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Things you’ll require:

1) Image Editing Software supporting Layers. I recommend GIMP, its great & free too.

2) Printer(Alternately go to your nearest cyber-cafe to take a printout)

3) White Card-Board(Thick)

The Instructions:

Click to Enlarge

1) Open GIMP. Hit File>New. In the new file creation dialog box, select A4(300ppi) & click OK.

2) Now go to Layer menu & select ‘Duplicate Layer‘.

3) Now press ‘Shift + B’ to select ‘Bucket Fill Tool’. Ensure that ‘Black’ colour is selected as foreground colour. Now click the cursor on the duplicated layer & the layer should be filled with black colour. Now from the GIMP toolbar adjust its opacity to 50%. Save the file as tiff.

4) Now just take a printout of this file on an A4 paper sheet. After that, cut the printed A4 sheet into four equal pieces & stick the pieces over the white card-board. Ensure you cut the card-board pieces slightly bigger than the grey card pieces so you can hand-hold them without ruining the grey area.

There you’ve it. Your 18% Grey Card is ready to use. Keep these four pieces in a ziplock bag & into your camera bag. In the next article, I’ll teach you how to use these grey cards.

Save for Web allows to find compromises between minimal file size and acceptable quality of images quickly. While adjusting various settings, you may explore how image quality and file size change. Options to reduce file size of an image include setting compression quality, number or colors, resizing, cropping, Exif information removal, etc.

You can find the plugin in the GIMP plugin registry: http://registry.gimp.org/node/33

How to install the “save for web” plugin in Ubuntu.

OptiPNG : Advanced PNG optimizer

OptiPNG is a an open source and cross-platform image compression/optimization tool. It supports batch processing i.e you can optimize bulk of png files in one simple command. Read more on Sudo Bits: http://blog.sudobits.com/2012/01/18/batch-png-optimizer-for-ubuntu-linux/

On my return to school that september one of my science classes was shared with a guy called Mark who always brought a copy of Anglers Mail in on a Wednesday and due to the old style science lab benches (the ones with the gas taps that you could simply switch on at anytime and gas out the whole class) we could secretly read each copy on our laps, undetected by our teacher.

At that time Anglers Mail were running a series of extracts from Pete Mohans’ ‘Cypry the Carp’. We were transfixed each week as the story unfolded of Andy and Cypry the Carp but what also captured my attention was the ‘make your own tackle’ features that were so popular back in those days and in september pike tackle came into the spotlight. Spoons made from, well… spoons! Toby style bars made from spoon and fork handles and slider floats made from broom handles carefully carved out. Pike fishing seemed another world away and new precautions needed to be taken in the pursuit, wire traces, pike gags and forceps all needed consideration.

With talk of pike in the back of the science lab, my friend Mark told me tales of large pike caught in the Horstead Keynes lakes and he had witnessed a few captures as he lived right next to one of the lakes with his mother and brother in a small cottage. Horstead Keynes was only about four miles away but these lakes sounded out-of-bounds to me, still my fascination with large pike was growing.

At that time I was a member of Haywards Heath and District Angling Society and another story was relayed to me about more monster pike encounters and this time it was on a water I could fish in Slaugham, a HHDAS water. A large pike was hooked by two lads fishing dead baits, it had them all over the lake and finally it shot under the platform where the two young intrepid piscators were standing. Hesitantly one of them hand-lined the pike from under the platform not realising how close his hand was to the wire trace until the shock of seeing such a large toothed mouth caused the pike to be dropped, resulting in the line parting. A return visit had to be organised and this time I was going to be properly prepared.

It was a saturday morning, crisp and bright, I had already purchased a PDQ wire snap tackle trace, bound multi-stranded wire with red cotton whipping over the twisted knots. The trace carefully coiled in a tracing paper bag, I could only afford one trace so it  had to last. Also I had purchased a Vortex sliding pike float (carving a broom handle was a lot harder than made out in the Anglers Mail article) along with various swivels beads and swan shot. The rod was my trusty old Marco fibreglass carp rod with extra whipping over   the joint where a split had started to show, the reel was a Mitchell 300s.

Standing outside the fishmongers by the roundabout in Haywards Heath I purchased a few joeys and some sprats which were a cheaper option. I was now a hunter using fish to catch bigger fish, maggots were for boys…I set off in trepidation!

The journey to Slaugham lake was a good forty minutes bike ride so I set off, now prepared like ‘proper’ fishermen do, off to do battle with rod and landing net tied to the crossbar and a faint whiff of sea fish following behind. On arrival the lake was calm, the trees bare and the air cold. My choice of swim was one of the platforms that protruded from the large reed bed that surrounded a good forty percent of the whole lake, the rest of the lake was un-fishable as the banks were covered in fallen trees that even the most cunning of stalkers could not penetrate. Once on the wooden platform I tackled up, carefully tying on my wire trace and setting the sliding float so that it ‘cocked’ nicely in the flat calm water. I couldn’t remember from my Observer Book of Coarse Fishing whether the dead bait was to settle on the bottom or dangle in the mid-water? A few  adjustments over the morning covered both options but the float never moved. By the afternoon I had covered a large corner of the lake and then remembered the illustrations in one of my books back home of a pike snapping at roach near some reeds, so I cast as close as I would dare, fearing that I could loose the wire trace and that would then be curtains for the day.

After only moments the float bobbed, then slowly towed away, just a foot or two but then stopped. Mixed  emotions of excitement, fear and disappointment all came at once but I reeled in, kept calm and replaced the now tired looking joey with a fresh tail and re-cast.  Again the float carried off and this time I struck, instantly there was a swirl that broke the stillness of the day and I was in a true tussle, like nothing I had experienced before. After a short while the pike was under control and I netted a pike of around six pounds. My next thought was how to un-hook the pike, I had forceps and a ‘humane’ gag but this was an operation all new to me. So straddling the fish I managed to get the gag in place and thankfully with shaking hands, managed to get the trebles out. I leant down and returned the pike using the landing net, I then stood up on the platform and thought, that was a ‘proper’ fish, was I a proper fisherman? Well time would tell but I certainly cycled home feeling a foot taller!

Now I am wiser.  I have learned from my mistakes and now fully realize the importance of things like documentation, a widely-used form of communication between developers, and well-written code.

Armed with lessons learned from last semester and the guidelines from the Teaching Open Source book, I had a very clear idea of what qualities I was looking for in a project before even discussing different project suggestions with the team.  Luckily, everyone else had the same idea in terms of what would make a desirable project, so narrowing projects down to a few choices was fairly easy.  We are looking at Gimp and Alchemy for our first two choices, with a third choice to be determined from several other projects that we have not yet narrowed down.

Our primary choice of project is Gimp (GNU Image Manipulation Program).  Gimp provides all of the functionality of the proprietary software Photoshop, without that pesky price tag or hidden proprietary source code.  I have done a small amount of professional photography, in addition to the photography needed for my food blog and photos I have taken just for fun while out and about in the world, and I have used Gimp for the last few years to help me with the postprocessing of these photos.  One of great things about Gimp, is the ability to create plug-ins (in C or Python).  Having used the software and a few plug-ins myself (created by other developers), I would love for the team to create something that can be enjoyed by the entire Gimp community.  I have been wanting to contribute to this project for a while, and am really excited to potentially get to do so for a school project.

Look out, fellow classmates, I’m ready to fight to get this project!

~Marianne

Everyday I come across tons of free programs that can definitely make your life easier if you have the patience to learn how to use them. Having a computer background I often wonder how easy these programs would actually be for someone who might not have the time to learn an extensive program with a lot of bells and whistles. I came across 2 that are very easy to use right away but offer tons of great features that you can discover at your own pace.

Open Office

This program is like a free version of Microsoft Office with all the same features that you would pay hundreds of dollars for. You can create documents, spreadsheets and presentations very quickly. I tried this one out a couple of months ago because I wanted a doc editing program for my laptop that I could use on the go. Without reading any of the tutorials I was able to create a document in about 5 minutes and save it into my docs folder. I don’t use spreadsheets very often but I was able to create a simple table in about 10 minutes. I honestly thought that there would be a major learning curve here but if you know anything about Microsoft Office this wont be a painful switch at all. The only thing that I had to remember was to save my file to a .doc format so that I could read it in Microsoft Office on my desktop. Here is an example of Open Office:

Gimp

Gimp is the closest free program that I have found to Photoshop. There is a download available for Macintosh as well (http://www.gimp.org/macintosh/ ). Gimp lets you do simple photo alterations, create web pages and brochures, as well as draw and paint with text just as easily as Photoshop without the major expense. Yes, there is a bit of a learning curve, but I was able to put together a simple one-page brochure in about 30 minutes my first time using it. There are also numerous tutorials available on line and at Gimps official website to get you up to speed fairly quickly. Then you can take your time becoming a pro. I’m sure I will be using this one a lot more often since I realized how extensive the program actually is. It’s definitely worth the effort of learning. A quick review of of Gimp:

Do you know of any other free programs that are fairly easy to learn? Please share them with me.

Link Lifehacker

Something deep under.

Something having a swim.

However, aside from a freak storm just before Halloween, there’s yet to be any real winter weather this year, and the trail is clear.

I really didn’t expect anything to really catch my eye.  The sky was clear and blue, and it reflected nicely off of the water along the trail, but the detail areas were all various shades of grey and brown, and really not very appealing.  But I found the shapes of dead trees to be interesting, and took a few shots from different angles as Molly and I wandered along.  I had the thought in my mind that they might work pretty well as black and white images, or perhaps tinted just a bit with a single color.

Pretty "blah" photo!

However, when I popped the card into the computer, and began looking at what I had, I wasn’t very happy.  The shadows led to a pretty uneven exposure, and in some shots, the angle of the sun, along with the position I’d taken, had given me tree trunks that were bright on one side, and dark on the other.

But I really liked the shapes of the trees.  They just looked so absolutely lifeless and alien.

So I started playing with them.

Step one was to drain them of color.  I was using GIMP (a free image editing software), which allowed me to desaturate the photos with a slide control, using either lightness, luminosity, or an average to take the colors out, and the second step was to put a single color back in.  I used different colors for each photograph, thinking that I might display three of them side by side by side, and wanted obvious differences between them.

Then I wanted fog.

GIMP allows you to use multiple layers, and to adjust the opacity of them according to your needs.  For fog, I found that generating what GIMP calls “plasma” works well for fog.  When it’s generated initially, it can look something like this…

The beginning of fog...

Doesn’t look much like fog, does it?  However, when you take all of the color out of it, and lower the opacity of that layer, it works pretty well!

Much better, but I thought maybe some “patchy fog” would look better.  In GIMP, you can use the eraser tool on one layer, which in this case was the fog.  By reducing the opacity of the eraser tool, and using a great big brush with “faded edges”, I took out some of the fog, which of course let the color bleed through a bit more.

In the end, this wasn’t what I had in mind when I pressed the shutter release, but I was happy with the end products.  I’ve printed my three favorites, and really like how they look next to each other.

Now I just have to figure out what to take down to put these up!

I’m out…Peace!

The Developing Photographer

When I began this blog I intended to post monthly tutorialson aspects of using my preferred image manipulations programme GNU Gimp. I wrote a very brief tutorial on what I feel is the fundamental tool in Gimp; using layers and layer masks. Learning how to use layer masks will allow you to achieve smaller retouches as well as more advanced image processing effects and it would be worth reading my previous entry before tackling this if you are new to GIMP. Unfortunately I failed to post a December tutorial over the festive period, but hopefully this will make up for last month’s omission.

In this tutorial I will try to explain how to achieve the more specific effect of adding textures to an image. As with many more extreme post-process effects, adding textures to images will always cause some controversy amongst photo enthusiasts. Mine is a mixed view on the subject. I’m not a personal fan of image effects for the sake of it, or changing an image to the extent that it tells an untrue story of the events that took place when the image was taken. However, I also think of photography as an art form and as a means of expression. In my view, the end image can justify the means of achieving it if it reflecst the intentions of the photographer/artist. My warning would be to use these effects sparingly and only when you are sure that the additions you are making will enhance the final product beyond the original image.

For instructions on achieving this effect, please read on after this break.

Adding a Texture Using Gimp

1. Open the image you wish to enhance and find an appropriate texture to overlay. For the most rewarding results, photograph your own textures. Images of stones, bricks, paper, the sky or even flowers can make great overlays for your image. Using your own textures gives you the knowledge that you have created the final image without assistance. That being said, there are numerous helpful Flickr users who are happy to lend their images though it is polite to reference their contribution in the description of your final image (if shared).

2. Open the texture as a new layer and order so that it is on top of your original image. Select the texture layer and use the scale tool to size drag it to the size of your image (or slightly larger if necessary).

3. With the texture layer still selected, look to the Layer Mode (top right in the image above), it will be set to Normal by default. Play firstly with the Opacity slider as this alone may give you the effect you desire (though perhaps my be a bit too harsh). Experiment with the different layer modes (try Overlay/Hard Light/Soft Light) and opacity until you reach the desired effect.

Bringing the Subject through

The problem with these steps alone is that the texture will in many occasions obscure the main image subject. You can use a layer mask to “bring through” parts of the image so they are no longer covered by the texture.

4. Right-click on the texture layer image on the right hand side and select “Add Layer Mask” (choose White from the selection window). To paint through the texture entirely, use a black soft edged brush to paint black onto the layer mask over the parts use wish to show through. Selecting a dark grey from the colour pallet may give a more subtle effect allowing the base image to partially show through.

That’s pretty much it. From what I can see adding textures is all about experimentation. Try altering the colours of the texture using Colours>Components>Channel Mixer and try adding multiple layers and textures to achieve the effect. I’m aware that these tutorials are very brief, so ask any questions you have in the comments section below.

Before

After

Thanks for reading and thanks to SkeletalMess for the texture used in this example.

Photo minip in Gimp

She stretched, the fur ruffling along her back, before turning toward the creature on the soft blue thing. The creature would feed her, the creature always did. All she had to do was rub up against the creature and purr loudly to get attention. Perhaps sit on her crinkly sheets wrapped in the harder thing that smelled of trees.

Peering up at the creature with her big yellow eyes, kitty purred, rubbing against the creature to get its attention.

We intend on replacing the siding with hardy board and covering the brick with stone.  Time consuming and expensive, we have decided that for now, a cheaper and quicker alternative is paint.  After doing some research, I discovered you CAN paint siding as long as you stay in the same color tones or lighter.  Ideally we would like the house color a dark grey but for now, will have to settle for white (not much else goes with orange brick).  We will paint the trim and the gutters as well but we are going to have to live with the windows until they naturally need replacing.

I downloaded a cool program called GIMP that walks you through the steps to alter colors of your photographs.  A YouTube video was also helpful and this was the result.

If you take your time, you can ensure you stay within the lines…much like coloring.  Mine is a bit messy but you get the idea.