If you are on the hunt for a do-everything photo management app, check out Album Shaper. Considering its solid, user-friendly design, Album Shaper is packed with a hefty toolset of features that newcomers to image manipulation programs will appreciate. That does not mean more experienced digital shutterbugs will feel left out. Album Shaper’s simple menu-driven structure, though, may make the app seem too basic for them. Just don’t let the simplicity lead you to that conclusion too hastily.

A little for everyone in this little gem, Baldy

Album Shaper: Plenty of Oomph Without the Button Glut

I have used a few converter programs on Linux in the past like, Avidemux, OggConvert, and Pitivi. However, a few months ago I stumbled on a media converter for Linux that I had not heard of before and discovered they had a deb file already created for Ubuntu Linux, so I figured it was worth the few clicks to check it out. I was surprised to discover a simplistically elegant interface although importantly it also worked perfectly each time I threw a “family video” at it.

Darn it really worked and without a ton of hassles and I have a old odd ball camera that up until now has been a “major project” to convert this is one I have to say thanks for the point in the right direction, Baldy

Easy Media Converter for Linux? You bet! Miksoft nails it.

When it comes to the world of graphics, Adobe’s Photoshop and Illustrator and DTP applications such as Quark and InDesign, stand head and shoulders above the rest and are the defacto standards for graphics professionals. But they’re not open source, even if a little Wine hacking gets them running. If you’re committed to doing your graphics the open source way then we have a few suggestions, and a couple of handy tutorials to get you up and running.

Here are some great graphics programs and links to some really good tutorials to help the total noob to pro with just a little reading and a lot of practice, Baldy

Graphics on Linux: Eight great image image resources and tools

One brake on the GIMP’s popularity is that, while it boasts dozens of filters, a rival like Photoshop boasts thousands. You may only occasionally need a special effect that imitates a pencil sketch or a famous style of painting such as Impressionism or Cubism, but, when you do, having a filter to create the effect instantly saves serious amount of time. To help bridge this divide, the GIMP is reviving the User Filter from its 1.x releases. This filter is a kind of meta-plugin that allows users to import and manage Photoship filters or, if they have the knowledge, to write their own. The GIMP User Filter is available from the project’s SourceForge.net site as source code or as a Debian package that may or may not work on Ubuntu, to judge from mailing list chatter. Once you install it, you will find it under Filter – > Generic -> User Filter.

I know of a lot of Gimp users who are jumping with joy today, get the hint Helena this is one for you kiddo. LOL Baldy

GIMP User Filter allows use of Photoshop filters

Struggling to keep control of your growing collection of digital photos? Breathe easy — you’re not alone.

With digital cameras making it easy to take images of just about every aspect of daily life, budding photographers are left wrestling with the best way of labelling them so they can be saved and shared with friends and family.

While file names, key words and captions can help with the process, a new technique promises to change the way photos are stored and viewed — it’s called geotagging.

As the term suggests, geotagging involves attaching tags to digital photos that describe exactly where they were taken. It’s a simple concept, but it opens up an exciting range of new ways in which such tagged photos can be used.

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Here is a nice cheat sheet for Gimp shortcuts that was in the RSS feeds this morning, take a look if you are a linux Gimp user, Baldy

As you might know – we already had a small page about the most important hotkeys in GIMP. But now we’ve collected all available default key bindings of GIMP in a single list.

The hotkeys and shortcuts are based on GIMP 2.4.5 and are seperated into different categories. The link itself hasn’t changed, you can click the link in the left menu: “All GIMP hotkeys” to reach the page.

Find the List Here

GIMP is an open-source image editing program, one of the most popular image-editing programs. It is supported by a huge open-source community that is open in every aspect – development, source, sharing and participation.

As is common to open-source applications, GIMP too has a huge repository of plugins, scripts, brushes and gradients (we’ve already covered Top 40 GIMP plugins). The open-source enthusiasts pour hundreds of hours into developing the application and its add-ons for no cost, and shares them generously with the community.
There are even pictures of the various brushes a great site to visit if you are a user of gimp or just starting and wondering what can be done with it, Baldy

Read the rest of the Article

Last week we learned how to sanely organize our vast digital photo archives with Digikam. Today we’ll look at Digikam’s built-in editing tools. You’ll be able to do a surprising amount of your editing work without ever leaving Digikam.

Here is the second part of a great article on DigiKam and a good read,

Baldy

Technorati tags: Graphics

Tutorial: Digital Photo Management In Linux, Part 2

After publishing an article about removing backgrounds quickly in Photoshop, many have asked me how to do the same thing with the Gimp. While there is no equivalent to the Extract filter in the Gimp, you can still remove backgrounds fairly quickly. Here, I will show you how to do it with the Create and edit paths tool.

Removing Backgrounds Quickly in the Gimp

Have you wanted to see what the funniest and most unusual pictures coming out of Google Street View are? Well here is the site that you want to visit. Some funny and some well lets say they should not be there type of pictures as folks get caught at places they really don’t need to be. Take a peek and see who you know, hint Tom from Buzz Out Loud is in one of them. But have fun and see who you might know.

View all the Pictures

Technorati Tags: Graphics, Networking