GIMP is an image editing program that’s been around since the mid 90’s. It’s often thought of as a free alternative to Photoshop. That characterization is not entirely off-base — it covers the basics: layers, channels, masks, blending modes, filters, and more. More recent releases have added support for color profiles, brush dynamics, and pressure sensitive tablets. And yes, it runs on Windows, Mac, and Linux.
GIMP is not as polished as Photoshop, and it doesn’t have all of Photoshop’s bells and whistles, but it goes way beyond the capabilities of the simpler and easier-to-use free editors like Picasa. Photoshop has a street price of about 650 USD, which is about 650 bucks higher than GIMP. If you use GIMP, you will also realize similar savings on Photoshop’s upgrade price of 180 USD every year or two.
Graphics professionals are not likely to switch to GIMP in hordes. But if you haven’t bought Photoshop because of its price, and Photshop Elements seems a bit too abridged, then you might give GIMP a spin.
Here’s some handy links to help you get started:
- Gimp.org – the “official” GIMP Site
- Wikipedia’s article on GIMP
- Six Revision’s recent article “10 Websites to Help You Master GIMP”
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Today Samsung and TMobile announced the Samsung Memoir smartphone with an 8 megapixel camera. The device looks as much like a camera as a phone. It comes with a Xenon flash, 16x digital zoom, and five shooting modes. You can post your photos directly to your online Flickr, Photobucket, Snapfish, or Kodak Gallery.
It remains to be seen whether this is just more megapixel madness or the thing actually takes decent pictures. No one has yet produced a phone camera that can rival the features and quality of a $150 digital camera, but, of course, that $150 digital camera might not be with you when the phone will be. The press release and some shiny pictures of the camera can be found here.
Over on MyBabyPhotos.net, Jessica Turner writes about the journaling aspect of scrapbooking, something that’s often not given the attention it deserves. She provides a series of questions that can prime the inspirational pump. The article, found here, is geared toward traditional scrapbooking, but the concept will work just as well for digital.
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Some photoshop tutorials that attempt some special effect will teach you how to ruin a perfectly good portrait photograph. But in this tutorial found here on scrapbooking-bytes.com, I like the effect the author gets. The technique applies blending modes over a textured paper. There’s also a pdf version here.
Today Bibble Labs made available a beta preview of its eagerly anticipated Bible 5 photographic workflow software. The preview is good for 2 weeks to the general public or 3 months if you have a Bibble 4 license. The preview has disabled support for Noise Ninja and Perfectly Clear. Also noteworthy is that is does NOT support JPG or TIFF, and provides limited raw support. The final version will enable these features. More here.
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Earlier this month Google announced a beta version of Picasa 3 for the Mac. So today I downloaded it and took it for a quick spin. The program seemed snappy, the interface was uncluttered, and it felt like a native Mac program. The editing features are similar to those offered on iPhoto. Just as iPhoto makes it easy to upload and sync photos to Apple’s MobileMe, Picasa 3 makes it easy to do the same with Google’s Picasa Web Albums.
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Rob Galbraith posted an informative article on laptop displays, comparing an Apple Macbook Pro, Dell Inspiron Mini 9, Levono ThinkPad T60, and a Levono ThinkPad W700.
He concludes that “…Macs are no longer at the top of the laptop display heap in our minds” ” and “…even though the late 2008 MacBook Pro 15 inch doesn’t keep up in either colour accuracy or viewing angle with laptops from IBM/Lenovo, its display is still quite good and still falls on the right side of the line of acceptable display quality for field use by a working photographer, at least in ambient light that discourages reflections.”
I remember when the the late-2008 Macbook Pro 15 was announced — there was some moaning in the Mac communitiy about the lack of a matte option. The same moaning could be heard when the latest iMacs were introduced without a matte option. Maybe the complaints had an impact – the new 17″ Macbook Pro announced this month has an antiglare option for an additional 50 bucks.
See the full article here.
Continue reading about Rob Galbraith: Laptop Displays for Photographers
Adobe Photoshop CS4 added a new vibrance adjustment that’s especially useful for photos with skin tones. But it confused some because of it’s similarity to the saturation adjustment. Watch this 3 minute video from tutcast.com to learn about the difference.
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Flickr released version 3.1.3 of their uploader, offering a better and more stable uploading experience which is “more accepting of different file formats and more capable to handle heftier uploading needs. As always, you can use the Uploadr to sort, edit and organize your images before presenting them on Flickr.” Details here.
From the press release: ” Adobe has released Photoshop Lightroom 2.3 and Photoshop Camera Raw 5.3 Release Candidates, both available immediately for download from Adobe Labs. The ‘release candidate’ label indicates that this update is well tested but would benefit from additional community testing before it is distributed automatically to all customers. The Lightroom and Camera Raw teams would like the community to help verify the quality of this update through normal usage as this will ensure that the application is tested on a wide variety of hardware and software configurations not available internally at Adobe.
Both release candidates provide additional raw file support for the Nikon D3X and Olympus E-30 cameras. In addition,the Lightroom 2.3 Release Candidate provides a solution to a memory leak that affected some customers of the Lightroom 2.2 release. “
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Several fixes and adjustments are included: False low battery indication when using EF 85 1.2L II USM, err 06 self-cleaning false indicator, color printing problem when printing RAW direct, AF-assist beam activation tweaking, and external flash allowed to fire when built-in flash is up.
Details and download are available here
This update addresses the following and more : “- Geodetic information is now displayed in ViewNX Ver. 1.2.0 or later and Capture NX 2 Ver. 2.1.0 or later for images captured with the GPS Unit GP-1 mounted on the camera.
- Autofocus-response performance in focus mode C (Continuous-servo AF mode) with relatively dark subjects has been increased.
- When the AF-ON button is pressed, the monitor turns off and a focus point can now be selected using the multi selector.” Details and download are available here.
Among the issues this update resolves:
” – When Custom Setting a4 Focus tracking with lock-on was set to Off in Continuous-servo AF, the lens drive moved gradually without achieving focus.
- When the Speedlight SB-800 was mounted on the camera with flash mode set to Distance-priority manual (GN) mode, and then the exposure meters were reactivated or the camera was turned on, the distance information displayed on the SB-800 changed.
- When the Multi-Power Battery Pack MB-D10 was mounted on the camera and an EN-EL3e battery inserted in the camera but no batteries inserted in the MB-D10, and SB-900 flash mode set to TTL auto flash mode, the flash mode changed to A mode when the exposure meters turned off or were reactivated, or the camera was turned off or on.” Find it here.
Canon released firmware update 1.0.7 for the 5D Mark II camera, which “improves and mitigates” both the black dot problem and the vertical banding problem. The update is accompanied by updates the Digital Photo Professional and Picture Style Editor software as explained on the download page.
Nature Photographer Andrew Yip posted before and after photographs showing the update was successful in mitigating the black dot problem. Other post in various forums have generally been favorable.
Continue reading about Canon Updates 5D Mark II for Black Dot and Banding Problem
I thought I would share my experience with you on my effort to get a free qualifying upgrade from Photoshop CS3 to CS4, just in case you too are waiting for an upgrade.
On November 7, I called Adobe to get the upgrade. I submitted my receipt for the CS3 purchase. Adobe acknowledged the receipt and that I qualified for the free upgrade. You qualify if you purchased CS3, or an upgrade to CS3 as I did, after CS4 was announced.
Last Wednesday (December 3), I called Adobe to determine the status of my order. The support rep I talked to explained that they were behind because of the demand for the product, but that he would put a rush on the order.
As of today, I have still not heard from Adobe. I’ll update this post when receive word of shipment.
Continue reading about Adobe Behind on Photoshop CS4 Qualified Upgrades
Last week I downloaded a trial copy of Bibble 4 to process some photos I took at a family get-together. After spending a little time studying the documentation, I went through over 400 images, selected the best 85, cropped, corrected, sharpened, and de-noised them. I then wrote the improved version of each of these 85 photographs to a different folder, leaving the originals intact. The whole process took about 2 hours. (more…)
Continue reading about Bibble Labs: Workflow For The Rest of Us?
Heads up, photos out: The deadline for Smithsonian Magazine’s 6th annual photography contest is coming up soon. All entries must be submitted by Monday, December 1, at 2pm Eastern Time. You must be 18 years old or better to enter the contest, and the photos you submit must have been taken since January 1, 2006.
You can enter up to 3 photographs in each of the following categories: The Natural World, Americana, Altered Images, Travel and People.
Prizes: “Category winners will be awarded $500. The readers’ choice winner will be awarded $500. The grand prize winner will receive a four-day, three-night Smithsonian Journeys Grand Canyon Weekend Adventure for two from July 17-20, 2009, or the wholesale cash equivalent.”
Link: http://photocontest.smithsonianmag.com/v6/
Continue reading about Smithsonian’s Photo Contest Deadline Is Fast Approaching
A friend recently asked for a recommendation on a point and shoot digital camera. So I visited our local megalo-electro-mart to get some hands-on time. I also googled the reviews, then scouted the popular forums for the buzz on the latest models.
There are many good, high quality cameras available, but I had to narrow the field. So I came away with two recommendations: the pocketable Canon SD1100 IS with a 3x zoom, and the larger Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ5K with a 10x zoom. The Panasonic is larger but still remarkably small for its zoom range.
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Here’s the short version: Free photo sites have limits. If you shoot and share lots of photographs, you’ll hit those limits sooner than you might think. When you reach those limits you have two choices: upgrade to a paid plan on that same site – which saves you from having to upload your pictures to another site – or look for a better deal somewhere else.
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