a airplane wing bends in a wind tunnel. This is still work in progress, you can follow it here.

You can find the cross stitch script in the forum.

And then we have a new script out of our secret Script Writers Guild. It’s the tonal range relection script and it can do some very weird stuff. And either Bert has bugged my computer or can read minds – he included the stuff I wanted to have without having seen the video.

The TOC

00:20 Show 100!
01:00 Congratulations to Sven Neumann!
04:10 The problem – measure wing deformation
06:20 The images
07:00 Stacking images in layers
07:30 Aligning the images
12:20 Cropping
12:50 Saving as XCF
13:20 Calibrating the setup
14:30 Measurement tool
15:20 Making a grid
17:00 Putting lines on the wing tips
19:30 Making a grid with horizontal lines
20:30 Turning the grid into a ruler
21:10 Beware of wrong selections
22:10 Pintin straigth lines
24:30 Save each layer as JPEG
26:20 Recap
28:00 Happy Birthday!
29:30 Cross stich script
30:30 Tonal range selection script
32:20 Simple DRI/HDR with the script
33:10 Installing the script
34:50 Testing the script
43:20 Wrapping up the script
44:50 Selection instead of new layer
46:00 Good bye and spread the word!

This work is licensed under a

Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Germany License.

Philippe is doing it from scratch again, this time unscratched acrylic glass, cut with a laser and mounted on a brushed steel plate.

Acrylic glass panes (or other kinds of glass panes) are not only transparent. They reflect externally and internally, distort, cast shadows and more. So it’s a lot to think about to get a believable image.

In the companion file there are also two scripts from Philippe for making such glass panes with letters cut into them.

This work is licensed under a

Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Germany License.

I start with a snap shot with a bad composition. A crop, a bit of curves and sharpening and the snap shot turned into a better snap shot.

The image to the right is not made with GIMP – it’s shot with a “Subjektiv” and had only it’s curve tweaked a bit. The Subjektiv is a lens with exchangable optics. I used an acrylic lens, like in the Holga. There is also a glas lens which even can be stopped down with an aperture, a pinhole and a zone plate. So this image is a “real” photography – would there be a difference if I had shot it with a good lens and made it look like this in GIMP?

I was inspired to this topic by these two discussions in the forum. And I have started a third about the question I posted here. Got an opinion? Join us there or post your comments here in the show blog.

There will probably no show next week.

This work is licensed under a

Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Germany License.

An important tool for this is the Focus Blur plugin. The homepage needs some assistance in translation from Japanese to English – are you able to help?

The Focus Blur plugin needs a “Depth Map”, a grayscale image which defines the amount of blur  in each part of the image. Rob A has made a tutorial about making a believable depth map. It’s not enough to make a simple gradient, you have to keep things with the same distance to the focal plane on the same level of gray and make the gradients follow the planes in the image. And here my subect turned out to be too complicated. My result is not as good as I wanted.

If I wanted to do this again I would choose a different subject and camera position. Higher up and farther away and so including more stuff. And I would look out for regular shapes in the area to make building a depth map easier.

(EDIT 04/03/09) A much better example than I was able to produce was made by the above mentioned Rob A. He describes his process in the forum thread.

This work is licensed under a

Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Germany License.

Todays topic is simulating a stone carving. Again Philippe starts with an analysis of the real world: how do we perceive the depth of a carving? It’s not only a drop shadow, like in so many illustrations. For “believability” additional highlights and some effects from dirt and imperfections are also important. Then he constructs these details in a very convincing way.

From the forum discussion about this episode:

Regarding the theme of software-patents I want to bring in
the link to the petition against software-patents here:

http://www.stopsoftwarepatents.eu/

Please read the information and sign the petition…
…and spread the word, please!

Softwarepatents are absolutely contarily to free software,
and even commercial (and also closed source software) vendors
can get problems by them. But for open source they are extremely
unhealthy.

For Software there is the copyright law, and it’s well suited.
Software-patents are… well, how to say it… they are… hmhhhh,
they are …. evil.(GIMPel)

Nothing to add! Sign the petition, they are not dead yet.

This work is licensed under a

Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Germany License.

Again I steal an idea from the forum. It’s making fake tilt shift images. They look like images of model railway landscapes but are made from reality. Have a look at the forum for links to images by Bert and others.

I do half of the work in this podcast – planning the image and give the real world a plastic look. Next week I’ll add the focus blur that is so typical for macro shots.

But at the start I show that I have learned something from Philippe: Look carefully at an original. The image on the right is a H0 scale model in the sand on the Weser beach – real plastic.

The companion file contains the original shots – the xcf will follow next week.

The TOC

00:30 Fake tilt shift images
01:50 Analyzing a macro shot of a toy
05:30 The real image
06:30 What shall be in the focus?
13:00 Rotate before crop and resize
16:00 Inside out crop
17:30 Scaling down
18:00 Analyze the plastic look
19:30 Selective sharpening
24:30 Unsharp mask for getting the plastic look
28:50 Specular highlights

This work is licensed under a

Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Germany License.

It’s curves time again. This powerful tool is in the centre of the stage and I try to explain it’s nearly unlimited power over colours, contrasts and brightness. Worth to learn.

This week I visit a vineyard in Missouri (too bad – only via HTTP) and discuss the dangers of blowing out the highlights under overcast sky. Just underexpose a bit when in doubt, you can get detail out of dark areas but 255 white has nothing to save in it.

The overexposed sky has killed all the details in a tree that looked over the horizon. I use the curves tool on a layer copy to get the details back and integrate the fixed tree with a layer mask into the original shot.

Then I adjust the black and white points and give a little more contrast to the image – of course with the curves tool. Finally I have some fun with – of course – the curves tool and come to an image that is not suitable for a vineyard but for a LSD factory. But they don’t have websites….

The TOC

(Kevin, I made one! )

00:20 Wine, Missouri and the Church
02:50 One image – two views
04:30 The histogram
06:40 Diagnosing overexposure
07:30 DO NOT BLOW OUT THE HIGHLIGHTS!!!
09:25 Histogram details
09:40 Linear and logarithmic
13:50 Blown out tree branches
14:30 Curves tool sight seeing
15:10 The translation line/curve
15:40 Black point
17:50 Set contrast in the curve
18:40 Bend the curve
20:30 Inspector – eye dropper
22:30 Repairing the tree
25:30 Get the blue cast out of the twigs
25:40 Adding a layer mask
29:30 Copy visible in new layer
33:00 “HDR” in a very cheap way
34:30 Power of the curve

This work is licensed under a

Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Germany License.

There are a lot of ways to do this – I chose to make a layer mask with the threshold tool. Selecting with the path tool is an other option – see the comments to this post.

To get rid of the artificial look I feathered (blurred) the edge of the mask a bit. This gives a soft edge.

The subject of this image is the logo of the Weltladen in Bremen. This is a shop with fair trade products. In the past these products were often bad in quality and high in price, but this has changed. Now the goal of a lot of fair trade organisations is to get the producers to good quality for a competitive price and make them fit for competing in the regular markets. By going mostly organic they can get more money for the products. We buy there all our chocolate (in the box with a bulk discount ) , wine, orange and other juices, rice and even a honey from southern Chile. Philippe considers this type of honey as the best from Chile and recommended mixing it with yoghurt. Exellent!

TOC

00:20 Fairtrade shop
01:42 The initial image
02:05 Create a layer to be used later as a layer-mask
02:50 The problem with using the threshold tool
03:45 Try doing it in peices
04:40 Use the selection tool to keep the part we want
06:15 Repeat for the next zone
08:20 Join the parts together with merge visible layers
09:00 Fine-tuning
09:47 – trying to find the biggest contrast using the channels
12:00 – paint in the missing parts
14:40 – invert colours to tidy-up the edges
16:00 Make the layer mask
17:30 More fine tuning
18:25 Smooth the edges
18:30 – select the wanted area
20:00 – feather the edges
21:00 – fill the unwanted areas to make them transparent
22:00 More fine tuning
23:53 Brighten the catch-lights in the eyes
26:52 The End

TOC kindly made by Kevin

Note: Use “right click” and “Save as” to download the image file. Somehow Podpress doesn’t get it….

It’s Philippe’s turn again. Today he starts with an image of his son David and turns it into a poster like the ones made by Shephard Fairey.

We had a show about this topic by Andrew A. Gill, who made a USSR propaganda style poster out of a portrait of President Roosevelt.

Philippe uses basically the same technique but has some aditional tricks in his sleeve, as separating zones with details that have to be preserved from others that should turn into flat areas and clear lines. And he shows how to get some fine lines into the image to get a half tone shade. The result really looks like a serigraph.

As always he starts with carefull watching and planning – a thing I too often forget.

This work is licensed under a

Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Germany License.

More information about selections, feathering. growing and shrinking them is in the outstanding GIMP documentation.

The image on the right is not made with this technique. I just tweaked the curve madly and used an insanely amount of unsharp mask.

Before all that I’ll take you to the work of Bert, who has combined images of the past and today. The results are stunning, have a look in this thread in the forum.

And at the end I’ll go back to the last show and finish the image that I made for selling a twin vacuum gauge. I left out the downscaling and sharpening. This gives the last kick for the image. The gauges are in the science collection of my school now – not on sale.

This work is licensed under a

Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Germany License.

I want to sell some stuff on eBay and of course I know that it will sell better with a good image. So I set up my “Production Shot Home Studio”, consisting out of a special height adjustable table, a light tent, reflector and flash.

EDIT: See the comments for additional tips about IKEA and other suppliers of high grade photographic equipment.

After that I edited the image in GIMP to get a nice appearance like in a catalogue. Now I see that the white balance is off….. But I am already thinking about putting this thing into our science lab in school istead of putting it into an auction. We don’t have such low pressure measurement devices.

The TOC

00:40 Setting up the shot
02:45 Opening the image in GIMP
04:25 Making a copy
04:40 Levels tool explained (forgot to cut some stuff away)
07:30 Getting the image brighter
08:40 Switching to curves for finetuning
10:50 Ímproving contrast with copy in overlay mode and layer mask
14:20 Getting the background white
17:50 Wrapping up
19:50 Cropping

This work is licensed under a

Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Germany License.

Today I talk about the Eraser Tool, Alpha Channels and Layer Masks – in short: about transparency. Jim got me onto this topic with an email. Jim, consider this the answer.

Norman sent me another mail about F-Spot and using RAW and  XCF files. Up to the inclusion of XCF files in the database and an option to get images out of UFRaw in XCF or TIFF, just copy the path of the JPEG with a right click. Store your XCF in the same directory as the F-Spot images and add the tag “HasXCF” So you know that there is a XCF and can search for it.

Show 100 is coming up. What shall be in it? I know about the intro, but nothing more. Discuss it in the forum or in the comments.

The TOC

00:18 Welcome
00:22 Ideas for episode 100 requested
01:10 The erase tool
02:57 The erasing with an alpha channel
04:05 The channels
06:40 Effect on the alpha channel when erasing
08:45 Un-erasing
10:30 Comparing with layer-masks
14:00 Historic and current images combined
15:20 Transparency menu
15:45 Colour to Alpha
17:00 Threshold Alpha
18:00 Alpha to selection
18:30 Summary
20:45 F-Spot and .xcf files
28:28 The End

After reading all your comments to this post and tracing back the origin of the mail I found out that this upcoming device is not from China but Chile. It’s only two letters difference…. OK, it’s a fake – but you should have seen this at one glance. Which device for nerds is shown with a bearded guy and not with someone female and near 20? Thank you to the people who recognized Philippe and kept their fingers away from the keyboard.

Philippe shows today how to make a mock up of a device with buttons and more and to combine it with a photograph.

This work is licensed under a

Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Germany License.

Edit: I have said something wrong in the video: The hotkey for opening the tag entry is “t”, not “Ctrl-t”. “Enter” validates the input and “Esc” closes the entry field.
It’s about editing images and exporting them into image sharing sites or into folders. Even a gallery creation function is provided, see the image on the right. The editing is only suitable for simple, quick edits. But you can call GIMP or UFRaw to help with heavier stuff. The images produced by these programs are also stored in the database of F-Spot. Only XCF files are not known to F-Spot – a real drawback in my eyes. Perhaps a later version will include them. At version 0.5 there is still room for an other feature.

F-Spot is expandable. You can get a lot of plugins on the F-Spot homepage or write your own.
I’ll use F-Spot from now on as my image database solution.
F-Spot stores the images in a system of folders (year/month/day), so backup or access with other programs is not a problem. While backing up you should include the F-Spot database, or all your tags will be gone. I shy away from the option to include the metadata in the original files – perhaps I am paranoid.

The TOC

02:45 Copy images with drag and drop
03:24 Why I shot in manual mode
04:30 Adjusting colours with F-Spot edit mode
06:15 F-Spot makes new versions of the images
06:30 Export to 23hq, flickr and more sites
09:40 Exporting to GIMP
12:00 Sorry, no XCF supported
13:00 Develop in UFRaw
14:50 More export filters
14:40 Making a Web gallery in seconds
18:00 Adding a tag from the keyboard
18:36 Managing extensions for export and editing

This work is licensed under a

Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Germany License.

You find the F-Spot homepage at f-spot.org.

F-Spot is a program for Linux and the Gnome desktop environment. But there are more programs out there for other Linux flavours and operating systems. For some you can even pay money.

I hope that I concentrated enough on the work flow  and not the specialities of this program. The work flow should be the same under all programs. Import, rate, delete the bad stuff, tag and store or post process further.

The TOC

00:20 Introduction (Bremen, site of shooting)
03:30 Open StreetMap
04:00 Insering the memory card and importing the images
06:20 Add a general tag to the import
07:30 Looking around in F-Spot
10:40 Merge JPEG and RAW images to one entry
11:50 Different modes of F-Spot
14:00 Help files
14:20 Burst trick and Browse mode
15:00 Rating the images
16:00 A glimpse into edit mode
18:10 Rotate an image
18:30 Rating revisited
19:20 Fullscreen mode
20:30 Select by rating
22:00 Deleting the un-stared images
22:30 Tagging the images
23:30 Adding a tag to the cloud
24:30 Excluding images with a certain tag from the view
26:10 Edit a tag – name and icon
27:00 AirShelters. musicians and peace
31:00 Summing up – what can F-Spot do
33:40 Web site design help wanted

Open Street Map provided the map of Bremen.

In the forum we are planning a new design for this web site. More specific, we plan and Daniel does the work. A big thank you to you, Daniel! Please check out the progress at our playground and give us some tips here in the comments or in the forum.

If you have filled out the registration forms in the forum and got no mail with the confirmation link to click at – please send me an eMail at info@meetthegimp.org. There is a problem with the mail on some servers.

The sound of this episode is a bit off. I have a new headset for recording – good quality – but I have messed up the mixer settings. Some experiments to do.

Sorry, no TOC yet.

There was a problem with the upload. If you have downloaded before 11:00 GMT, please check your file and reload if necessary.

This work is licensed under a

Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Germany License.

This week I start with a short introduction into autostereoscopic images, see two posts below. Then I cover the GEGL operation “c2g”, which converts acouloured image into a monochrome image with a lot of noise or other other effects. It’s a “try out” thing – up to now I have not found documentation. Perhaps one has to look into the source. Be warned – some parameters can kill the program.

Then Joseph tells us. how easy it is to make “HDR” images with QTPFSGUI. It’s not as complicated as I feared. I’ll try it soon myself. The website Joseph pointed me to is here.

The TOC

00:28 Autostereoscopic images

02:10 Petersons image with GEGL c2g

03:30 c2g is used

06:30 Introducing Joseph

07:00 Introduction into HDR photography

09:00 QTPFSGui

10:00 Aligning the images

10:30 waiting….

11:20 Editing tools

12:10 Set the parameters

12:50 Save the image

13:00 Change the EV values

14:30 Tone mapping

15:40 saving in an LDR format (JPEG)

16:20 different effects

18:10 Web site with more info

This work is licensed under a

Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Germany License.

Then Joseph tells us. how easy it is to make “HDR” images. It’s not as complicated as I feared. I’ll try it soon myself. The website Joseph pointed me to is here.

The TOC

00:28 Autostereoscopic images
02:10 Petersons image with GEGL c2g
03:30 c2g is used
06:30 Introducing Joseph
07:00 Introduction into HDR photography
09:00 QTPFSGui
10:00 Aligning the images
10:30 waiting….
11:20 Editing tools
12:10 Set the parameters
12:50 Save the image
13:00 Change the EV values
14:30 Tone mapping
15:40 saving in an LDR format (JPEG)
16:20 different effects
18:10 Web site with more info

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

I found these links useful: Gimp Guru and Petteri’s Pontifications. The last one is a very rich ressource.

The end of the video is quite abrupt. I didn’t want to start the recording again, you can read the rest here: “These 1000 Danish Crowns cover half a year of the server costs and the domain fees for this year. A big thank you!And there is more nice stuff in the pipeline. Perhaps we will have a challenge soon – with a real price from a sponsor. Good Bye up to next week!”

The TOC

00:30 Film grain – then and now
02:20 What’s film grain?
03:00 Anaylsing grain in photographs
05:05 Getting digital grain
05:30 Extracting from a scanned image
09:05 Sythetic grain
10:00 Make artificial grain
13:10 Apply grain to an image
13:15 Scale to the final size first
15:00 Tiling and adding the grain layer
18:00 Layer mask for grain in the midtones only
21:00 Comparing real and artificial grain
22:50 Good bye!

And then I have a reminder about animated GIFs – a “commercial” from SCALE 7x.

This show has a new encoding, so it may not be playable on every device. I wanted to test this thoroughly before rolling it out, but the old converter program has some problems. If you run into problems – it should be playable on any computer with the program VLC.

After a short visit to the Schnoor in Bremen and a Christmas Equipment Shop that is open all year Max makes a winter theme wallpaper.

He constructs a snowflake brush and then makes a multi layerd wallpaper for his computer.

This was the last show for 2008 – I need a bit of a break. Have nice holidays and a happy new year!

Bert (Ray Adagio on the Forum) is the star of this episode. He has written some great scripts and enhanced others, the Zone Adjustment script for example. And now he has tackled rotation. You just have to mark two points on a vertical or horizontal line and click – the rotation starts. Ok, the tool from the toolbox has way more options, but usually you don’t need them.
Bert has also started a discussion about sharpening in different colour modes. Sharpeneing the “L” of LAB should be the best way, but this involves a lot of lossy math in 8 bit mode. Forget about it. But sharpening the “V” of HSV can be an alternative.

The animation in this post has a lot of artifacts due to the 256 colours of the GIF image. The real ones are better. All the example images are in the companion file of episode 79, not 78 as I said in the video. Only the one with selective sharpening is in the ZIP file for this episode.

I add a way to do a selective or high pass filtering in HSV. Perhaps in a script on a server near you in the future.

Sharpening is a topic that has to covered in later episodes. On can sharpen a colour channel (gree is best most of the time) or use different values for the USM (unsharp mask) algorithm. How that thing really works would be interesting too.

Information about the DOCMA Award 2009 can be found in the forum. I’ll update that tomorrow.

The TOC

00:30 DOCMA Award Challenge
02:30 Subscribe and donate
04:20 Writing scripts
05:00 Rotation script
06:20 Install a script
08:00 Missing folders – no problem
08:45 Using the Rotation script
11:25 Sharpening in LAB?
12:30 HSV and LAB
14:45 Differences between RGB, HSV and LAB sharpening
20:40 Conclusion
21:15 Decompose
22:00 Unsharp mask
23:30 Adding a layer mask for selective sharpening
24:00 Edge detection
25:30 Temporary layer for controlling the effect
27:30 Recompose the image
29:00 Adding an image into a new layer
30:00 Conclusion – there are more ways….

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

And I’ll show you an often overlooked feature of GIMP – the screenshot. It’s way more flexible than just pressing “PrntScrn”. It even stores the mouse pointer on a different layer.

The companion file contains also the images for the next show. I was too lazy to un- and repack that again.

The TOC

00:19 Welcome
00:33 Greetings to Norman
01:10 Understanding the Convolution Matrix
03:48 – Sharpening
05:18 – Blurring
06:43 The Forum
08:16 Screen shots using Gimp
13:03 the End
TOC made by paynekj

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

This is Philippe’s last show for 2008. He torments us by making a summer holiday and has perhaps some extra work to do during Christmas.

But he’ll be back in January. (Rolf has his sound card problems sorted out and faces some time slot sorting problems. He will be here with a show soon.)

If you have a wish for a project for Philippe to do, post it in the forum or here in the comments.

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

The Convolution Matrix lives in Math-Land. It is the backbone of a lot of filter plugins. It’s fun to play with if you have understood the basics and lost your fear. One example of a filter done with this is the Pencil Shade Filter by Alex Turner

I forgot to talk about the “Border” options. “Extend” just adds a virtual black border around the source image. “Wrap” takes the pixels from the opposite corner and wraps them around.

The matrix in the image has no deeper meaning, it’s just some random numbers.

My lens replacement surgery went well and I am recovering fast. Thanks for all the good wishes!

The TOC

00:19 Welcome
00:23 Oakland Technology Exchange West
02:25 Rolf’s Eyes
03:13 Convolution Matrix Filter
05:18 – User interface
06:08 – Experimenting
06:56 – The documentation
12:30 – sharpening
16:48 – blur
17:16 – normalize option
18:02 – edge enhance
21:38 The End
TOC made by paynekj

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

This is really a fast forward through the program, nothing really in depth. It can be a guide for experimenting. If you know not much about RAW processing, have a look at episode 11. It covers some basics about the technology behind it.

I used the UFRaw version compiled by Pascal. You can find it for Ubuntu on his site – other OS have to look around. Start with the UFRaw home page.

I’ll have an eye surgery tomorrow (lens replacement) and had not much time to prepare this episode. TOC and more will follow. And I’ll be off screen for some days until I am allowed to read again.

The TOC

0:00 Intro
0:26 Statistics
1:50 Pascal’s e-mail blog.pcode.nl
4:16 – Fire up UFRaw!
4:30 – Color matrix vs. Color profile
5:57 — Working Color Space Profile
6:33 — Rendering Intent Option
8:50 – Details Restauration & Highlight Clippings
10:13 – Import base curves from .NCV
10:26 – Auto black point correction works perfectly!
11:13 – New features in new version of UFRaw
11:36 – LensFun
14:00 – Fix cromatic aberration
15:57 – Optical Vignetting
16:23 – Lens distortion – Panotools
17:16 – Lens geometry
19:18 Outro

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

The image is from a not so nice part of the town and it shall finally show a certain lost atmosphere. But for that he needs a plan.

Following advice from Vincent Versace’s book “Welcome to Oz” he makes some maps over the image to find a crop and to get the light and contrasts right. The crop is found at the end of the episode, the lighting will follow next week.

If you want to work ahead – the original image with all the work done up to now is in the downloadable companion file. See the top of this posting for a download link.

The TOC

00:45 How I made the image
02:20 Selecting the image
06:50 Making a plan
09:30 Defining a crop
13:40 Cropping help with a black bar
16:10 Looking for tilt and deformation
17:00 Cromatic abberation
17:45 Zoom memory
18:00 Lighting issues
22:00 Rotating on a separate layer
26:10 Making the crop
31:10 The second crop
33:15 Locking the layers
33:35 Good bye

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

With texture wrapping you can give a flat texture the look of being on the surface of a 3-dimensional body. This is the domain of Raytracers and 3D programs like Blender. But for that you need a mathematical model of the body in question. This is not available in photographies.

The TOC

00:50 – Concept
02;50 – Forum discussion
05:00 – Accentuating value contrast
06:10 – Choosing and resizing a texture
08:20 – Masking
16:10 – Giving volume to the texture
22:00 – Setting layer mode and tuning
22:40 – Enhancing the shadows using a contrasted color channel

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

Layers are an important tool in image manipulation. You can isolate different parts of an image with layer masks and so avoid negative consequences of your actions to other parts of the image. And you can play work with different layer modes to achieve effects from a little contrast manipulation to complex changes.

We need Tables of Content for the back episodes. You can help by joining this thread in the Forum.

TOC

00:30 The helpers
03:18 The TOC Project – Help Kevin!
05:10 Layers
05:20 What’s an image?
07:00 Alpha Channel
08:30 Locking a layer
08:50 Layer modes
10:20 Documentation at gimp.org
13:10 Tips in the forum: Contrast reduction
17:10 Visibility toggling
18:00 Changing  the layer order
18:40 Protect the alpha channel
19:00 Creating new layers
20:40 Layer masks
23:30 Showing and disabeling layer masks
24:15 Text layers
26:40 Editing a text layer
27:30 Loosing the text properties
29:00 Learning by doing

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

Today we have a guest on the “from scratch” slot. Max from Munich shows ho to make an envelope like this one. His Homepage is at http://milian-web.byto.de

The TOC

(Times are coming up)

Background
Texture for paper
Link to the original PS tutorial PSDTUTS (Vintage Fifties Letter)
Gimpressionist for paper texture
Airmail border pattern
Pattern fill from clipboard
Make the border
Grunge on the border with Plasma
Create a stamp
Make the perforation with a spaced paint brush
King Wilber on the stamp
Creating a rubber stamp
Waving lines with the Curve Bend filter
Smushing the ink stamp
Adress
Font from “dafont.com”
Aging the letter with a bump map
Use in a web logo

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

The People of the USA are electing a new President. And we wanted to publish this Election Special some hours ahead of the schedule – but the technology was against us. Encoding problems at midnight and an alarmclock set to 0635 don’t work well together.

We wish the US (and the World) a good choice and a not so bleak future as it looks at the moment.

Philippe shows how to make the animated flag you see here.

Rolf steals a trick to enhance an image with a layer copy first converted to monochrome and then set to “value” as the layer mode.

And with the next show we’ll perhaps know who will be sitting in that nice house here in 2009. (We know it: Congratulations to Barack Obama and all the people in the USA.)

The TOC

00:20 US presidential election
01:02 Animated US flag
01:55 – Create the mapping layer
04:00 – Create the animation layers
04:20 – Displacement and bump mapping
06:20 – Move the background
07:10 – Repeat on all the layers
08:35 – Perspective distortion
09:35 – Background image
11:10 – Add the animation layers
12:04 – Flag pole
14:38 – Save the animation
17:05 Forum – increasing contrast
19:25 Trying the new technique
20:10 – Make a monochrome layer
21:48 – Layer mode to value
24:34 The End

TOC made by paynekj

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

If you have already downloaded this episode before October 31 3:30 PM GMT, you’ll have noticed a black border around the too small image. It’s fixed now, so if you want to look again at some details I would consider a new download.

This week you see how to create drops of water while staying dry at your computer. Again starting with a view on nature Philippe shows what a drop of water does to the light and emulates this from scratch with GIMP.

At the end you are in for a surprise gift – it costs you just a download.

You can discuss this techniques and more in our Forum post your achievement here or write a comment here in the blog.

The TOC:

00:50 Studying nature

04:50 Setting up background and texture

07:00 Setting ilumination

07:50 Giving a shape to the drops

10:10 Creating new layers

11:50 Selecting alpha channel

12:20 Filling and blurring the effects layers

15:40 Moving and cutting highlights and shadows

18:20 Displacing the background texture

20:35 Over sharping  texture

22:30 Tuning highlight and specular reflection

34:05 Bonus (The file in question is in the companion zip archive)

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

[This was added on Oct 30:]

And I still think my method of putting a transparent layer in overlay mode on top and painting on that in white or gray is better than this tool.

My method can even be adapted to work only on shadows, highlights or midtones – just like the Dodge and Burn tool. It’s a bit more complicated…. 

You can see a very good result of this technique from Xavier at Retouche Libre.

The show starts with a call for help. We need more people on this project who can give input, coordinate and organize. And I am really not looking for people that I can push around – I do that all day at school with the kids.

The TOC

00:20 Hello from Rolf and requesting assistance with Meet The Gimp
06:00 The dodge and burn tool
06:34 – the origin of dodge and burn
08:00 – using an overlay layer instead (Episode 10)
09:49 – the built-in tool
12:50 – it’s destructive
14:23 Dodge and burn using overlay layers
14:49 – make the layers
16:33 – set up the layer masks
22:08 What’s coming in future episodes
23:24 The End
TOC made by paynekj

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

This show is answering some of the comments of Episode 066 and shows a little gem from the rectangular and elliptical selection tools.

Sorry, no TOC and other gadgets, because I have a new gadget as my Birthday present – a Samsung P2 MP4 player.

The TOC

00:18 Apologies for the delay
01:37 Answers to comments
04:31 – Adding and locking tool tabs
06:50 – Manual page for gimprc file
08:13 – Portable Gimp
09:24 – Instalation problems
11:20 – GEGL
14:10 Selection tool options
16:13 The End
TOC made by paynekj

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

Philippe is on with his first biweekly show!

He makes an iris from scratch and explains the new features of brush dynamics in Gimp 2.6. If you didn’t knew that you paint a circular iris into a rectangle, then this show is for you! Painting the skin and modelling the face is left for a later episode.

The TOC:

01:15 Making a new image and preparing it
01:35 Selecting and choosing colours
02:20 Introduction to brush dynamics
10:40 Preparing the texture
12:20 Applying wind
13:40 Distortion with Iwarp
15:55 Readying the texture and applying Polar Coordinate
17:30 Dodging and Burning
19:05 Inserting in face image and final adjustments

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

The show will go wide screen as in Episode 64, but we’ll have a separate feed for mobile devices.
The funding is secure. In Episode 49 I had asked for donations. They are still coming in. I just paid the demorecorder license for Philippe from that money and have left enough to pay my 20€/month for the server well into January. If the funds are running out I’ll give notice.
BTW, I don’t publish donor names and amounts. I feel that such lists, especially sorted by amount, are humiliating. An amount easily spent by e.g. a German teacher with tenure is a high investment for people in other parts of the geographical or social map. Each donor gets a thank you mail from me as a receipt.
And there are more ways to donate to this project. Time for example. Spread the word about this on your blog or in forums where appropriate. Write comments or go to the forum. Or become a correspondent for the blog if you are stumbling over newsworthy stuff while surfing around on all the other graphics web sites.

The TOC

00:20 Housekeeping – New shows, file formats, feeds and so on
04:40 Look at 2.7, 2.8 and further
11:50 Why not 16 bit in 2.8
12:40 Setting up 2.6
14:20 Preferences dialogue
14:30 Environment
15:30 User interface, previews and keyboard shortcuts
16:00 Theme – Big or small icons
16:40 Help system
17:20 Tool options
18:55 Toolbox
19:10 Default image
19:30 Image window
20:10 Display
20:50 Input devices – activating a Wacom tablet
24:10 Tweaking gimprc for getting rid of the drop space in the toolbox
28:00 Configuring the dockable dialogs
30:30 Selecting tools for the Toolbox
34:00 Recap

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

Philippe is back and has found a way to implement 16 bit ON Gimp. 16 bit IN Gimp is left for Sven and all his helpers. (EDIT: Note that 2.6 has GEGL integrated, but still works only with 8 bit per channel! This Episode is kind of a joke!)

You see how to change the appearance of a font and give it a 3D chrome look. Then you’ll learn how to simulate a reflection of the surroundings and to repaint your car in a hurry.

Philippe is no teacher – but he gives you homework! Look out for the end of the show!

In case that you are interested in the CV2, Wikipedia has good stuff about it. And from own experience I can tell you that there is not much more frightening than going round a corner with speed in a 2CV. You are sure it will topple on its soft suspension. Perhaps a bit more frightening is to have one in the opposite lane in a curve….

New Python Script for managing brushes!

Philippe has written a script for managing brushes under Gimp. Check it out here in the forum. Perhaps you can help to make it better and to integrate it into GIMP?

The TOC

01:22  Ferrari and 2CV
03:00  Learning from others
10:30  The Background
11:30  Selecting a font
12:30  Modify the writing in a path
19:30  Bumpmapping
23:10  Getting the Chrome on
27:00  Reflection of the surroundings
32:00  Adding some sun glare
36:00  Adjusting the reflections, fine tuning
39:40  Repaint your car in a second!
40:00  Homework for you!

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

If you have any problems viewing this on your device, please write a comment here. I would love to have more screen estate, but if this collides with your viewing I’ll stick to the old format.

You find the relese notes for GIMP 2.6 at http://gimp.org/release-notes/gimp-2.6.html.

Not so much progress on the noise side – I tried to reduce chroma noise with an option in UFRaw. The result is, well, see yourself in the image above (200% view).

1 – the noisy image

2 – the denoised image

3 – the denoised image with chroma noise reduction

4 – 1 and 3 combined with a mask for the edges.

I’ll explore soe more noise reduction options before I finish this image.

In the main part of this video you’ll see how to register an additional image into the already rotated and cropped  stack of layers.

The TOC:

Reducing Chroma Noise in UFRaw 03:00
Register an additional image into the layer stack 06:00
Moving the layer to a register point 06:30
Setting the center point for rotation 08:40
Cropping the layer to the image size 13:20
Checking the results 14:00
Recap 15:30
Why the Neon Filter? 16:20
When is an image finished? 18:10
Save as a new one layer image 19:40

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

I am through a bad cold and nearly through an iris inflammation and so I loved to talk – you get a double dose of MTG tonight. Philippe helped me out last week – and he will be a regular contributor after that success.

After I solve the mystery behind the menue entry “Edit/Fade” I tackle an old image. Taken 4 years ago with my old camera (Nikon D70) at ISO 1600 and f=1/1.8. It’s noisy.

I use the noise reduction from UFRaw and combine two results of the RAW conversion – one with and one without noise – to one. As with the selective sharpening I left the edges of structures noisy and kept the noise out of the structureless areas. Of course this is done with layers and masks. with this technique you keep the structures crisp and the noise out.

After finishing this video, I found out that UFRaw has a well hidden option for removal of chroma noise. More next week.

This image still needs some work on it – I’ll show that in the next episode.

Joel has a lot to say about noise and I’ll go into some other noise reduction techniques in the future.

The TOC:

03:15 Edit/Fade
09:55 The image in UFRaw
14:45 Noise
16:40 Noise reduction in UFRaw
19:10 Comparing the images
22:50 The Plan
23:35 Making a layer mask with “Edge Detect”
29:40 Recap
30:40 Fine tuning with another layer
38:50 Rotating
41:50 Cropping

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

The TOC will follow when I have seen the video again – I was so absorbed that I forgot to make notes.

I promised a link for the “User Filter”, which allows to use Photoshop filters in GIMP.

Do you like this kind of GIMP usage in the show? I come from the photographic side and made this podcast according to the stuff that I can do. But with Phillippe’s help a lot more is possible. What do you think? Post your comments here!

Before one of you comments about making vignettes: Just invert the mask and you have a vignette. Looks fine with a lot of images and John Arnold uses them all the time.

TOC

Setting display options 0:30
Zone System Philosophy 3:24
How to chose a way to tackle a problem in Gimp 10:20
Correct a vignette or light falloff 18:22
Using burn mode to emphasize colours 23:30

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

An image consists out of three channels – red, green and blue. If you combine a channel of each of three shots made at different times into one image, you can get results like these and much stranger stuff.

This method is also known under the name of Harris shutter.

I got the inspiration from Diana Thater, who had an exhibition here in the Bremen Kunsthalle in 2004.

If you found out about the contrast range of your camera, please post the results here in the comments!

TOC

Camera calibration for the simple zone system 1:22
Using the histogram dialog 4:00
Please report your results 13:00
Diana Thater 13:50
Combining three images for a motion series 15:15
Registering with layer mode “difference” 18:15
Checking for rotation 20:00
Cropping 21:00
Decomposing and recombining 23:20
Working in monochrome 28:30

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

EDIT: This plugin has evolved tremendously. Go to the Forum entry and search from the last postings backwards for it’s latest incarnation!

And I present a plugin for displaying EXIF information in an image, a split toning plugin and a plugin for applying the “Lazlo Dragan effect”. (Download should now be possible without need to register – sorry, made a mistake in the configuration.) All were published in the Forum of Meet the GIMP.

You can find information about the installation of these plugins there too. Basically you just copy them into your plugin directory (not the scripts directory) and make them executable. The last step is not necessary under Windows.

The show starts with a short introduction into the Zone System of Ansel Adams. Before we go deeper into this, we have to calibrate our cameras. Set your camera to manual mode, set the metering to spot or center based and shot a well exposed image of something middle grey or whitish with a bit of structure in it. I took a white door, but raw concrete is fine too. Then shoot two series of images, the first one closing down one stop in each image, the other in opening up one stop for each step. We’ll look at my images next week.

The TOC:

Ansel Adams and the Zone System 0:27
Calibrating your camera for the Zone System 7:00
Plugins in the Forum 9:36
Working with the “Zone Adjustment Plugin”, formerly know as “meaningful Black” 11:25
Detaching menues in GIMP 12:23
Sample Points 12:50
Finding the Dark and Bright point 15:25
Using the plugint 19:40
The proof: white is grey – and black too! 25:25

The image used in this podcast was made during a performance of Pascale Loiseau from the Belgian  WAZOVOL artists group. I found a video of her performance.

Edit: I changed “script” to plugin – there is a bit of confusion….

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

Uploaded a new video – all downloads from the first 1 1/4 hours are corrupt!

This week I have a guest on the show. Philippe Demartin from Chile shows how to make letters out of blood without pain and no need to clean up afterwards.

EDIT: Be sure to read the two comments from eBrnd below. They are really good additional material for this show!

gimpusers.com has a nice tutorial about this which influenced this show.

No Gimps were harmed in the process of making this podcast!

Just an afterthought: You can use the bumpmapping also with photographies, inserting your logo for example. I’ll look into that.

Next week will see the publishing of the first product of the MTG-Plugin Factory.

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

EDIT: This plugin has evolved tremendously. Go to the Forum entry and search from the last postings backwards for it’s latest incarnation!

Information about the Zone System is at Wikipedia and a lot of other sites. Chris Marquardt has made a simple version of it for digital cameras.

At the end of the video I do some ironing. I made some promotional images for our organic shop around the corner. The team had donned brand new aprons with all the creases from packing still in them. Awful! I show you a way to iron them out after the shot. BTW, this works too with wrinkles in the skin of a portrait model.

The “Old Ink Challenge is still open. Give it a try!

I also have some updates about the forum and ask for input with a new design for this web site. Daniel (DRB) is helping me a lot – and he has made a great interactive and collaborative storytelling site at StoryEverTelling.com . If you are into telling stories with a twist or reading them – check this out and help him to build this up.

The TOC

Old Ink challenge update (1:30)
Forum update (1:55)
Daniel’s “Story Ever Telling” (4:40)
Meaningful Black (6:25)
- Zone System (9:42)
- Finding the Black Point (12:00)
- Twisting the curves (16:05)
- Building a Plugin (19:00)
Ironing an Apron with GIMP (20:10)

This video has been rendered in a different way. Is the problem still there that it calls itself a MP3 audio file? Is it playing everywhere?

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

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.

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

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

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

Finally there are some news about GiMP 2.5.2.

The TOC

00:22 Update to episode 52 – copy visible
04:09 Burn mode – Gimp documentation
05:53 The old shows
06:00 Video from Andrew A. Gill
06:27 – Poster Art
07:00 – Start image – chopped into pieces
08:00 – Posterizing with more control
08:50 – Colouring
10:17 – Saving in indexed mode
13:00 Make your own video for Meet The Gimp
14:20 Comparing the results of poster art
16:23 The Old Ink Challenge
18:30 Extras
18:53 Gimp 2.5 features
22:50 The End
TOC made by paynekj

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

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: