Meet the GIMP

Episode 109: Make Money with GIMP! (1)

info@meetthegimp.org (Rolf Steinort) — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 15:35:38 +0000

You challenged Philippe to make a bill of a currency from scratch. It is a lot more complicated than it looks at the first glance – of course – otherwise I would print some Euro notes at the beginning of the week instead of going into the school for earning my pay.

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.

Episode 108: A lot of Paths

info@meetthegimp.org (Rolf Steinort) — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 17:07:10 +0000

Paths are a powerful tool in GIMP – and not so easy to understand. So I’ll make a two part series out of them.

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

Episode 107: Orton’s Sandwich

info@meetthegimp.org (Rolf Steinort) — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 21:05:03 +0000

A bit late, but finally here!

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

Episode 106: Colours and Values

info@meetthegimp.org (Rolf Steinort) — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 16:00:12 +0000

It’s toning time again. Toning is done do black and white images to increase their “volume”, the perceived contrast range. We only have 256 values on the screen, so a bit of colour can be good.

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

Episode 105: Another Bowl of Soup?

info@meetthegimp.org (Rolf Steinort) — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 17:04:32 +0000

Philippe was working on bank notes – but it turned out to be a too big task for the available time. The designers of these notes have one thing on top of their minds – make it difficult to copy.

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.

Episode 104: Filling the Gap with Bamboo

info@meetthegimp.org (Rolf Steinort) — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 16:11:41 +0000

This weeks show starts with some additional talk about tablets. After Episode 101 there still was the question if a Wacom Bamboo tablet is “good enough”. Matthias visited me with his tablet and we sat in a street cafe and compared. (Sorry, the sound in this segment is not very good and out of sync.) The Bamboo is as good as the Intuos if you don’t need diffenrent pens. I would buy one. (Too bad that I don’t get money from W….)

Then I follow a comment from Steinar and explore the Device Status dialog. It gives you all information you need about your row of input devices. Even if they are plugged in too late.

In the image I tackled last week were some really big damages. And I tried to fix them with the Resynthesis plugin and G’MIC. Both did well with small defects and considerably good with the big ones. The were only at loss where knowledge about the world was needed – like in the back of the chair. We know that the wood goes on – the computer does not.Perhaps the result would have been better with the first plugin if I had followed Tobias’ tip thouroughly.

UPDATE: If you call the Resynthesis plugin via Filters/Enhance/Smart remove selection you get a much better result. See in the image on the right.

Both plugins are not easy to use and need ore time to explore than I was motivated to invest.I found no way to “automagically” select the damged parts of the image. Perhaps a scan in full colour mode would have been better. Ther may be a colour difference between dirt and image that can be exploited for a selection. So, scan in RGB!

There is a an other plugin perhaps usable for such work. It’s the Wavelet decomposer. I’ll try that in a later show.

At the end of the show I tell you a bit more about this young man, show Norman’s version of the reconstructed image and propose a different approach with an oval “matte”, like it must have been in the original.

The TOC

00:30 Comparing the Wacom Bamboo with the Intuos
05:40 2 tablets, 1 machine
06:30 The “Device Status” dialog
13:30 Going back to the “Portrait of a Young Man”
14:00 Resyntesizer and Wavelet Decompose
16:15 G’MIC
17:30 Comparing G’MIC and Resynthesizer
18:00 Please scan in RGB even if the image is monochrome!
19:20 Take care with the eyes!
20:30 Preparing a mask for the plugins
24:40 Using a colour for the mask
28:30 The G’MIC plugin at work
32:40 Resynthesizer at work
34:40 Comparing the results
36:00 Conclusion
37:00 Who is in the image?
39:00 Norman’s version of the image
39:40 Making an oval frame
43:40 Good bye!

Episode 103: Portrait of a Young Man

info@meetthegimp.org (Rolf Steinort) — Tue, 26 May 2009 16:00:18 +0000

Again Norman has an interesting task for me – restoring old images. John Edwin Frewer was photographed in London around 1866/7 – of course not digital. I’ll tell you a bit more about him in the next episode.

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

Episode 102: Ancient Wisdom Rusting Away

info@meetthegimp.org (Rolf Steinort) — Tue, 19 May 2009 15:05:01 +0000

A metal sign has been sitting on a wooden wall for decades, rusting away in the weather.Nobody really cared.

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

Episode 101: Tablets

info@meetthegimp.org (Rolf Steinort) — Tue, 12 May 2009 16:10:07 +0000

A Graphics Tablet is a great input device for working with GIMP. You’ll see what to look for (pressure sensitivity and size) and how to integate them into GIMP. My tablet is from Wacom, the market leader. But a lot of other good ones are around too.

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

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Episode 100: Windtunnels and Tonal Ranges

info@meetthegimp.org (Rolf Steinort) — Tue, 05 May 2009 17:03:32 +0000

This is Show 100! Exactly 2 years after I put the first posting on the blog.

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!

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Episode 099: GIMP goes Acrylic

info@meetthegimp.org (Rolf Steinort) — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 16:29:17 +0000

This is the last episode where I have to look out for the leading zero in the episode number!

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.

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Episode 098: How much GIMP?

info@meetthegimp.org (Rolf Steinort) — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 21:15:40 +0000

What is the right amount of manipulating forging post processing a photograph? Is there “enough”? Too much? In this epsiode I try to get into these questions – but don’t expect an answer.

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.

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Episode 097: Shrinking! (2)

info@meetthegimp.org (Rolf Steinort) — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 21:31:52 +0000

After a welcome to the (hopefully) lots of new viewers from the Miro Guide, I continue to shrink a real building site to a model train scale.

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.

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Episode 096: Carved in Stone

info@meetthegimp.org (Rolf Steinort) — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 11:49:55 +0000

Philippe has a problem with Software Patents – and so he makes a headstone for them.

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.

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Episode 095: Shrinking! (1)

info@meetthegimp.org (Rolf Steinort) — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 18:46:51 +0000

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

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Episode 094: Wine and Curves

info@meetthegimp.org (Rolf Steinort) — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 23:13:40 +0000

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

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Episode 093: Isolation!

info@meetthegimp.org (Rolf Steinort) — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 22:21:42 +0000

In this episode I try to isolate a subject from the background.

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!

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

Episode 092: DAVID! (for President?)

info@meetthegimp.org (Rolf Steinort) — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 17:00:14 +0000

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.

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Episode 091: Growing Feathers

info@meetthegimp.org (Rolf Steinort) — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 18:37:41 +0000

There was a question in the forum about how to desaturate and blur the surroundings of a figure. The blur and desaturation should follow the shape of the figure. I give an answer here – making a selection, storing it in a channel and then grow and feather it according to the needs of the task.

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.

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Episode 090: Selling the Past (on eBay)

info@meetthegimp.org (Rolf Steinort) — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 19:11:35 +0000

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

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Episode 089: Transparency

info@meetthegimp.org (Rolf Steinort) — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 20:52:49 +0000

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

Episode 088: Chile instead of China!

info@meetthegimp.org (Rolf Steinort) — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 19:17:43 +0000

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.

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Episode 087: The second Spot of F-Spot (2)

info@meetthegimp.org (Rolf Steinort) — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 18:55:50 +0000

This is the second show about F-Spot – one week late because of sound problems.

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

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Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Germany License.

Episode 086: A Spot of F-Spot (1)

info@meetthegimp.org (Rolf Steinort) — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 21:35:45 +0000

Today I explore the program F-Spot. It’s an image multi-tool – you can rate, tag and index your images, store or export them and even do some editing with it.

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.

Episode 085: Geeks Only! (Really?)

info@meetthegimp.org (Rolf Steinort) — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 22:34:46 +0000

This week it’s geek time. I found in the German c’t magazine an image which can measure the amount of change to contrast caused by an image manipulation. Yes, an image can measure. I contacted the author, Ralph Altmann, and we cooperated in translating this file from Photoshop to GIMP. (Cooperation = he did most of the work. )

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.

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Episode 084: The 3 Letter Acronym Show (RePost)

info@meetthegimp.org (Rolf Steinort) — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 14:55:35 +0000

This is a repost of Episode 84 – there seem to be some feed problems. there is no need for download if you have seen 84 already.

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.

Episode 084: The 3 Letter Acronym Show

info@meetthegimp.org (Rolf Steinort) — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 21:41:45 +0000

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.

Episode 083: Getting Grain in

info@meetthegimp.org (Rolf Steinort) — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 17:49:34 +0000

A lot of people miss “film grain” in digital images. I show how to add it (the exmple on the left is a bit over the top…). You can extract the grain from a scanned analog image or make your own digital grain with the HSV noise filter.

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!

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Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Germany License.

Episode 082: Not Really Square!

info@meetthegimp.org (Rolf Steinort) — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 20:34:15 +0000

I am back with a short trip into the land of the non-square pixels. You can change the resolution and aspect ratio not only of the image but also of the individual pixels.

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

SCALE 7x, the premier Open Source Community conference in the southwestern United States, returns to the Westin LAX Hotel, site of the 6th Expo!

For 2009, the main weekend conference at SCALE 7x has been expanded. In addition to the three main tracks, a Beginner’s track and a Developer’s track have been added.

SCALE will be February 20th – 22nd, 2009.

The TOC:

00:40 Anamophic images
01:40 Making an image with non-square pixels
02:30 Changing the resolution and units
03:35 “Dot for Dot” has to switched off
05:10 Changing the unit of the rulers
06:00 Setting up the grid
08:20 Scale7x announcement

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

Episode 081: Winter!

info@meetthegimp.org (Rolf Steinort) — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 15:21:44 +0000

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!