More Dynamic Range in GIMP

Exposure blend is a GIMP plugin which facilitates the process of creating contrast blended exposures. Contrast blending is a popular technique for getting more dynamic range from a set of bracketed images.

(Photoshop users might wanna check here for a few actions and a tutorial.)

I've decided that Photub should actually be renamed to Flickr News Network. Flickr Code is a site to talk about and discuss writing things for Flickr. The Flickr team has made the source available for Uploadr, a cross platform tool for uploading content to the site. There is also a blog.

Gimp Development Branch

GIMP's development team, has announced the 2.5 development branch. It's no where near stable yet, but what it means is that we will soon have a Gimp that can support higher color depths, more colorspaces and eventually non-destructive editing—things many have criticized the GIMP for over the years.

Like I said, this is just a development branch, so it's really for nothing more than taking a peek into the future. Those who'd like to try GIMP, or find out more should take a look at their latest stable release GIMP 2.4

Lightroom 2.0 is now available in beta from Adobe Labs.

Adobe Joins the Online Photo Editing Bandwagon

Adobe lovers rejoice! You no longer have to use more powerful software on your personal computer where you store your photos! Now, you can upload your photos to Adobe and edit your files from anywhere using a less powerful Photoshop Express!

It was bound to happen. The online photo editing scene has been taking off and lots of sites now allow you to upload a picture and make some adjustments to it and save it back down again. Adobe has been mysteriously absent until a few days ago when they released PS Express. The great thing about it, is that it works really well and provides you some simple tweaking. It's probably one of the nicest Flash/Flex applications I've ever seen. The photo management portion of it reminds me of Light Room's browser and the editor is probably more like Elements than Photoshop, but that's only because you're not getting tools like the lasso, the pen tool or curves. My guess is that we'll be seeing some more improvements and maybe even some other software packages come to life online from Adobe.

Highslide for Web Galleries and Blogs

So, you've got a few pictures you wanna add to your blog, or some other gallery, and you're going to use LightBox to display them in a nice way when a visitor clicks on them. Well, don't. Try Highslide. Let your visitors open up a few side by side and compare. Best of all, it's free for personal use (like all good software should be). (Note: I have nothing against LightBox, I just think this is cooler)

Gimp users who are also Flickr users will like GimpPublishr because it cuts down on an important step in your workflow. GimpPublishr supports exporting photos to Flickr and to Picassaweb.

I haven't yet upgraded to Apple's latest version of Mac OSX, but I have been watching blog posts and other criticisms of it pretty closely. There have been many posts indicating that software does not work correctly, but I'm happy to hear that Lightroom 1.3 mostly works.

StudioCloud

StudioCloud is a web based photography studio management system which includes scheduling, invoicing, reporting, inventory management, client management, and financial capabilities that are all integrated with in studio and online galleries. The application is written in Adobe's Flash (the demo of StudioCloud is probably the most extensive Flash application I've ever seen), and has been showcased by Adobe. I'm not sure how many Photub readers will find this interesting, or useful, but if nothing else, it's a great example of what can be done with Flash.

Gimp 2.4 Released

The Gimp has reached a version 2.4 release.

Developers, artists and user interface designers from all over the world worked together to make GIMP more powerful and easier to use than ever. The changes from version 2.2 are too numerous to list here, please check the Release Notes to get an overview.

This is exciting news, and with it comes a new look for their website, which looks really good. Thanks Gimp Team! So, if you're a user, it's time to upgrade.

Two links in a row about The Gimp; it's obviously a Gimp news day.

In Photos.org has posted a Gimp plugin to simulate a Lomo. I played around with it a bit and it's pretty neat.

Free JAlbum Hosting

I've mentioned JAlbum before, a super customizable cross-platform photo album creator, but there's some new and exciting news from them:

Today, JAlbum releases a free hosting alternative for your pictures. With 8 million published albums, the free JAlbum software is one of the most popular tools in the world for producing web photo albums. Up until now, users have needed to have their own web site to put their albums. This new service makes publishing stunning photo albums easier than ever.

So, what are you waiting for JAlbum users, go try it out!

Photo 2 Text

Photo 2 Text is a way make your photograph a piece of ASCII art. This isn't actually a new idea, and you can find tons of tools and libraries to do this if you search, but this site is a quick and easy way.

A few years ago, I wrote a program to do something similar given a bunch of text. It worked best on smaller images and produced color output by way of HTML. A sample of it's output using an outdated version of my resume can be seen as an image of Tux the penguin.

Qtpfsgui

Qtpfsgui is an free software (as in freedom, but also as in beer) application for creating HDR images. It's available for Mac OS X, GNU/Linux and Windows. Aside from the name, which seems to stem from the GUI toolkit it uses (Qt), and pfs (the set of commands it creates the gui for) it looks promising and is definitely a cheaper alternative to get into HDR imaging. I'm looking forward to taking a look at it soon.

Open Source Photography

Being a software developer and free software (tidbit: free and open source are not the same thing, but this is a photography blog, not a software blog) enthusiast, I can't help but laugh at Open Source Photography. Not because of it's content, or it's intention, but rather because of it's name. Open Source Photography's goal is to empower photographers to use open source tools to do the work they need to do. The project is promising and I look forward to seeing it's content increase, but I wish the name were different. I don't think their intention is to provide images that you are free to modify and or distribute, as is the normal case in open source software, and that makes their name a bit misleading.

jAlbum

Daniel from jAlbum writes in to tell us about jAlbum, a free piece of software for creating photo albums. Oh, and did I mention it's written in Java, a cross platform language, meaning it'll run on your computer too? Check it out, it looks great.

Philip McClure, has written an article comparing The Gimp to Photoshop.

Plogger for Photo Albums

Plogger is an open source gallery system that runs on top of MySQL and PHP. It looks to be a serious contender for those looking for a photo album online.

Fauxto

Finding Fauxto this morning was a bit of a shock. I'm not one for this whole revolutionary phase where we put huge applications online and use them over the web, especially a real image editor like Photoshop or The Gimp. I'm also not a huge fan of things written in Flash, and Fauxto is that as well.

Though it's in it's beta form, the early release of Fauxto is pretty impressive. It looks and acts like a real image editor. It's definitely one of the most impressive Flash apps I've seen in recent history. Check it out. Also be sure to check out there blog.

Tableau Is Not Tabblo

In a strange move Creativist has released an open source photo gallery, built on Ruby on Rails-- a popular framework for making websites, but has named it very similarly to Tabblo, a unique way to tell a story with photos. It's name is Tableau. The software itself looks pretty good and there's a demo available to play around with.

Linux Photo Organization Shootout

Linux.com has an article about the top GNU/Linux photo organizers. There are quite a few to choose from and after reading some of the comments, a bunch more popped up. If you're a GNU/Linux user and looking for a photo organizer, head over and take a look at some of your options.

I don't know if of these applications run in *BSDs, but my assumption is that some of them do.

One Shot at the Top of the World

Vincent Laforet's work is absolutely stunning, and one of his latest projects is featured in an Aperture profile. The project: Capture a worker on the Chrysler building in New York City a top one of the gargoyles overlooking the city. The result: awesome.

Gimp Tutorials

Assuming you don't know what GIMP is, you'll probably be less interested in these tutorials. Though, if you want a FREE and awesome replacement for Photoshop, then you should go back and find out about GIMP, and while you're at it take a look at that list of tutorials to get you started.

LifeHacker has a look at setting up Gallery2, a popular, open source web-based gallery script. Read it all at LH.