Re: [LUG] Protography with Linux

[Gordon Henderson <gordon+lug@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On Sat, 21 Dec 2013, L Smith wrote:

> As a serious (and experienced) amateur photographer, I want to get more 
> serious but at the same time avoid getting sucked into the photoshop 
> swamp and remain loyal to Linux. I do though find Gimp to be a pain, 
> just wondering if there are any viable alternatives to The Gimp and what 
> any "serious photographers" here might be using?

I'm a bumbling enthusiast with a nice (well I think so) DSLR and I use 
GIMP.

However, I've only ever used GIMP... I did use a freebie version of 
photoshop for a very short while and didn't like it - presumably because 
I've always used GIMP.

But it delends on what you're trying to achieve - a simple rotation or 
small perspective change - easy in the GIMP, re-colouring, or colour 
correction - easy, but even thought I've been using it for years and 
years, I don't consider myself a gimp power user by any stretch. I have to 
read the manual when working out how to create a transparent background 
for example.

I find selective enhancements fiddly too, but I hear later versions are 
better - this:

  http://unicorn.drogon.net/pike.jpg

was a scanned negative which I did a bit of brightening up of the pike 
while trying to leave the backgound darker... I remember that being fiddy, 
but that was 10+ years ago. (The original scan was a 35MB tiff file which 
GIMP seemed OK with all those years back - it printed well at 10x8 too)

I think, like a lot of Linux tools, GIMP is just different to it's Win/Mac 
"equivalents", that's all, so a little bit of re-training is to be 
expected.

And lets not forget the power of the command-line - when I have a few 100 
pictures to put online - I want to scale and reduce their quality to make 
the upload quick, then let people (friends, family) email me the numbers 
to give the the high resolution ones, if needed, etc. The "mogrify" 
command from imagemagic is the key here - although a word of warning: It 
mogrifys the images in-place!!! So take a copy first.

And in our nice dry summer, this is the bottom of my garden: 
http://unicorn.drogon.net/deanBurn4.jpg today it looks like a raging 
torrent )-:


Gordon

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