Getting Plugged-In

My original plan was to have another installment of Swashbuckling with Modern Pirates devoted to batch (i.e. applying the same edit to multiple photos at once) watermarking and resizing in GIMP and Picassa.  However, while that's a simple task in Picassa, I've had quite a bit of difficulty with the process in GIMP (and this is where the cheating comes back to bite me--incidentally, if you haven't figured this out yet and you were wondering, you can adjust the opacity of your text for your watermark using the layers dock; if you have no idea what I'm talking about, more on this later).  It turns out that you need a plug-in to do batch watermarking in GIMP.  There are a lot of special functions like this you can perform in GIMP if you simply install the appropriate plug-in.

If you're not sure what on earth installing a plug-in in GIMP means, think of it like this: there are certain editing and creative tasks users want that GIMP cannot accommodate.  So, users who are far more computer savvy than myself go and write little mini-programs that tell GIMP how to do whatever it is they feel GIMP is missing.  Then, these kind individuals are generous enough to post all of their hard work on the GIMP registry, where novices like me can download the files to make GIMP accomplish the task.

The problem is 1) installing a plug-in for GIMP is not as simple as clicking one or two buttons and 2) you need a program called Python installed prior to installing GIMP in order to get some of these plug-ins to run.  I learned this the hard way, which involved uninstalling GIMP, hunting for a solid half an hour for the appropriate files, sifting through a bunch of UNIX gibberish I won't even pretend to understand and, finally, with the substantial assistance of my fabulous computer guru (yes, he pretty much did everything for me while I stood over his shoulder going "oooohhhhh!"), locating and installing the appropriate files.  Let's see if I can make the process a little less frustrating for you than it was for me.  Here are the steps we took for Windows 7.  Mac and UNIX users, you're on your own (though this is probably a breeze for UNIX users anyway):

1) Go here and click on the third item down in the list under "Downloads":

• Windows x86 MSI Installer (2.7) (sig) 

2)  Go here and click on

pygtk-all-in-one-2.24.1.win32-py2.7.msi  

3) Go here and download GIMP, and don't forget to install the user's manual if you want it--it doesn't come with the program automatically.  The files to pick here should be pretty obvious.

4) Run each file you downloaded in the order of the download.  So, first python, then the pyGTK package, then GIMP and the user's manual. 

 Given what a pain this is, I'm going to consider this post my good deed for the day.  Hopefully you'll find it helpful. 

Swashbuckling with Modern Pirates (Part III)

Alright, so I've talked about digital theft, why it sucks, and how to stop it.  I've been relying pretty heavily on Gimp for this because a) it's free and b) it's a lot more powerful than some of the other free photo programs out there, such as Google's Picassa.  However, if you're not interested in doing particularly advanced things with your photos, Picassa will work just fine and, in fact, can handle resizing and watermarking.  While there are a lot of things you can't do in Picassa, such as dodging and burning (or, at least I haven't discovered how), it's an extremely user friendly program.  And, like Gimp, it's free!  Bonus.  So, how do you resize and watermark in Picassa?

First, double-click the photo you're trying to alter.  This will bring up a window with the photo, a toolbar to the right with basic fixes etc., and a toolbar on the bottom.  Now that you've selected the photo, click CTRL+Shift+S.  This will bring up a dialog box.  First, select the folder you want to save the new image to in the "Export Location" window.  I also like to set the image quality to "Maximum" in the drop down menu halfway down the dialog box, but for a smaller file you might want to reduce the image quality.  Next, you can either resize by clicking the "Resize to:" button and sliding the bar or you can watermark the image by clicking the "Add watermark" button and typing whatever you want your watermark to say in the box below.  I suppose you could do both at the same time, though I'm not sure why you would... Anyhow, the only thing left to do at this point is to click the "Export" button.  Note, your original image is unaltered and in its original folder.  Nice and easy, right?  The only problem is, you have a lot less control over the color, location, etc. of the watermark than you would in a program such as Gimp.  As you can see below, the watermark simply appears in white at the bottom of the image.  The second example here shows a resized image. 

This picture shows the mermaid statue in the Old Town Square in Warsaw, Poland.  The mermaid is the symbol of warsaw, and the bronze sculpture dates to 1855.  The town square has been reconstructed more than once, most notably after its destruction during World War II, and the statue, which survived the war, was relocated to the center of the square.