Mixed stuff: fonts, photos, games, anniversaries

When is a good time to use the "Impact" font? How about... never!

Last week a friend of mine put on sale some stuff on an auction website (kind of local ebay, this is his the main activity of his small business) and when creating the page he had to choose a few style elements, the font being one of them.
He selected the Impact font, thinking that such a name probably stands for a font that will catch attention from the readers. But being a Linux user, without the Microsoft Core Fonts installed (Impact is part of MS Core Fonts), he didn't saw how the font really looks, all he saw was a harmless san-serif fall-back option. And made it red, no less.

Only after I showed him a screenshot of the site in action he understood and changed it to something sane. Look below at a sample "lorem ipsum" text to see how unreadable it was:

With this still fresh in my mind, one can understand my probably exaggerated reaction when I saw Impact used on a Fedora related proof of concept website and complained about it.

From here I can draw a couple of conclusions:

• Who named the font Impact had an effective idea, even the fonts is hard to read beyond very short labels (probably it can be used on buttons), a lor of users fall for its name
• It is not a good idea to use such "fancy" on websites intended for a large audience, even less when your audience is mostly Linux users: there is a huge chance they will not have the font installed and don't see the page as intended. Stay with the basics, they are nice enough

Upskirt

This is an interesting reason to use the bus to go from work to home (Bucharest, the 300 bus line):



The photo is not that great, being made with my 2.5 years old phone (I didn't had the guts to reach my backpack and take out the SLR with really big lenses), but think it was taken wile standing and with the phone at the height where you are normally using it for writing text (and imagine what could I do with just a bit of effort).

Walking guy

A couple of days ago I posted a small animation (made with Inkscape and GIMP) of a little guy walking. I am not completely happy with the result (and I still have a lot of other graphics to do for that project), I added the other walk directions:



Birthday

Tomorrow, 12 July, is an important birthday. I am really sorry I will not give any gift. I didn't forgot. And I have god ideas, good enough (I think) to top last year's gift. It is only a delivery problem.

PS: It is not my fault if someone has not updated the feed address and carry posts that are not announcements in the Romanian language and has to endure what is perceived as offtopic crap :p

Was she there, or wasn't she? Removing objects from photos with GIMP and Resynthesizer

Resynthesizer is a very cool GIMP plugin I have been playing with for a few days. It can be used for some "magic" effects: create seamless backgrounds, transfer textures from one image to another and remove objects from images.

The plugin is not installed by default, but is available on the website, with binaries for various OSes. In Fedora we have it already packaged, only a yum away: yum install gimp-resynthesizer.

I like its "remove objects" feature, which of course is far from perfect and works best on selected images, but is the kind of effect you see on movies: a few clicks and poof! instant coolness (in the same league with SIOX).

So open your photo with GIMP and draw a free selection (with the Lasso tool) around it:

Then apply the plugin: Script-Fu -> Enhance -> Smart remove selection...


If the case change the radius (just try some values) and leave it to work for a few seconds:


And admire the "magic":


Then you have only one thing left to do, wonder: Was she there, or wasn't she?:


If you want to get close to perfection, use the clone tool or the healing tool and remove the remaining artefacts, just don't try to use the photo as an evidence in a court of law or pass it as true photojournalism.

GIMP Polaroid effect

There are some things in life which go in cycles and such a cycle, a short one, is the cycle I started a couple of weeks ago with an Inkscape tutorial, continued with another and it ends now back on track with some GIMPing, after which I will take a break from tutorials. What I'll do next? Upload some old clipart on OCAL? Do some Fedora graphics? Something else? Nothing? We'll see.

A tutorial about creating a Polaroid effect from a digital photo is quite un-original, it involves basic operations like layer and canvas management, drop shadows, selection move and rotation, with distort filters being the most "advanced" part. So read it if it sound interesting.

Somewhere inside is buried a screencast, which, as all my screencasts, is rough: unedited and without a sound track (despite the number of requests I received for adding sound). Maybe I should reveal the real reason why I dont' add any sound: it is not about the video editors, you can install Cinelerra from kwizart (it is compatible with livna) and you can get over its interface (one of the the fugliest UI I ever say) or crashiness. I don't add voice because my spoken English is so bad that I can't put it on the web with a straight face and I don't add music because the music I like is powerful, strong, heavy and will distract the viewer from the video, which is the real point of interest. And of course, is not free (sute, I can get to classic music, which may solve both issues, but I am affraid it will make the screencasts "uncool").

Wow! I got really off-topic from the main point, the tutorial. Anyway, it has also a Romanian translation available. Now is the time for a break.

Red Hat Magazine: GIMP 2.4 preview

Red Hat Magazine published a preview of the GIMP 2.4 new features I think are the most important, among them: improved selector and crop tools, healing, red eye removal, perspective clone, SIOX extractor.

The truth is, I had in my mind a different schedule and the article was intended to be published earlier and be followed by various tutorials and screencasts, but in the end all went for the good: my article got delayed but also the final GIMP 2.4 release got delayed.
However considering the freeze, most likely Fedora 8 will ship with RC3 and the final release (which for the most part should be identical) will be pushed as an update.
Enjoy Fedora 8 and Enjoy GIMP 2.4!

A home for my GIMP screencasts: Romanian video sharing sites

Lately, I was in a GIMP screencasts creation frenzy (with ups and downs, struggles and achievements), the next step is to publish them somewhere.
It may be OK to put a few movies on your website, but when you have multiple 20MB files to host, you think twice (maybe three time if the site peaked at around 10.000 visitors a day recently with the help of a social bookmarking service) so the obvious solution is to use a video sharing site, with a compromise on video quality and file formats (Flash).

Of course, you have to use YouTube, that is the place where the most users will look for videos, but I think I identified a very good niche: Romanian video sharing sites, my co-nationals, with the most used ones being Trilulilu and Neogen (Trilulilu seems more popular but Neogen worked better for me - more about that later). Those sites are extremely poor in tutorials, FOSS stuff, GIMP or Inkscape stuff, they look like a virgin land for such type of content so I can get the first mover advantage.

But now to the ugly part: those sites are defective by design, they have the upload forms made with Flash (the upload pages, like other parts of the site are identical to the last word with each other, from what I understand Neogen shamelessly copied Trilulilu) but even worse, the Flash uploader from Trilulilu does not work under Linux, it report upload done but nothing happens (the one from Neogen is bad, but not that bad).

I did an effort, uploaded content to both, and indeed, on Trilulilu you get more eyeballs but the site is the worse from a Linux user point of view.

A conclusion? Recently Google started localized versions of YouTube for some language, when they will get a Romanian version those bad sites will get a much needed kick in the pants (still, they will survive, as the sites are a haven for stolen content copyright infringement porn questionable content - being outside of the RIAA/MPAA/whatever radar).

Red Hat Magazine: How to touch-up portraits with GIMP

Red Hat Magazine published this week-end my How to touch-up portraits with GIMP, it is a tutorial about photo enhancement I wrote as promotion for both GIMP 2.4 and Fedora 8, which will include the new GIMP.

You can learn how to improve a poor and boring photo to something more exciting:

Update: now the tutorial is also available in English on my own site and with a romanian translation.

Fun with glass and shadows in Inkscape

A couple of days ago I was playing with my own variations of Martin's GDM mockup, with glassy surfaces (transparency and shadows), which is all the rage these days.

So playing with those I had to use a simple but less known masking trick, which gave me the idea to develop it in an Inkscape tutorial about glassy surfaces .

A usual, a Romanian translation is available too.

SIOX: foreground image extraction with Inkscape and GIMP

A couple of years ago when the SIOX (Simple Interactive Object Extraction) surfaced the web, a lot of enthusiasm and expectations were created. Now with released or almost released applications using it, we can have an objective look at it and draw practical conclusions, not only talk about the demos which may be (at least partly) doctored.

With fast release cycles (about two releases a year) Inkscape was the first to have a working SIOX implementation in a release, back in Inkscape 0.44.
Inkscape is a vector drawing application, so it had to implement the algorithm in its specific way, namely as a part of the tracing tool, which convert from raster to vector, so the result is not pixel-perfect, but it does not even tries that.
Another downside is that Inkscape will use only the starting photo and one single path defining the region of interest (without a mark for the sure foreground), so the result is far from perfect and the tool is not really interactive.

The receipt is simple: import the photo, draw a freehand shape covering it, select both and run a trace by colors:

GIMP got the tool even earlier in its development branch, but only the soon-to-be-released stable GIMP 2.4 will put it in the hands of the larger audience.
Here are a lot of options: brush sizes, feather edges, smoothing and you can mark both the sure background and the sure foreground, but after the SIOX job is done, it still needed to adjust a little using classic selection tools.

The receipt is more complex: open the photo and use the foreground extraction tool, it will offer a lasso-like tool to mark the region of interest around the subject and then a brush to sample the foreground. You can change the brush size and/or zoom in and out and even an eraser to unselect foreground. When ready, press Enter to get the subject selected, but you still have to use the real lasso selection to adjust it more:


I think I have some solid experience with both application, so my conclusion is obviously biased: SIOX may look like a timesaver for some operations, but in the end you will still need a loot of additional work to improve its results, you will not save that much time, so for me it is mostly a nice gimmick.
As particular applications, Inkscape is really lacking a way to define the sure foreground so it will give satisfactory results only for selected images but with GIMP you can zoom in and use smaller brushes (like in the good old Quick Mask way) and select anything you want.
Maybe if you want vectorization for complex images is better to extract the foreground in GIMP and trace in Inkscape the already extracted foreground.

Postage stamps with Inkscape

Yet another trick in my graphics tutorial collection, this time about creating a postage stamp with Inkscape.

And, as I believe people are already used to, a Romanian translation.

Reflecting images on surfaces with Inkscape and GIMP

In the comments to my post from yesterday about creating shiny buttons with Inkscape I got asked about "simple howto about how to create planes with reflections of existing objects". Does someone think I can resist?


I wrote a simple howto about this effect for both Inkscape and GIMP . And for those who like it this way, there is also a Romanian translation .

The useless guide to drawing shiny web buttons with Inkscape

I understand the uselessness of writing yet another tutorial about creating shiny web buttons with Inkscape, but I think I found a niche: I don't know about such tutorials in my native language, Romanian.
So instead of translating an existing one, I was hit by the "not invented here" syndrome and wrote a Romanian Inkscape tutorial about creating web buttons.

With the article already written, it was obvious I have to pollute the 'net with it and make an English translation of it (usually I do the other way, write in English and maybe translate into Romanian later).

I can't draw but I want to draw people faces (with Inkscape)

As probably my loyal readers are used to, I write tutorials at a very low level, suitable for beginners. In the same note, today I'll talk about how to draw people faces (or hackergotchis) with Inkscape even if you don't know how to draw.
Something like this:

The basics: import a photo in Inkscape and using the calligraphic tool draw on top of it and then fill with colors and add highlights and shadows.
Sound interesting? Read more.

At some point I had the idea to make it a screencast, but the video would be long and in need for some editing. PiTiVi is far from usable and Avidemux2 can't work with Ogg, so I'm back to HTML, which is good, a HTML page is better indexed in search engines compared with a video :p

This tutorial has also a Romanian translation.

Fedora Tuica

Fedora 7 Moonshine translated in Romanian is Fedora Tuica (with diacritics Fedora Ţuică). It allow users to make their own mix at home and brew an own home-made derivative, with its own personal flavor, including liveCDs or liveUSB.

In a celebration of the Moonshine, here are schematics of an improvised installation for making tuica, just like my grand mother uses to use ages ago:

There are a fey quick similarities comparing Fedora and Moonshine (tuica):

• using any of them will make you happy
• both are addictive and may render you dependant
• being home made, Tuica is free, Fedora the same
• you can share them with your friends
• both are strong

A bit more info about the Romanian Tuica:

• the original and traditional receipt is to made them from plums
• an appreciated variety is the one made from pears
• the flavor is poorer, but the fruits are everywhere, so many people make it using cherry plums
• mulberry is a very sweet fruit, so people make tuica using mulberries, when they have them
• a cheap receipt it to use the remaining of the pressed grapes after wine making

What is a name?

I voted for Siegfired



Background info and credits for the photo at wikipedia

Inkscape folded sticker

Ryan's tutorial about creating stickers with folded edge in Inkscape is very addictive, so I couldn't stop myself playing with it, here is what I did:

Nice work, Ryan!

When I saw the sticker for the first time (before the tutorial was published) I had an idea, but being too lazy and too focused on other things for the moment will not follow it: how about a little web page to create such customized stickers? Like a form to enter your text, select the sticker color, click a button and your sticker is ready!

I see two ways to do it:

• have two PNG images, one with the body of the sticker and another with the "dog ear", use a library like gd and combine these two PNGs with another one, generated on the fly, containing the text (also made with gd and php)


• work with vectors, replace the text inside the SVG and use a command line utility to convert from SVG to PNG. Unfortunately, imagemagik is not up to the task (it does not support advanced SVG features) and Inkscape is probably not available on your web host (and I don't think Inkscape will work without X)