Susie’s Thoughts

A new version of Gimp has finally been released. I have been able to use python plug-ins on MS Windows by installing the following software in the order listed below. These should be the latest versions of the software and they work on two of my Windows XP computers. There are no guarantees thought that they work on yours and I have no clue on how they work on any other Windows version than XP.

http://downloads.activestate.com/ActivePython/windows/2.5/ActivePython-2.5.1.1-win32-x86.msi

ftp://ftp.gnome.org/pub/gnome/binaries/win32/pycairo/1.2/pycairo-1.2.6-1.win32-py2.5.exe

ftp://ftp.gnome.org/pub/gnome/binaries/win32/pygobject/2.12/pygobject-2.12.3-1.win32-py2.5.exe

http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/binaries/win32/pygtk/2.10/pygtk-2.10.6-1.win32-py2.5.exe

http://downloads.sourceforge.net/numpy/numpy-1.0.3.1.win32-py2.5.exe?modtime=1187637892&big_mirror=0

http://downloads.sourceforge.net/gimp-win/gtk%2B-2.10.13-setup.exe

http://downloads.sourceforge.net/gimp-win/gimp-2.4.0-rc3-i586-setup.exe?modtime=1190592348&big_mirror=0

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I’ve worked with both Photoshop and Gimp for many years, but Inkscape and vector graphics are new to me. I was looking for some tutorials on Inscape today and found these:

Inkscape User manual in English
Pixel2Life’s Inkscape tutorials
heathenxyt tutorials on YouTube
a Quick Guide to Inkscape by ~microUgly on deviantART

This should be enough to get us started.

Design doesn’t automatically mean web design. Design can mean print design also. Graphics aren’t always bitmaps and photos, today vector graphics are used a lot. And of course there is also other types of design, from clothes to mobile phones. I’m going to leave the clothes and the product designs to the professionals, I know nothing about those areas of design. We work a lot with small businesses and entrepreneurs at our school and there seems to be a big need for affordable software and information on how to manage a small or home based business’ web and print advertising. If you are self-employed and your business is really small, maybe you’ve got one or two people to help out, but basically you’re on your own, then you have to be a little of a jack-of-all-trades. You need to know a little about a lot of things and a lot about your basic business. Hopefully you are able to pay someone to take care of your advertising needs, but very often the advertising and marketing is up to you too.

To help you along the way I will post some links to open source software you can use for creating web sites and print materials. Some of the software’s are really familiar to me, but some are new, so I will check them out and try to find good tutorials for them and post them later. If I can’t find any good tutorials, I will create my own.

I teach Adobe InDesign in an advertising course and even though InDesign is a great software, it isn’t cheap and there are way more tools than the average small business owner needs. Scribus is a desktop publishing software, as InDesign, and it is both cross-platform and multilingual. I haven’t used Scribus a lot, but I’m supposed to create an online course for work and I will be able to share the material to you too.

Inkscape is a vector graphics software. The software was chosen to be a part of the Google Summer of Code 2007 project and have developed a lot since I last took a look at it.

Photo editing is done easily in the Gimp. You can find more information in my previous post. There are other alternatives too. Picasa is more a photo organiser tool, but you can use it for basic editing also. Well, Picasa isn’t really open source, but it’s a free software and therefore I sometimes recommend it.

A good replacement for Adobe Dreamweaver is hard to find. Nvu looked promising, but it hasn’t been updated since 2005. KompoZer is an unofficial bug-fix release of Nvu and I haven’t yet checked it out, but I will do that really soon and give you a review of the software. Amaya is another WYSIWYG web page editor I’ve taken a short look at and I will add a review for Amaya too.

If you’ve got suggestions on good open-source or free software to use for web or print design, please feel free to add your suggestions in a comment.

I know many of you find this site while googling for information about the Gimp. I am working on some tutorials for Gimp, and because I use the latest beta version of Gimp in my tutorials I thought I’d give you something to start with. Gimp 2.4 release candidate 3 as released yesterday and you can find it here. I use both Linux and Microsoft Windows, but I’m in no way a Linux guru, so hopefully you know where to find and how to install the Gimp on your Linux distribution.

There’s an automated installer for those who use Windows and you can find that installer here. Make sure you scroll down the page and find the file gimp-2.4.0-rc3-i586-setup.exe. Everything you need should be included in that file.

For those of you who are new to the Gimp and need some additional information on how to install the software, try the following links. There are of course tons of other sites with as good information, but these are the ones I usually recommend to my students.

Design your own web (gimp tutorial)

Basic GIMP 2.x Tutorial For Windows

You have to remember though, that most of these tutorials are written for Gimp version 2.2 and the installation process have changed in this new version.

If you are in to podcasts/videocasts I would recommend the “Meet the Gimp” video podcast by Rolf Steinort.

I didn’t have any good pictures of roses myself so I used a really nice rose from the Freefoto.com website. The pictures at Freefoto.com are free for private non-commercial use, but remember to read the rules before you download and use any of them. Another good resource for free stock photos is stock.xchng. You need to register to be able to download full sized photos, but you don’t have to provide any photos yourself if you don’t want to.

The font I used for the names probably came with Photoshop and is called Edwardian Script ITC. The font for the &-symbol is Kunstler script. If you use the GIMP or any other software you might not have these fonts on your computer. You can either buy fonts or use a free font. Good resources for free fonts are 1001 Free Fonts, FontFreak, AcidFonts and 1001 Fonts. You can find links to more free resourses from the sidebar or by doing a Google search.

I use Adobe Photoshop CS for my images and have done that for years. Photoshop is quite expensive if you only manipulate pictures occasionally. A cheaper alternative would be PaintShop pro or the GIMP. The GIMP is a freely distributed software for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring. It works on many operating systems, in many languages.

I have used PaintShop pro, but not GIMP, so I downloaded GIMP and thought I’d give it a try. I will create the same header image in GIMP as I already created in Photoshop and show you how to do it in both. If you want to download GIMP you can do it here. Just remember to choose the right operating system. If you use Windows make sure to install both files and to install them in the order they appear on the webpage.

It’s easier to create a template if you have an xhtml and style sheet wysiwyg editor. I use FrontPage 2003 which isn’t the best tool for creating a template, but that is what I’m stuck with from school. FrontPage doesn’t have any specific xhtml features, but it does support xhtml. You have to makes sure though that you have all the settings right and Microsoft provides some instructions on their website for that.

I have found a couple of free editors on the web, but haven’t had time to test them. If you know of a good xhtml or style sheet freeware editor, please leave a comment and I will look at it.