Photo-Comix_Lab is a “Extremely Value Added” package of GIMP, Python and a lot of good plugins for Windows targeted at photographers. One install and you get the whole lot.
I don’t run Windows, so I can’t test this. But it sounds extremely well on paper screen. Oh, nearly forgot the link: gimpchat.com
This post describes a malware attack using a malicious download link for GIMP for Windows. You can trust this link, it’s the Source.
And now the WARNING!
(The title and the following text have been stolen by me from Michael Schumacher at the GIMP Developers Mailing List and GIMP Users Mailing List.)
Hi,
recently, we’re seeing more and more sign of GIMP becoming mainstream – the availability of several GIMP installers for the Microsoft Windows platforms loaded with trojans is certainly an indication for that.
The most common trojan seems to be InstallIQ. A piece of software that grants the providers of the actual installers plausible deniability because the installers itself is clean, and because the user has to agree to install additional “utilities” during setup.
Step 1: the victim is sent a scam mail pointing to a file at photo-host.net/ (which disguses as a image upload site).
Step 2: the files provided there are .gmp files (huh?)
Step 3: for viewing those files, there’s a link to gimphost.com, where the infected installer is located
Another victim or culprit of a related scam seems to be the gimpshop.com site, which used to host a modifed version of GIMP which resembled the Photoshop UI. Either its original author has gone to the Dark Side, or that site has been taken over by a scammer – it is distributing InstallIQ-infected installers.
If you see any GIMP installer sites which have a fine print with phrases like
“is distributing a modified installer which is different from the original ones”
or
“InstallIQ”
or
“the installer is compliant with the original software manufacturer’s policies”
then do the following:
STAY AWAY FROM THEM!
And now it’s me again. InstallIQ seems not to be a trojan but an installer that pays out some money for the hosters. It has the capability to load more software and seems so to be considered a risk to the security of the system.
Download the Video! (20:20 40.5MB)
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.
00:30 A dumb thing to do
01:10 The license for all Meet the GIMP stuff
03:00 Another GIMP theme by samj
03:50 Mice, Trackballs and Tablets
04:20 Absolute positioning
05:00 Modes of a tablet – pressure
06:10 … velocity, direction, tilt
08:00 … random
08:20 … fade
09:15 You started tablet training as a toddler
09:50 Setting up a tablet in GIMP
11:00 The pressure curve
12:45 Tablet sizes
13:30 Mapping matrix – controlable features of a brush
16:40 Dynamic curves control
18:40 A special non repetitive brush
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.
Download the Video! (30:37 61.1MB)
Download the companion file! (65.5MB)
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. 
Update: An error corrected below and the comments are working again!
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.
UPDATE I made a blunder here and switched the terms dodging and burning – I got the reminder of proper dark room culture from Saul Goode in the forum.
Burning is letting more light from the enlarger onto the paper (as I told in the show) but as it is a negative projected on light sensitive paper the image gets darker. So I burned the lower right edge of the image.
Dodging is keeping light away from the paper and so making that part lighter, no light at all would result in unchanged white. I dodged the rust on the fitting in the center of the image.
And here comes the twist. A “burned out sky” is white on the final image because it has been “burned out” the negative, resulting in solid black there. I haven’t been in the dark room lab for decades, perhaps I’ll try it again after the printing fever has gone old. (BTW, my new pigment ink and refillable replacement cartridges arrived today…. )
A very good demonstration of burning and dodging is done in the film War Photographer about James Nachtwey. Worth watching, even without interest in dark room technique.
A big thank you to all of you for the support in these five years!
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
20:45DodgingBurning with a layer and brush
22:50BurningDodging 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.
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.
While I am digging myself out under a pile of paper (grade stuff and tissues …) – have a look here:
Download the Video! (24:08 48.1MB)
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. (The link address says still 2.7, but it is 2.9….)
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
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.
Have a look at Gimpusers.com, they had the scoop even before gimp.org was updated (and have had their wrist slapped for spilling the news).
A look at the release notes gives you all what’s new and shiny.
Download the Video! (23:24 46.4MB)
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.
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
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.
(Steve asked me to publish this – sounds like a very good idea!)
A quarterly magazine for GIMP users to include: next gen software features (and road ahead type articles), tips and tricks, tutorials, and most importantly a magazine to show off your stunning art, photography and graphic design works created in GIMP or related open source software. All of this wrapped in some really cool and professional looking graphic design and layout. Everyone will be able to download this magazine completely free as it should be! Follow us on twitter for details www.twitter.com/GIMPMagazine.
The theme for the first issue is “Next Gen GIMP”
We need your help to contribute to this magazine:
Continue reading
On my way to bed I stumbled across a blog post by Michael Natterer (Mitch), one of the core developers of GIMP. Øyvind Kolås (Pippin) and he tinkered around with the GIMP core and GEGL. By accident (or sheer genius) they found a way to integrate GEGL into the ancient GIMP core. “After a few hours of hacking, Pippin had the GimpTileBackendTileManager working, and I went ahead replacing some legacy code with GEGL code, using the new backend. And it simply worked!”. Well, it took some weeks from that to get a lot of stuff adapted to GEGL. “What was planned as a one week visit turned into 3 weeks of GEGL porting madness. At the time this article is written, about 90% of the GIMP application’s core are ported to GEGL, and the only thing really missing are GeglOperations for all layer modes.”
I just glanced over it (on my way to bed – ALARM at 0600 – that’s in 6:44hours…. ) but there is this promising sentences in there: “GIMP 2.10’s core will be 100% ported to GEGL, and all of the legacy pixel fiddling API for plug-ins is going to be deprecated. Once the core is completely ported, it will be a minor effort to simply “switch on” high bit depths and whatever color models we’d like to see.”
Mitch asks for support of the Libre Graphics Meeting - shower them in money! This is one of thew hubs of GIMP progress. And I want it to run fast!
PS: Next show is in the works.
Meet the GIMP! is Stephen Fry proof thanks to caching by WP Super Cache