www.gimp.org From the release:
Version 2.2.14 of the GNU Image Manipulation Program is a bug-fix release in the stable 2.2 series. Please see the NEWS file for a detailed list of changes. The source code is available from ftp.gimp.org. Binary packages for the various supported platforms should become available soon.
AMD has posted an update to their proprietary Linux driver for ATI graphics cards. Here is the announcement. From the notes:
Resolved Issues
The following section provide a brief description of resolved issues with the latest version of the AMD Catalyst™ Linux Graphics Driver software suite. These include:
- The screen no longer turns black if the X-Server is terminated from the text console. This condition was known to occur only on certain laptop confgiurations. Further details can be found in topic number 737-26829.
The Gimp developers announced the release of a new users manual today. From the announcement:
After three months of hard work we are proud to announce a new release of the user manual for GIMP 2.2.. They recommend you wait until it's been prepackaged for your distribution before installing it on your system, but you can always check it out online at http://docs.gimp.org.
- New content (incl. spelling and grammar fixes) for German, French, Italian, Norwegian, Russian, Spanish and Korean
- The PDF version of the manual is now generated using dblatex
- Lots of bug fixes
I don't have any actual content for you right now, but I just saw this article, 30 Days With Linux that I thought I'd share. This is a very even handed review of my favorite linux distribution, Ubuntu.
The article is geared towards people who like to tinker with their machines but who aren't necessarily programmers or even script kiddies. (This group is also sometimes referred to as "power users" but that just sounds so lame... I shudder every time I hear it.) If you've been wondering if the time is right for a move toward linux, or if you're (rightly) upset about the price range or hardware requirements, or embedded DRM of Windows Vista, I'd highly recommend reading this article. The article is a bit long, so if you're short on time, you might just read the first and last pages. If you do have time, the article is well worth the read, even if you're already using linux.
Enjoy.
adigitaldreamer.com has free royalty free stock photography available for download. This is a great resource for anyone wanting to build a website or magazine on the cheap. The stuff I've seen is pretty high quality, which is rare from a free stock photo site, so I thought they were worth a highlight. Go give them a look.
The Open Font Library has announced a logo competition. From the announcement:
The Open Font Library (OFL.o) needs a logo to help identify the project. We want the community to help create this logo and three judges from the OFL.o will select the winning logo which we will use in all of our branding.One of the stipulations is that it must be in SVG format, so fire up Inkscape and get cracking!
PortableApps.com announced yesterday the release of their portable version of the Gimp 2.2.13. From the announcement:
This new release updates the included GIMP to 2.2.13, adds Vista compatibility, correctly cleans up GTK's bookmark and thumbnail files and features a greatly improved startup speed thanks to the new launcher's plugin processing. And, it's now packaged in PortableApps.com Format so it can easily integrate with the PortableApps.com Suite.If you don't have a portable computer, or if your only computer is someone elses, having PortableApps is the next best thing, seriously. Go check it out!
Just bumped into the Gimp Users flickr group. (Thanks again Charles.) From their description:
Just to let the world know that some of us prefer to use "free software".They've got over 1,100 members in the group. Check them out!
Charles Tilford (a.k.a. listentoreason) sent me a tip about another photograph editor called LightZone for Linux. I haven't had much time to experiment with it, but it looks to be a pretty sweet little package. This is $250 software on Windows or Macintosh but free for nerds linux users. Score! Here's a quote from their homepage:
Drawing on principles behind the photographic Zone System and traditional darkroom film photography, LightZone 2.1 makes it simple and easy to bring out the true tone, color and contrast often hidden in digital images. Designed by photographers for photographers, LightZone 2.1 offers a rich set of powerful, yet easy to use digital editing tools. LightZone's editing tools help reduce the noise often found in high-ISO digital images, correct color shifts and white balance errors, selectively sharpen or blur images or parts of images, remove dust spots and boost overall color to create beautiful, breath-taking images, letting the true talent of the photographer shine though.
For all you shutterbugs out there, there's a flickr group out there just for you called Open Source Photography (OSP) I'll just post the summary they have up:
This group deals with the usage of open source software to process photography. It intends to be a forum to share experiences and advances in the area of OSP. Image pos-processing using gimp, experiences with plug-ins, different open source for Tone mapping and HDRs, and much more …
For those of you using some flavor of Debian linux (Ubuntu) and do not favor building your own packages, ubuntuforums.org user gummybearchen
has conveniently packaged Inkscape for us. Check it out here: http://www.ubuntuforums.org....
That is all.
What I'm wondering is, should I include Inkscape as a tool for the tutorials on this blog? It's another open-source application which does vector paths a lot better than the GIMP's GFig plugin and I could make things like the Web 2.0 violators look a million times better. I'd still try to do everything here with the GIMP whenever possible, only using Inkscape when I felt it could accomplish the task in a way the GIMP could not.
I don't know how to do one of the fancy polls, so just post a comment with your opinion please. Thank you.
Update: It seems like the overwhelming majority would appreciate some Inkscape content. Havoc makes a very good point though. I'm a very busy guy. I'm a husband and a father. I have a full time job, and I am also taking a couple of courses at the local University. My time is Precious. However, one of the benifits of my job is that when things are going well, I can pretty much research and do what I please. I'm not terribly familiar with Inkscape, but since people (including myself) feel that it is a valuable addition, I will make an effort to include it when appropriate. After all, one of the reasons I started this project is to learn new things. So far, there's really only been one post where it would have made a difference in my opinion, so there may not be much call for it.
Thank you everyone. I really appreciate the input.
If you are a Debian or Ubuntu user, Ubuntu Forums user soc has created a .deb file for the latest version of the GIMP. Check it out here: www.ubuntuforums.org. If you're unfamiliar, a .deb file is an automatic installer for Debian based systems which makes installing applications a very simple process. No dependency hell. If you're brave, you can download and build the package from source. I'm going to continue using v2.2 here just because it is the stable version. As soon as 2.4 is announced, I'll make the switch for tutorials.
Thanks soc!
p.s. Here's the changelog for 2.3
As it says in my info page, I'll be using this space to adapt existing popular Photoshop tutorials into GIMP tutorials. I will attempt to obtain permission from original tutors when necessary, and will at least always attribute the original work, so if you'd like to see something done the Photoshop way, you can simply follow the attribution links to the original work.
At some point, I plan on actually being more proficient with GIMP and will be authoring original Gimparoo tutorials. If you ever see the "Gimparoo" category attached to a post and no attribution links, this means I have succeeded.
For those of you wondering what the heck GIMP is; GIMP stands for "GNU Image Manipulation Program". It is a program similar to but not exactly like Adobe's popular Photoshop application. The most significant difference to the lay user is that GIMP is free. I say "lay user" because Photoshop does have significant advantages for the professional user, but to the average user, GIMP is more than sufficient. Especially for free. You can download GIMP and a large number of add-ons for Windows, Macintosh or Linux by visiting their website. If you are running some modern flavor of Linux, chances are good that you already have it installed. Being open source software, there are a number of ways you can personally contribute to the project. Please explore the GIMP homepage and it's associated links for more information.
So, on with the show already! Up next I'll start with everyone's favorite new fad: Web 2.0. I'll be walking you through a few of the more popular Web 2.0 Photoshop tutorials, GIMP style, and hopefully we'll all learn something in the process.
All text and images are published under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 License.
