The GIMP – Basic image enhancement

I am a regular viewer of Category5.tv and recently (last Tuesday) he went over some basic tips on how to edit images to make them look a little better. I thought this was particularly useful and given the tool he used GIMP which is open source i thought i might just briefly touch on it here as well as embed the video for you to watch.

Ok so normally I do not post about shows I watch on-line or otherwise but this particular show I found somewhat useful. To give a quick synopsis he shows you how to lighten pictures and crop it in a way that does not kill the image, In the words of Robbie however “Always make a backup! Never edit your master images”

Some other points he touches on in this episode are

• Reinstall Linux with a just a  full backup of your home folder – He specifically mentions Ubuntu here since that is his distro but you could use his strategy for any distro Including Fedora with a few minor tweaks that are Distro specific.
• How do you share iTunes music to Linux?

He covers these points with regards to GIMP

• Adjusting the levels in a photograph using the GiMP.
• Zooming in and out of images in the GiMP.
• Removing blemishes from a photo using the GiMP.
• Resizing an image in the GiMP.
• Cropping an image in the GiMP.
• Resizing a marquee in the GiMP.
• Saving your image in the GiMP.
• Preparing images to be shared by email or on a web site or blog.

Now as I said this is mostly a post to show others in the Fedora and other Linux community  that might read this, that editing of images can be done fairly easily and that videos such as the one below do exist to show you how. While there may be videos out there that dive more into the workings of GIMP this one stays pretty simple so anyone can use it to achieve what they want.

I should note that the video is embedded from his video host blip.tv and it has about a 30 second ad prior to the video starting, I have no control over this and as such I do not necessarily condone any of the content that the ad may demo as it changes over time. As it stands when i posted it the ad was about Windows 7, but by the time you watch it the ad could be different.

[bliptv ga4Fge_TEQI]

If you liked the video please make sure you check out Robbie””s site he put a lot of effort into this show. If not then thanks for taking the time to read this post. I will not be making a habit of posting about his show but this one seemed worthy of passing along via the fedora channels and the like.

Again he uses Ubuntu so pardon all the Ubuntu centric stuff most of what he mentions can just as easily be done via Fedora or even a different distro.

Host of the show: Robbie Ferguson

Show notes: http://www.category5.tv/show_notes/episode_148.php