Apache web server for windows - CHAPTER 20 Image Editing The
CHAPTER 20 Image Editing The PC has become an increasingly useful tool in the field of photography. In fact, these days it s hard to imagine a professional photographer who doesn t use a computer in some way, either to download digital camera images or to scan in images taken using traditional film- based cameras. Ubuntu includes a sophisticated and professional-level image-editing program called The GIMP. The title stands for GNU Image Manipulation Program. This chapter introduces this jewel in the crown of Linux software. Getting Pictures onto Your PC Before you can undertake any image editing, you need to transfer your images to your PC. Depending on the source of the pictures, there are a variety of ways of doing this. We have already looked at transferring images to your PC in Chapter 8, but let s briefly recap the procedure here. Most modern cameras use memory cards to store the pictures. If you have such a model, when you plug the camera into your PC s USB port, you should find that Ubuntu instantly recognizes it. An icon should appear on the desktop, and double-clicking it should display the memory card in a Nautilus window. Technically speaking, the memory card has been mounted (see Chapter 14 for an explanation of mounting). If your camera doesn t appear to be recognized by Ubuntu, you should consider buying a USB card reader. These devices are typically inexpensive and can read a wide variety of card types, making them a useful investment for the future. Some new PCs even come packaged with card readers. Most generic card readers should work fine under Linux, as will most new digital cameras. If your camera isn t recognized, however, or if it s a few years old and uses the serial port to connect to your PC, you can try using the gThumb software (Applications . Graphics . gThumb Image Viewer), as explained in Chapter 8. If you re working with print photos, negative film, or transparencies, you can use a scanner to scan them in using the XSane image scanning program, also covered in Chapter 8. This works in a virtually identical way to the TWAIN modules supplied with Windows scanners, in that you need to set the dots per inch (DPI) figures, as well as the color depth. Generally speaking, 300 DPI and 24-bit color should lead to a true-to-life representation of most photos (although because of their smaller size, transparencies or negative film will require higher resolutions, on the order of 1,200 or 2,400 DPI).