Linux for Designers

Over GetDeb.net i explored various interesting image utilies (most of them i'd like to see as a GIMP plugin):

Seam Carving GUI
...a utility for content aware image resizing very simliar to the Liquid Rescale plugin for GIMP (inluded in the package GIMP-plugin-registry). Seam Carving GUI is available for MacOS X and Windows too.

Tintii
...is a coloring utility - available for Photoshop too but not for GIMP

Smilla Enlarger
...raster image enlarger that uses smart curves algorithms to avoid pixelization and blurring artifacts. Smilla Enlarger is available for MacOS X and Windows too.

The first development snapshot of Gimp 2.8 is available: Gimp 2.7.0. There are a lot of nice, new upcoming features:
* a reworked, much more flexible text tool
* new saving/ export option
* export plugin for X11 mouse cursors and JPEG2000 file format
* rotation of brushes and additional enhancements to the brush dynamics engine
* tagging for resources
...and much more.
Check out the release notes too.

But there are much more interesting things we can await in Gimp 2.8:
* Finish merging of the GSoC 2006 vector layer stuff
* Merge the GSoC 2009 projects for brush dynamics and improved SIOX.
* Add a better set of default resoures
* Provide default tags for the default resources

After some weeks of the release candidate RawTherapee 2.4 reaches now the final state. The changes since 2.3 are:
* Exif/IPTC support
* Theme switching
* Improved GUI layout
* Improved filebrowser
  - Ranking support
  - Basic file operations possible (delete, remove, rename)
  - Filtering based on Exif data
  - Configurable thumbnail caching
  - Live thumbnails (showing the images in the processed state)
  - Resizable thumbnails
  - Configurable thumbnail layout (left - right, top - down)
* Basic batch processing
  - Controllable workqueue
  - Copy/Paste processing profiles (or only parts of them)
  - Direct sending of images to the workqueue
* Improved auto-exposure and spot white balance
* "Send to Editor" feature (Gimp, Photoshop, custom editor)

RawTherapee is not open source but it is your assessment what you like to donate to the author. The development of RawTherapee is healthy a first alpha of 2.5 is promised in a month.

Pavel Kanzelsberger, the developer of the image editor Pixel, wrote at his blog again that the release of the Pixel 1.0 comes closer. He presented a distributor for it too. This isn't the first message about a final release and after so much announcements it isn't save if this will really happend.

And another update to make GIMP 2.6 series fast and stable. All details about this update can be found at the release log. Get your Deb packages for Ubuntu at GetDeb.net - this time for Hardy too

Again another update to make GIMP fast and stable. Deb packages for Ubuntu can be found at GetDeb.net.

As a Xmas gift the 4th beta of RawTherapee, a imageging software for photographers, is now available. This beta brings again various bugfixes:
* crash on save-as (a new progress indicator dialog has also been introduced)
* ISO is now recognized in rw2 files
* autoexp with clipping=0 is working
* fixed the permanent delete & empty trash crash when the image in editor is deleted
* detail window label when zooming
* better jpeg error handling
* Canon 1Ds tiffs and Kodak dcr files are supported again
* new naming scheme for pp2 files (the old one is kept for loading only for compatibility)

RawTherapee is not open source but it is your assessment what you like to donate to the author.

Today i get a real amazing message from Jan Dudek. He started developing a PixBuf load for Photoshop PSD files for the Gnome Linux Desktop. That means PSD support for any Gnome application like the image viewer EOG, the document viewer Evince and in combination a thumbnailer for *.psd or *.pdd files for Nautilus too.

Read more...

Gimp 2.6.3 is out now and includes again several bugfixes and translation updates. You can grab a Deb package at Getdeb.net.

That is really sweet: Made by Via Lori Grunin & Adam Jerugim.