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Video Episodes:
171 Views
13:49:49 05/19/13
Episode 170: Set the Presets!
[LESS INFO] 171 VIEWS | ADDED 13:49:49 05/19/13
A nice feature crept into GIMP 2.7 under my Radar – presets for the tools in the toolbox. You can store all the settings, give them a name and recall them later. I show how to make some for rotating an image and cropping in different aspect ratios. GIMP 2.7 includes also a system for tagging brushes. A combination of tags and presets allows a big but manageable collection of special brushes. This needs further exploring. Then I have to brag about the low light capabilities my new X100 – ISO 2000 and nearly no noise. There is no torrent file for the moment, because we still have to resolve these tracker issues. And beware of the companion file – I think it is only useful for you if you want to tinker with the RAW file or check out an image out of a X100. The TOC 00:30 GIMP Version numbers 02:00 Saving presets with the rotate tool 03:40 Presets for different crop settings 05:35 The Preset dockable dialogue 05:55 Prests for the text tool 07:30 Using preset tools 08:25 Curves tool – low S-curve 10:00 Bragging about the X100 in low light
1 Views
22:00:00 04/09/13
Episode 190: JPEG and PNG, what’s in it?
[LESS INFO] 1 VIEWS | ADDED 22:00:00 04/09/13
The last episode was for absolute beginners, this one is for Geeks. I try to explain (and understand on the way) how images are stored in PNG and JPEG files. PNG (pronounced “PING”) does this lossless, the image can be retrieved in the same quality as the original. PNG works wonders with graphics with a lot of lines and clear colour areas, comics and logos for example, but it creates monster files out of photos and similar images. JPEG looses details, aquires artefacts and generally mangles the image. But it has so beautifully small files and the losses are in most cases invisible – except in the area where PNG is good. So both have their niche to live in. How is this done? I try to explain this without the math, using analogies, plaing with GIMP to reenact some stages and reducing the complexity a lot. If you want to know the exact facts, read up in Wikipedia, which was also my source of information, or look for other sources. I hope that I never crossed the border between simplification and telling wrong stuff – but I am really not sure. The math is really over my head, last time I had to tackle such a level a Pentax ME Super was still a new camera model. I am happy about any comments that improve my understanding – and all other comments too.
2 Views
22:00:00 03/27/13
Episode 189: Currywurst for Beginners
[LESS INFO] 2 VIEWS | ADDED 22:00:00 03/27/13
This is an episode completely in “Beginners Level”, some of you have asked for such a thing. I go through the editing of an image and cover a lot of topics. Nothing really in depth, but you should be able to work your way through other material after viewing this one. I start with a short tour through the user interface of GIMP, you find more about that in the GIMP documentation and other places. In between there is a bit about saving vs. exporting an image – without the nasty and pointless discussion. The image itself has to be rotated a bit, cropped, treated with a bit of curves, burned, and dodged, given more omphh with a layer in overlay mode that of course has to be modified with a layer mask. Finally the image will be scaled down, sharpened and exported as a JPEG while the original XCF file is conserved. Quite a tour – so I needed nearly an hour .
0 Views
15:00:00 03/17/13
Episode 188: The Book
[LESS INFO] 0 VIEWS | ADDED 15:00:00 03/17/13
This episode is about using GAP, the GIMP Animation Package, and “The Book of GIMP”. I walk through one of the tutorials of the book and create a multi layered animation that will be used in a cleaned up form for these videos. I can not praise the book enough, you can read more in a former blog post. GAP showed some flaws, but this may be the problem of the Debian package that I used. “The Book of GIMP” has also a reference part. I compare that to the official GIMP documentation while looking for information about the Convolution Matrix. Before all that I tell you about a GIMP plugin for exporting a layer as a PDF file and I defend my new camera – 36 Megapixels may not be too much, they only show the limits of the lenses….. Cameras with smaller sensor sizes of course hit a barrier with more and more MP. The next episode will have animated lower thirds and a proper automatically generated title screen. ;-)
0 Views
23:00:00 02/26/13
Episode 187: Cleaning Up
[LESS INFO] 0 VIEWS | ADDED 23:00:00 02/26/13
The last episode got a lot of comments – thank you all for them! And in this episode I try to follow all of the tips you gave me. I remember layer groups and drop shadows, see that Alpha to selection is really better and fight with Copy%Paste in the text tool. I got a present too – a fine script in Scheme for generating the title screen. Of course that has to be explored. Did you know that you can export the content of a selection as a new image by key stroke? I found out about SHIFT-CTRL-V. Saul’s script gets also a first analytical look – Scheme looses its terror if you come close. Matthias pointed to an other Colour Design site and the GIMP Magazine will publish a new issue next week. And finally I take a good look at the “Blender Master Class”, a very fine book about the 3D software Blender.
1 Views
19:00:00 02/12/13
Episode 186: A new Face!
[LESS INFO] 1 VIEWS | ADDED 19:00:00 02/12/13
Long time no show – but this project is not dead. For the fresh start a new design for the intro is needed. And a new design needs new colours. I used the Colorschemedesigner to create a palette of colours fitting the “Original MTG Orange” from the logo. Clever algorithms use old artists knowledge about colour combinations. This site even exports a GIMP palette file which is then imported into GIMP. For the lettering I wanted some fresh fonts and found them at the League of Movable Type. The TOC The video now has chapters – you can jump to the TOC entries! 00:01:00 Finding a palette with Color Scheme Designer 00:04:58 Exporting the palette to GIMP 00:05:43 Find the directory for the palette 00:06:30 Using palettes in GIMP 00:08:20 Creating a new image template 00:09:45 Create a new image 00:10:28 Inserting the logo from a file 00:11:11 Setting guides to half and a third of the image 00:11:44 Move the logo with help of the guides 00:13:20 Free fonts from the League of Movable Type 00:14:10 Editing text in GIMP with the on canvas editor 00:16:24 A drop shadow for text 00:17:36 A drop shadow for the logo 00:18:55 Saving the image 00:19:28 Adding the CC-Logo – loading images from the web 00:20:35 Using layers for different versions of one text 00:27:16 Rapport – stacking layers exactly on top of each other 00:28:29 Moving a stack of “chained” layers 00:29:08 Can you help me with the design? 00:29:44 Outlook into the next episodes
10 Views
18:00:00 09/21/12
Episode 185: The 52.02 €rror – Printing with Profiles
[LESS INFO] 10 VIEWS | ADDED 18:00:00 09/21/12
I gave myself a real photo printer for the 5th anniversary of “Meet the GIMP!” and have now my work-flow ready to print in the “right” colors. One reason I shied away from printing for years were the costs. Original Printer Ink is one of the most costly fluids that are traded commercially (1544.54€/l (1) is not the highest price you can pay) and good paper is expensive. But now I have found a combination of a good printer, which is subsidized by small and expensive ink tanks and a good second party ink for 1/6 of the price. The ink is pigment based and so doesn’t bleach out in the light so fast as dye inks. Added to that two good but cheap papers for making beginners mistakes. Of course the colors are off when I print with the usual TurboPrint driver. TurboPrint knows neither ink nor papers. So I needed two printer profiles – one of them was already payed for with the ink starter set. Well, I had to buy two more profiles because I had made a big mistake while printing the test sheets. Take care to switch off all color correction while printing calibration charts. With the right ICC profiles GIMP can give you a Soft Proof of the image that is going to be printed. The look of the printed image is simulated on the screen and you can adapt the image to get your best result. All you need to know (and much more) about calibration and the different “intents” is at Cambridge in Colour and at the Idea Machine. (1) It’s even worse than I said in the video. The ink cartridge holds 11ml and costs 16.99€ Epson list price. That’s 1544.54 per liter. farbenwerk C7 runs up to 275€/l in the set and 230€/l for the ink only. Quite a difference. The TOC 00:20 Gimp Magazine had a great start 01:10 New printer 03:00 Replacement ink by farbenwerk.com 03:50 Pigment ink vs. dye ink 05:50 Arguments for refillable inks 06:30 Filling of cartridges 09:20 Paper from Monochrom.de 11:20 Paper color changes the image 11:50 How printing works 16:00 Printer profiling explained 17:00 Profiling done 21:30 Getting the profile into TurboPrint 23:50 Soft proofing in GIMP 24:30 Out of gamut colors 25:40 Display filter for soft proof 26:30 Printing a real image with profile and soft proof 27:30 Adapting to printable colors with curves 30:10 Difference between LCD and paper / display intent 31:00 Printing in TurboPrint 34:15 6 colors – all black (Carbon ink for monochrome images)
29 Views
17:00:00 08/30/12
Episode 184: Scraping the Web!
[LESS INFO] 29 VIEWS | ADDED 17:00:00 08/30/12
I found a new feature in GIMP, no idea how long it has been hidden in the files menue. One can import a whole web page in one image! Better than a screen shot, because you don’t need to scroll down. The web site of the GIMP Magazine results in an image of 1024×16037 pixels, quite an extreme portrait format. It doesn’t work with all sites and sometimes results in render errors. But it is a nice tool. The GIMP Magazine will have it’s launch in some days on September 5, you should know this by now. ;-) I helped a bit publishing a book, working as a Technical Reviewer. I got the drafts of all the chapters as a Libre Office File and worked through it, filling it up with nasty comments. So I can claim that I have read every word in Michael J. Hammel’s book “Artist’s Guide to GIMP, 2nd Edition” that I have on the lab bench in the second part of the video. It is not a text book but a collection of small and medium sized projects. You learn by doing stuff. Of course I am a little bit biased, got some money, fun and a box of books, but I would also have recommended the first edition of this book. And the second one is better! The TOC Not really needed here – the show starts with creating an image from a web site and switches over to the book review at 7:40. Nothing more in it. Creative Commons License 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.
24 Views
10:00:00 08/05/12
Episode 183: Dynamics!
[LESS INFO] 24 VIEWS | ADDED 10:00:00 08/05/12
In the last episode was a short segment about the brush dynamics in Ramon Miranda’s GIMP Paint Studio. I wanted to read up a bit about this, but the GIMP documentation hasn’t held step with the development here. So this video shows my exploration of the brush dynamics control. The possibilities are limitless, it seems. The show starts with another GIMP theme by samj and a big misunderstanding. You can find everything about it at Gimp Chat.
16 Views
00:01:00 07/24/12
Episode 182: A Special Day
[LESS INFO] 16 VIEWS | ADDED 00:01:00 07/24/12
It’s a special day today, five years ago I rolled out the very first episode of “Meet the GIMP!”. And now it is #182, that’s 0.7 episodes per week. ;-) But the show starts with an other anniversary. Twenty years ago these days Tim Berners-Lee (still without a “Sir” in front of his name) published the first photo on the World Wide Web. Up to then it had spent it’s first year or so text only. The users and servers were somehow connected to the CERN particle collider near Geneva. What’s better to put on an image in a nerdy environment than a band? An all female High Energy Rock Band, Les Horribles Cernettes, of course. So a quick and dirty Photoshop (Version 1) hack (yes, web sites were that ugly once…) intended as a base for an in house CD publication found it’s way to the computer of Berners-Lee and history was on it’s way. There seems to be quite a dispute about this just now. Why can’t people keep proper records when they are making history? ;-) Some epsiodes of Meet the GIMP! have found their way into an education program of the Indian Institute of Technology in Mumbai (Bombay). They dub them with Indian English and publish them on their server. The project Spoken Tutorial is a great way to reach out and broaden education. And of course I am proud that my material is used that way. I love the Greyscale Icon Theme by Eckhard M. Jäger of the “Linux for Designers” blog. Keeping the active icon in color is a nice touch. Ramon Miranda has updated his GIMP Paint Studio. This is a collection of brushes, patterns, gradients and more, bound together by presets and dynamic settings for tablet users. (If you don’t have a tablet, get one now!) The GIMP Magazine is taking up steam. I have seen the drafts, they are nearly complete and get better all the time. Expect the first issue in early September. And finally I process an image of a small part of the steam engine 01 1066, which I found in the Hamburg Main Station. The processing is nothing spectacular, just cropping, curves, a bit of burning and dodging. But this time I am printing the image on my brand new printer – an Epson 1500W. An Episode about printing is coming up, just now I am just playing around. A big thank you to all of you for the support in these five years! The TOC 00:20 Les Horribles Cernettes 03:15 20 years of images in the net 03:50 Meet the GIMP is dubbed in Indian English by spokentutorials.org in Mumbai 06:20 5 years of Meet the GIMP! 07:00 Installing a grey icon theme 08:00 Where is your personal GIMP directory? 09:00 Gimp Paint Studio by Ramon Miranda 10:50 The presets give additional value 11:20 Dynamic settings 13:00 Dampflok 101066 in Hamburg Central Station 14:45 Opening and analyzing the image 16:20 Cropping for a print with a fixed aspect ratio 18:45 Make a backup layer 19:00 Curve tool to get black black 20:45 Dodging with a layer and brush 22:50 Burning with a layer and brush 26:05 Sharpening 27:30 Saving the image 28:10 Printing is new for me 29:00 The GIMP Magazine is coming in September 29:55 5 Years – a summary. Creative Commons License Meet the GIMP Video Podcast by Rolf Steinort and Philippe Demartin is licensed under aCreative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Germany License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://meetthegimp.org.
0 Views
22:00:00 05/24/12
Episode 191: PNG or JPG – The Big Fight
[LESS INFO] 0 VIEWS | ADDED 22:00:00 05/24/12
In the last Episode I looked under the hood of JP(E)G and PNG. This time it gets a bit more practical – which is better for what? I tackle two examples from the GIMP Magazine web site and test, if they would be better saved as JPG or PNG. The Plugin “Save for Web” is really usefull for this task.(The image for this blog entry is a PNG by the way, showing JPG compression artifacts. As a JPG it would be five times the size. ) I “developed” a method for comparing two layers – just set the top layer mode to “difference”, make a new layer from visible and check that with the threshold tool for pixels, that are not completely black. After locating the problematic zones in an image with this tool, one can decide what settings are “good enough”. Conclusion: It depends. It depends on the file, your use case, your level of “good enough” and your compassion for people on a mobile device in EDGE-Hell. The show starts with a little extension of the last show, Pascal mentioned some options for saving a JPG file that I had overlooked. The TOC 00:00:00 Start of video 00:01:00 Progressive mode in JPEG 00:04:09 Progressive mode is not fully supported by browsers 00:04:23 Optimized mode 00:05:56 Baseline? 00:06:17 The quality setting 00:07:09 GIMPMagazine and MTG header image – PNG or JPG? 00:09:23 Checking for quality loss in JPG 00:10:03 Comparing two layers with difference mode 00:10:48 Using the histogram for analysis of the amount of difference 00:11:25 Locating the differences 00:13:50 Trying 85, 75 and 90 as quality settings 00:16:13 When in doubt, compare different settings 00:16:36 Save your work as XCF.GZ 00:17:12 Second example – a drawing 00:19:56 Conclusion 00:23:19 Stay at 4:4:4 for subsampling with photos 00:25:16 Final words of wisdom
47 Views
19:00:00 05/13/12
Episode 181: 2.8, 2.9 and Counting!
[LESS INFO] 47 VIEWS | ADDED 19:00:00 05/13/12
A week of news: GIMP 2.8 is out, we have again a modern stable version of GIMP. Gratulation to the developers, this was good and hard work. But instead of relaxing a bit they threw at the same moment Version 2.9 into the world. High bit depth, not only the 16 bits everybody wanted, 32 bits integer and floating point modes are suddenly available. But be aware, this is a field of bugs and crashes, don’t expect any productive results yet. In a first look at 2.8 I show the shiny new brushes, explain how to use the new sliders and the tagging system for brushes, gradients and patterns. For the lazy I add a bit of calculations in input fields. Then nachbarnebenan takes you for a tour through 2.9, presenting the lossless operation of the layer stack and other stuff. But again, this is not for the faint at heart. If you want to compile 2.9 on Debian, here is a How To in our Wiki. 00:20 News about 2.8 and 2.9 04:40 Starting GIMP 2.8.0 05:00 Single Window Mode 05:25 A new brush set – brush controls 07:10 The new slider controls 08:10 Ressource tagging for brushes, gradients and patterns 10:45 Calculations in input fields 11:45 Goat Invasion! Outlook to 2.9 (nachbarnebenan) 11:50 A layer stack in 2.8 – 8 Bit depth 14:50 The same in 2.9 – 32? Bit Floating Point 18:20 Soft Light and Overlay – the Bug is gone! 19:20 Not all is using GEGL yet 22:30 Final words from Rolf
18 Views
14:30:00 04/28/12
Episode 180: Not for Grown Ups!
[LESS INFO] 18 VIEWS | ADDED 14:30:00 04/28/12
Tuxpaint is a painting software for kids between 3 and 100+. Well, the targeted audience ends at an age of 12, but it is still fun to use when you are older. Tuxpaint is available for Linux, Mac OS X and all Windows flavours. Of course it is under the GPL and so free to get and to be shared. The ease of use beats everything I have seen in the professional educational market and I am considering to get it into my school. The user interface and availability of tools in Tuxpaint can be configured to adapt to the skill level of the user and the level of annoyance the environment is willing to tolerate. There are nice sound effects, but how often can you stand “QUAAAAAAAKQUAAAAAAAKQUAAAAAAAK DUCK”? Also printing can be disabled because space on the fridge and ink cartridges have limits. The configuration is done with a separate program which can be kept outside of the reach of the little end-user. The show starts and ends with some information about the upcoming GIMP Magazine. I am somehow involved in the team now but I promise to keep my priorities on this project here. And then there is an invasion of goats int GIMP and 16 bits and more are in reach. If you want to become a member of the forum, just drop me a mail at info@meetthegimp.org and tell me your intended user name. The TOC 01:00 GIMP Magazine 02:00 Goat Invasion – GIMP will get a lot of progress soon 03:00 16 and 32 Bit already running in the Goat Invasion branch 05:10 Tuxpaint 05:55 Setting Tuxpaint up 09:00 The Toolset 10:00 Painting and brushes 11:10 Lines 11:45 New canvas 12:20 Shapes 13:35 Stamps 16:40 Text 17:30 Magic! (scripts and filters in a mixed bag) 20:20 Saving and recovering images 20:40 Templates for coloring 22:50 GIMP Magazine
54 Views
23:30:00 03/18/12
Episode 179: Corners and Edges
[LESS INFO] 54 VIEWS | ADDED 23:30:00 03/18/12
I am on my way to a class trip an so you get only a short episode about the corners and edges around the canvas. There is a menu button, a zoom mode button, a navigator and the quick mask for selections. And of course there are the rulers with the guides and control points to pull out. All this after a quick update on the histogram from the last show.
31 Views
23:30:00 03/10/12
Episode 178: Lurking in the Shadow
[LESS INFO] 31 VIEWS | ADDED 23:30:00 03/10/12
You are in for a night-time trip to one of the most secret places on the earth – until 23 years ago. The former Stasi headquarter is only 2 subway stations east of my home and I quite like the morbid, spooky atmosphere there. It’s a really huge areal, lots of office space and other buildings. Some of them are used as a museum and as the archive for all the Stasi files. Others are rented out or are simply empty. My image missed some details in the shadows. I used a modified “burn with a layer in Overlay Mode” technique to get a bit of light into them. Instead of painting on the layer I used the L-part of the LAB colour model. I got the idea for this from the Darktable Blog.
30 Views
20:00:00 02/21/12
Episode 177: Take 2 and GIMP!
[LESS INFO] 30 VIEWS | ADDED 20:00:00 02/21/12
Nachbarnebenan continues his tutorial from the last episode. He isolated his model from the a bit to vivid background by making two images from his RAW file. One is crisp and colourful – best for the model. The other one is soft and a bit dull – this tones the background down. In this episode he combines them to one image with a layer mask. Did you know that there is a filter in GIMP to emulate the look of an image for colour blind people? Nachbarnebenan shows how to use it. It’s no so important for photography – but think of all the graphics work done with GIMP. By using this filter you can make a difference in accessibility If you want to get into programming plugins for GIMP in Python – there is link to this great HD video from Gimpusers.com. And for the next episode you’ll need a Trench coat and dark glasses – we’ll enter the Stasi headquaters at night. Sorry, no TOC up to now, but at around 15:30 is the great segment about GIMP and colour blindness.
05/19/13