The End – at least for now.

No, I'm not giving up blogging – just the last of the imaging program posts for now.

The final instalment is the only one of the more PSP-like  programs I’d heard about before I started all this – Gimp.

Just looking at the website makes you realise that this is a different sort of beast to most of the others I’ve looked at. The page of tutorials alone is thiiiiiiiis long – and, of course, full of words you never knew existed.

However, as a novice and non-techie – I found the program a bit irritating. Click on ‘File – Open’ and you get a list of your pictures. Not thumbnails. A list. The Help section acknowledges that this can make life difficult if you don’t know the name of the image you want to work with – but I couldn’t work out how [or even if] you could change the list to thumbnails. I suppose if you are working on a few images, you probably will know what they are called – but when you’ve got hundreds and they are almost all called something like IMG 1234…

If you click on a name the program shows you a thumbnail of that file – but clicking through  all the files in a folder can take a while – and I'm an impatient soul.

Another thing that irritates me is that as you move the cursor around, little arrows on the scales across the top and down the left hand side move around too. I’m sure there is a way to stop it but I don’t know what it is.

Unlike most of the other programs I’ve tried, when you use the filters, Gimp doesn’t always show you a preview on the actual image, but in a separate pane – and most of the time it is only part of the image, not the whole. You can move the preview around, but I prefer to se the whole thing at once. For ‘Tools’ on the other hand, it does use the actual image. Most of the time – it doesn’t seem to be consistent.

Having said all that – Gimp has a huge range of things to play with, [try ‘Colours’, ‘Tools’ and ‘Filters’], even if some of them are [and I quote from the program] ‘special effects that nobody understands’. There are lots of sliders to play with too, even if you don’t understand what the labels mean.

This is ‘Supernova’.

 

 

 

 

 

 

‘Cubism’ which is in the ‘Artistic’ set of filters. Lots of bits of layered sheers, I think.

 

 

 

 

‘Value – Invert’. Very moody.

 

 

 

 

 

Equally moody – the ‘Edge’ filter on the dahlia – love those colours.

 

 

 

 

 

‘Predator’.  No, I don’t know why either, but interesting for counted thread techniques.

 

 

 

 

‘Artistic – Softglow’. Maybe I’m turning girlie in my old age.

 

 

 

 

 

 

And ‘Waves’. most of these samples have had sliders slid – but don’t ask me what I did!

 

 

 

I didn’t find Gimp the easiest of programs to use, but I think it has enormous potential – and is probably much easier if you know more about this sort of program than I do. It also seems to have the best ‘Help’ section of all the programs I downloaded – and, I think, of all the others too.

Of the 4 programs I downloaded [as opposed to on-line programs]Photoscape is probably my favourite, because it is so easy to use and has extras like the collages etc. But I may well come back to Gimp – if only to explore the tutorials on layers, and the paint section which looked quite user friendly.

Mmmm – have to think of something else to do tomorrow!

On a completely different topic – Mrs C reminded me that I hadn’t mentioned where we all went on Monday night.

Here.  Or, more geographically accurately, here – but I posted the review rather than writing my own, which would have been pretty similar.

I don’t think actors are allowed to work at the Watermill unless they can also sing, dance and play at least one musical instrument – preferably all at the same time. I have seen people dance on grand pianos before [as they do in this show] – but not tap dance with a double bass. Has to be a first. Strongly recommended – if you can get tickets. Mrs C got ours last Easter. Very good for taking your mind off interviews.

P.S. Am I the only person in the country who didn't know who Craig Revel Horwood is? – had to look him up.

The penultimate instalment …

unless I find something new.

Today it is Photoscape. This one looks different, and I found it took a bit of getting used to. The circular menu looks nice but is a bit off-putting if you don’t know what ‘Raw converter’ or ‘Splitter’ mean. The ‘Help’ comes in the form of videos – am I the only person in the world who loathes trying to watch videos on my computer?

If you click on ‘Editor’  you get a more friendly looking screen. On the left there is a list of all your files and folders – scroll and click your way through that to your pictures. You will see lots of thumbnails appear below the list. [Well, you get lots if, like me, you've got lots.] Click on the picture you want to work with – the thumbnail will grey out so you know which one you’re working with, in case you’ve altered it so much you’ve forgotten. I really like this because it is very easy to find the image you want, and change to different images as needed.

Click on ‘Home’ at the bottom of the page just next to the thumbnails.  The options for editing the photo are all shown at the bottom:  there are square buttons for B&W, sepia, greyscale and negative at the left and ‘Undo’ and ‘Save’ are over at the far right.

It is worth playing around with all the options – for example this is the result of increasing ‘Auto Level’, ‘Auto Contrast’ and ‘Sharpen’ to the maximum.

 

 

You can also add a [fairly simple] frame if you wish. Here's one for Mrs Cheddar …

 

 

 

 

 

although she’ll probably prefer this one. 

 

 

 

 

There are 25 filters, many with further options and most tuneable. Some are quite unusual like ‘Cellophane’ – which looks like an idea for appliqué with sheers.

 

 

 

I’m not usually very interested in distortion filters – but I made  an exception for ‘Illusion’ under the ‘Distorts’ heading. You can have up to 12 repetitions of the image.

 

 

And ‘Distorts - Window’ makes your image look as if you’ve printed it on a sheet of labels – you can vary the arrangement of the labels and the background colour.

 

 

 

 

If you click on ‘Region out of focus’ you can adjust the size and degree of the unfocussed region – but you can also apply another filter to that region – like ‘Crystallize’.

 

 

 

If you fancy doing silly things with your image click on ‘Object’ next to ‘Home’. Then you can add other images, text, or symbols  – or draw on your image if you so wish. The daisy image came from the program – i think you can add your own images but I haven’t worked out how to do it.

‘Crop’ does what it says on the tin. ‘Region’ removes moles and redeye, but also allows you to pixelate a selected area – useful for protecting the innocent in your images.  

 

 

This is ‘Distorts – Illusion’ applied to the daisy-dahlia before I added the text. Isn’t it pretty?

 

 

 

 

When you’ve finished exploring the tabs along the bottom, have a look at the ones along the top. ‘Batch Edit’ lets you do the same thing to lots of photos at once, should you wish to.

‘Page’ is great fun. You can make a range of collages, add borders, change the background colour etc.  ‘Combine’ seems to do something similar, but there may well be some subtle difference which escapes me.

‘Print’ allows you to arrange images for printing, and gives more options than Picasa.

And ‘Anigif’ does this. Very easily. [Just hope it still works when I publish this.] [If it does you may well see more of them – you have been warned.]

 

 

 

And one little extra. Click on ‘Photoscape' and then ‘Paper Print’, and print your own graph paper, lined paper, calendars etc. If you, like me, have a desire for landscape paper with lines – this will print it for you – although I would prefer not to have a margin.

I like Photoscape. There are lots of interesting filters and other things to play with, and It is easy to navigate once you get used to it. The paint section seems quite limited but I’m not really into painting my pictures anyway. I just wish I could read the help section instead of having to watch it.

And finally – Ronaldo the Wonder Dog just made the dizzy heights of the local TV news – which is the best thing I've seen on it, ever. Well done, Ronaldog!

Sometimes I just can’t think of a punchy title…

Today’s program is Twisted Brush. There are several versions of this – the free one is Twisted Brush Open Studio.

A friendly ‘Quick Start Guide’ pops up when you open the program, but some of the controls use slightly confusing terminology – for example you need to click on ‘Load from file as new [Import image]’ to upload your photo.

Once you’ve sussed that, there are lots of Filters to play with, and most can be tuned. Indeed some of them, mostly the ‘Generate’ group, make you think your image has vanished into cyberspace when you first click on them. Playing with the sliders and the ‘Mix Mode’ section  will bring it back in a wonderful variety of formats.  [If nothing seems to happen, check that the ‘Preview’ box is ticked!]

Each of these was made from one of the 17 options under ‘Generate’.

As you can see, Twisted Brush has unusual filters as well as more common ones.

 

 

And these all resulted from playing in the ‘Stylize’ section. I wasn’t feeling particularly girlie, they just turned out pink – apart from bottom right, which is ‘Fingerprint’.

 

 

Back to the passion flower – these are all ‘Artistic’ effects. The abstract is ‘Crayon’ with the ‘Size’ slider moved well to the left.

 

There is a lot to play with in Twisted Brush  - I think complete newbies might find it a bit overwhelming. Possibly it is also a good one to look at if you are into paint programs.

The Quick Start Guide looks helpful, but can be a bit confusing because it also refers to the paid-for version.  One to come back to when I feel in the mood to play, I think  …

The portfolio is packed and isn’t too full, the required passport sized photo [who is that woman with the grey hair?] is in my bag, and the nails are being chewed. Fortunately I have a busy day tomorrow so not much time to worry, but I may not post – either because I haven’t had time or I’ve hit the gin. [Actually we’re going out with Mr and Mrs Cheddar which is a very  good thing…]

The last lap.

I’m going to finish off this apparently never-ending series with some programs you have to download- but still free, or free versions of larger programs you have to pay for. [I was careful here and only downloaded programs available from sites like CNET.]

The first is Paint.Net, which was developed in conjunction with Microsoft – and it looks like it. Which is actually quite confidence building if you are used to  Microsoft products.

It doesn’t have an enormous range of effects, and there is only limited tuning compared with Sumopaint, but I found it easy to use. For example, the ‘Undo’ button is very close to the Effects button, handy when you change your mind. But I wish the tuning menus didn’t appear right over the image you want to tune, so you can’t see what's happening without moving them.

The ‘Help’ section is reasonably helpful to a novice – for example the explanation of layers and blends is actually comprehensible! And the on-line forum has Tutorials written by users, including some for Newbies, although I haven’t tried any of them yet…

As in Pixlr you can play around with ‘Curves’ in the ‘Adjustments’ section, to change the colours of the image.

 

 

 

 

This is ‘Tile Reflection’  - under ‘Effects’, then ‘Distort’.

 

 

 

 

 

You can change the tile size and angle, amongst other things.  

 

 

 

 

 

These used the ‘Clouds’ filter - you need to click on ‘Render’ first to get it. At first I got a murky grey image – as you might expect given the name – but applying the ‘Difference’ blend [left] or ‘Negation’ [top right] made a big difference. The bottom right image is a multiple exposure of the other two made in Picasa.

 

Also in the ‘Render’ section are two Fractal effects, Julia -

 

 

 

 

and Mandelbrot.  The colours don’t seem to be affected by the original image – and I’m not sure if the patterns are either – but fun if you like fractals, and it might be interesting to recolour them in another program.

 

 

So – if you don’t mind downloading a program rather than accessing it on-line, and you want something simple, with what appears to be more effective help than Sumo or Pixlr, it is worth looking at Paint.Net, especially if you are a Microsoft user as a lot of the commands will look very familiar.

Thanks to everyone who sent encouragement for Monday – the portfolio is under way, but I think the biggest problem is going to be reducing it to a sensible size…

A correction, a new program, and some good news – maybe…

I have been corrected by Wensleydale for saying that there was no electric light at the Watts Chapel. While I was attempting to photograph the wall paintings, he was inspecting the infrastructure and spotted some lights and some switches - but the switches were not accessible by members of the public. So if you decide to visit the chapel, pick a bright day, unless you have better eyes and a better camera than I have.

Onto another program – the delightfully named ‘Sumopaint’. Like Pixlr it offers both painting and photo manipulation – indeed, the two look quite similar and seem to have many similar tools, although Sumopaint has a useful ‘Undo’ arrow at the bottom left.

Sumo has over 20 filters, and almost all of them allow tuning – in some cases there are lots of sliders and tick boxes to play with. And some of the filters are quite unusual – you can spend hours playing with these, believe me.

This is the ‘Camouflage’ filter – you can increase the size of the blobs, which  gives quite as abstract effect.

 

 

 

 

This is the ‘Perlin Noise’ filter – move the ‘Pattern Alpha’ slider to the left to combine the original image and the lovely coloured swirls.

 

 

 

This is ‘Ripple’ – again you can adjust the size …

 

 

 

 

 

as you can on ‘Waves’ – which allows you to change  a lot of other things as well, which I don’t pretend to understand, but I love the results.

 

 

 

The same is true of ‘Wave Lab’ – there are 13 different things you can adjust. I knew what sines and cosines etc. were once, honest, but I never associated them with lovely patterns.

This is Wavelab Complex.

 

 

Wavelab can give an effect similar to that which  other programs call ‘Kaleidoscope’, but Sumo’s Kaleidoscope gives you something a bit more traditional. [It’s the dahlia, that’s why it’s gone red.]

 

Move the ‘Transparency’ slider and magic happens.

I think this would make a wonderful patchwork Christmas tree skirt – especially for hand dyers who can dye gradations. [You know who you are!]

 

 

This is another one for quilters - ‘Triangle Pattern’, also  with the ‘Transparency’  slider moved about half way across.

 

 

 

Another quilt? The thing i like best about Sumopaint is that the ‘ordinary’ filters which most programs have [this is ‘Pixelate’] become extraordinary when you play around with all the sliders and tick boxes. Most programmes allow you to change the size of the pixels – Sumo lets you do that, and choose circles or squares,

which can be ovals or rectangles.  Sixties curtain material, anyone?

 

 

 

 

Take another example. Lots of programs have ‘Half Tone’ – and usually you can play around with the size of the dots, and sometimes the shape too.

This looks a bit ‘blah’ doesn’t it?

 

Change one or more of 11 different characteristics, and interesting things begin to happen – another patchwork pattern?

 

 

 

 

 

Or blackwork? To be honest, you will only get ideas for shading as the individual units are restricted in pattern – but still worth a play.

 

 

There are a few little niggles. Occasionally the image disappeared or the program froze. The ‘Help’ section is not particularly helpful if you are a novice. And most frustrating of all, although I asked Sumo to save the images to my computer as JPEGs, on several occasions it saved them as BMPs – which you can't open in Picasa. I was able to open them with Windows Picture and Fax viewer, and save them from that as JPEGs, but it caused a few minutes of panic while I tried to work out what to do. [Don’t be fooled by this paragraph into thinking I know what I’m doing – I don’t – it was inspired guesswork!]

And after all that, I nearly forgot  the good [albeit scary] news. I mentioned before that there is something I really want to do but I daren’t say too much about in in case I jinx it.

Well – I've got an interview for it on Monday. [No, not a job, I've finished with all that, thank you very much.] And I’ve got to take portfolio. Guess what I’ll be doing this weekend?

Another reason to love Sweden – apart from IKEA and Wallandar.

[The Swedish TV series of Wallandar, that is – miles better than the BBC’s version, even if you have to read it. And even if Krister Henriksson looks like my Uncle.]  But I digress.

Pixlr is Swedish. I think. It seems closer to Paint Shop Pro than any of the other on-line programs I've found - for example, you can paint as well as photo edit if you are so inclined, and it has layers. But don’t let that put you off – Pixlr is more unskilled-user-friendly  than PSP, or maybe it just looks less scary …

I find it easy to use, even though I am a great believer in ‘If all else fails, read the instructions’, especially with IT because the instructions are rarely comprehensible to those without a degree in geek. The Help section for Pixlr is written in excellent if occasionally idiosyncratic Swedish English but it does have gaps, like the section on layers. If you are prepared to work round that, you will probably have fun. And for a really easy version, without the paint brushes, try Pixlr Express.

You can upload an image to both programs quickly and easily, though one problem I found with Pixlr, but not the Express version, is that the image is shown as square even when the original isn’t – so part of it may be hidden. The ‘Navigator’ window to the right shows you a mini version of the whole image, and which bit you are looking at, and there are sliders to move it around – but it was a bit confusing before I realised this. It may be possible to change it but I couldn’t work out how – although I didn’t try very hard!

There are over 20 filters [i.e. effects], most of which allow tuning. If they don’t, like ‘Blur’ and ‘Sharpen’, just click on them again, as many times as you like till you get the effect you want. There is an ‘Undo’ command in ‘Edit’ but although it says you can use ‘Control Z’ I couldn’t get it to work.

This is ‘Art Poster’ – basic black and white but you can change the third colour. Have I mentioned that I like purple?

 

 

 

 

This is ‘Colour Look Up’ – you can modify the colours if you don’t like pastels.

 

 

 

 

This is ‘Pointinize’. You can change the shapes, and I think this is ‘Small Circles’. Fascinating how it looks like cross stitch.

 

 

 

 

 

I showed you ‘Kaleidoscope’ before. 

This is what you get using the default settings. Nice – but not as nice

 

 

 

 

 

as the effect if you  reduce the size , using the slider.

 

 

 

 

I like the Kaleidoscope effect so much I applied it to the dahlia – clockwise from top left these are:

1. Kaleidoscope alone
2. Kaleido + Art Poster
3. Kaleido + Heat Map
4. Kaleido + Engrave

 

I played around in the ‘Adjustment’ section as well as the Filters – all these use the dahlia.

This was using ‘Curves’ - clicking on that heading gives you a line graph, which you can distort  by clicking and dragging – and the colours change. So my red dahlia turned white, with lots of pretty colours in the background.

 

And this used the ‘Levels’ tab – try using the drop down menu headed ‘RGB’ and moving the little upward pointing arrows  around.

 

 

 

Pixlr is the only program I know apart from Tiltshift that allows you to shift tilts. Or tilt shifts? [Doesn’t  this woman write gibberish?] For those unfamiliar with the activity, it is a method of making photographs of real objects look like toys. I was introduced to it by Mr Cheddar but I don’t do it very much because on the whole I don’t take the right kind of photograph. You need something with a strong horizontal feature for it to be really effective.

So passion flowers and dahlias won’t do. 

This is Cloud’s Hill – because it looks like a toy anyway. On the left, the original image, in the middle, the Tiltshift version, and on the right the Pixlr version. Pretty close -but I found the real Tiltshift is much easier to use.

As I had the photo of Cloud's Hill around, I couldn’t resist playing with it.

Doesn’t lock much like a Kaleidoscope, does it? Or a cottage? But it makes a great abstract landscape.

 

 

And finally – because I find Pixlr so user friendly – I actually played with the paint toys – er – tools. 

The blue and brown circles at the top were my first effort  - just don’t expect me to remember how I did it. Then I played with ‘Adjustment; and ‘Filters’ and finally added some text in Picnik – although you can add test in Pixlr as well, and it seems to use your own list of fonts, rather than the restricted range in Picnik.

You may gather that I like Pixlr. I find it easy to use, and confidence building, compared with the big, expensive program mentioned earlier. If you are a confident PSP or Photoshop user you might not be interested, but if you don’t have one of those programs, or if like me you find them difficult, confusing and frustrating, you might like to try Pixlr.

I shall be using it again in the hope that if I play around with the free version I might pluck up courage to go back to the scary one!

These posts get longer and longer don’t they? But it’s pouring with rain, Wensleydale has been out, and work [or play] expands to fit the time available.