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Switching from Adobe Photoshop to Gimp - testing it on animals

Archive - Originally posted on "The Horse's Mouth" - 2010-08-06 17:47:36 - Graham Ellis

We got an unexpected chance to stop away for a couple of nights - Lisa, me and Gypsy - and yesterday we headed out. Equally unexpected, we find ourselves back in Melksham tonight; "please find attached" to this article pictures from the return journey.


The new MacBook Pro I'm now using for almost every one of our courses comes with the Snow Leopard version of Mac OS X ... and with it iPhoto. Previously, I've used Adobe Photoshop to trim / straighten / resize / adjust pictures, but rather than upgrade / get a fresh license for my limited use (as opposed to Lisa's wider use) I decided to see what iPhoto could do for me. In image editing and resizing and clipping, frankly, "frustrating" and I suspect that I was hoping it could do a lot more that it can.

The dog is allowed in a taxi but not on the seats. That means in the tiny well, or on my knee!


So - now back home, and I've downloaded "Gimp". I've heard a lot about Gimp in the past, but been frightened off with things like dependency downloads, and the lack of time in my schedule to learn something else ... but the X11 support that it needs on the Mac is nor standard and the theory is "plug and play". And I'm delighted that turned out to be the practise too!


Of course, with any new software "toy" there's a lot to be learned, so I've been spending a few minutes of "quiet time" this afternoon learning things like image rotation, clipping, resizing and renaming with GIMP - and I seem to be doing OK ... witness the pictures taken on the journey home.


I'll be filling you, dear reader, in further with our "overnight away" ... I should have know it was going to be an interesting one when we set off, slightly later than we should have done, yesterday ... and everything from a haycart to a wide low loader carrting an army tracked vehicle pulled out in front of us, leading me to expect us to miss our train at Westbury. Turned out the train was 15 minutes late, and all was well in the end.


I'm hoping it will be "all's well that ends well" about the return journey too. Certainly little glitches (such as a reduced train service on Fridays!) caught us out, but we got back in good time. As I write, I'm in something of a limbo, waiting for news of what's going on. They say "the waiting is the worst" and I certainly hope so.