Sometimes, people will remember that GIMP is a program allowing to do digital photography on Linux. And, often, many people think that it is only available on this relatively uncommon platform. But, as a matter of fact, GIMP also exists on Windows. And, because of its price but also because of its features, it is recommended to at least try this Windows software.

The big news of this version 2.8 is the arrival of what its developers designate with the ugly name of single-window interface, which is actually a presentation based on a free window along with tools palettes.

GIMP on Windows

This version is also able to handle layers (individually or as a group), to work on 16-bit or 32-bit pictures, but it’s the more discreet improvements that may be the most critical for user comfort and efficiency. Things like:

• The use of the Cairo library (which gives a much improved rendering of texts and graphics)
• The use of independent processes for save and export operations (which offer a much faster feeling for these long operations)
• Direct editing of text strings (rather than the editing in a separate window, for better Wysiwyg)
• The nicer design of many little tools like spin buttons and many controls

So, if you are not fully convinced by the small fortunes that Adobe is requiring from the customers at each new version, it is now time to upgrade your mind and check GIMP.

To get even more:

• All GIMP-related posts
• Download (freely) GIMP v2.8.0

• Instant Vintage Photo Effects with the FIL Script for GIMP
• How To Create Amazing Text and Font Effects in Gimp 2.6
• Fake Depth of Field in Gimp – DOF Explained will teach you how to handle (and produce) depth of field in a pictureusing GIMP (and it will also provide useful information which will be useful for every photographer, not only GIMP users).
• 5 top tips for GIMP users
• GIMP 2.7 for Photoshop Expatriates
• Content-aware resizing in Gimp is available through the excellent Liquid Rescale plugin for GIMP
• Free GIMP Plugins for Photographers
• Créer un effet de vignettage avec Gimp et Photoshop
• Puis, un site francophone très riche et principalement consacré à GIMP avec de nombreux guides et tutoriels sur la retouche photo (1point2vue.com).

Photoshop CS6

Finally, Adobe has officially announced the newest Photoshop: CS6. We know about everything of it because of the beta which has been available for a few weeks already (and there are a few videos available on a YouTube channel, for you to discover all the new features). But there is one new thing which was left undisclosed up to now, the price.

If the basic cost for a full license is nothing new (some people, including me, were hoping to see a price drop like for Lightroom):

• $699 for a Photoshop CS6 license
• Photoshop CS6 upgrades from $199
• $2599 for the full CS6 collection

But there is now a cloud-based solution allowing a new rent option: US$50 or 20€ per month gives you access to a wealth of applications: all the CS6 Master Collection applications, including Photoshop Extended. The only catch is that you have to pay a full year of subscription. This may not look great if you only need one of the applications but it’s astonishingly good if you need more.

If you are a student, you get an even better bargain at $30 per month.

Remember: You’ve got some time to still decide (Photoshop CS6 starts shipping at the end of May), but you can play with the beta version of Photoshop CS6 up to then.

Download it freely from Adobe Labs.

A reminder of the main new features:

• Improved content-aware patch which is behaving in a nearly magical way;
• Speed improvements everywhere;
• New User Interface with a dark background;
• A lot of newly improved tools (about everywhere).

As always, remember that the beta version will not work any longer after the arrival of the final/official version, that it is not exempt from bugs while Adobe gives no warranty about it (all very good reasons to have backup copies of your pictures before using Adobe Photoshop CS6 beta).

DigiKam RAW import

• Install digiKam 1.6 on Ubuntu 10.10
• RAW Magic In Digikam: Understanding RAW Photo Settings
• Process RAW Files in digiKam
• New Features in digiKam 2.0: Geolocation
• New Features in digiKam 2.0: Face Recognition
• Work with Photo Metadata in digiKam
• How to find duplicate images on Digikam
• Geotag Photographs with Open GPS Tracker and digiKam
• Sieve through Photographs with digiKam’s Light Table Tool
• Batch Process Photos in digiKam

But Digikam is not the only tool in Linux photographers life… Particularly, if you are looking for software programs to handle the RAW files from your digital photo camera, the choice is still quite large and diverse enough to have you fooling around for quite some time:

• Editing RAW Photos on Linux with Rawstudio 2.0
• Convert RAW Files to DNG with DNGConverter
• Process Raw Image Files for Free with RawTherapee
• Process RAW Files with Rawstudio

However, if you still want to have an idea of the future of Photoshop through some demos, tests and trials done on some of the versions which were leaked to the Internet, here comes Photoshop CS6 in full video glory.

In English:

Adobe Photoshop CS6.v13.0 Released MacOSX-Incl… par hikarivip

En español :

En français :

In Portuguese:

Last small advice: If you search with Google, you will certainly find a large number of links to download Photoshop CS6. Don’t forget that this is (often, but not always) a fraud to try and infect your computer with a nasty Trojan horse, more than with Photoshop CS6.

Bryan O’Neil Hughes, Senior Product Manager at Adobe, gives us an idea of the next version of Adobe Camera Raw (ACR).

First, it is possible to download the version 4 beta. So, why not? (apart from the risk associated with working in a software version which is not fully debugged and may not even work when the final version reaches the online shelves – you’ve been warned)

The public beta version of Lightroom 4 can be downloaded on the Adobe Labs website.

The most prominent progress certainly comes from the following:

• the RAW dematricing engine has been improved again
• some new modules were included to support book and maps creation using your own photos
• a new interface to touch-up colors and tones
• it becomes possible to locally correct the white balance
• digital noise and moire local correction
• new features targeting video correction

If you don’t have the time (or the courage) to try it by yourselves, I recommend a few good posts I found on the Internet:

• The interview of Tom Hogarty on DPReview.com, who talks about Lightroom 4 from the point of view of somebody working at Adobe
• the hands-on preview of Lightroom4 at DPReview.com
• French tutorial from Gilles Théophile
• French test and advice from Volker Gilbert

But even if you do not start playing with the new Lightroom, if you still keep the old version of Lightroom, it is still possible to spend some time using Lightroom. I collected some very good articles for you (in various languages, as usual here):

• How to Personalize Lightroom with an Identity Plate
• 5 Top Tips for Lightroom Develop Presets
• How to Add Watermarks to Your Photos in Lightroom 3 va vous apprendre à ajouter ces marques ou ces signatures au coin de vos photos ; cela fait très pro et très élégant (si vous ne vous contentez pas d’ajouter votre nom…)
• Camera RAW vs. Lightroom einmal, in deutscher Sprache verfasst
• Lightroom: Alte Dateinamen rekonstruieren
• 3 Ways to Change White Balance in Lightroom
• How to Add a Photo Border in Lightroom
• Wer braucht Fotobücher aus Lightroom? (in Deutsch)
• Black and White RAW Processing for a Landscape Image – Weekly Lightroom Edit Episode 2

• Video demo of “PatchMatch“, an algorithm developed by Princeton scientific research and Adobe.
• AppleInsider’s sneak peek at CS6 look and feel
• Image de-blurring demonstrated at 2011 Adobe MAX in October 2011, and many other technological presentations shown at the same time.

But, for now, since April 2010, we are still stuck with the old and faithful Photoshop CS5. A very good reason to keep looking at enlightening sources of new techniques, tutorials, solutions and free plug-ins. The last ones I stumbled upon:

• An Introduction to Working with Layers and Masks in Photoshop
• Creating Textures in Photoshop
• How to Use Photoshop’s High Pass Filter to Soften Skin While Retaining Texture by PetaPixel
• Smarter Content Aware Fill in Photoshop brilliantly solves an issue often found when using “content-aware fill“: Photoshop sometimes fills with parts of the image that are taken from the most surprising places (and often the less pleasant ones). A simple and 100% efficient solution.
• Camera RAW vs. Lightroom einmal, in deutscher Sprache verfasst
• Finally, a hodge-podge of filters, brushes, plugins, all free for Photoshop: Free Photoshop Filters, Brushes and Plugins

So, many people want to see my photos immediately out of the camera, right after the recording. This is not an issue for me when we are speaking of showing the picture on the back of my camera (Nobody can see anything there, anyway…) but I actively resist when we’re speaking about final pictures. As a matter of fact, I work some more. This is something that ussually annoys a lot of other photographers, but that I consider an integral part of taking a picture (and this is a reason why I switched to digital photography early). First, I sort pictures out in Adobe Bridge. I usually keep only a small part of the images I shot. In a family reunion, I may keep half of the shots (It may vary). From a photo safari, I keep between 1% and 3% of the recorded files. The rest is not really worth it. Your mileage may vary (some will say that I should shoot less and think more, but it’s my style), but you need to select your best pictures.

Then, I enter the real development phase: I work from the RAW picture files of my camera, but this would be near exactly the same from JPEG picture files (I just prefer to start with images less digitally massaged by the camera to reach my own pictures). Consequently, a lot of what I do happens in Adobe Camera Raw (and it applies mostly to Lightroom users too). Here is how I proceed and… why.

The first thing requires to notice that the histogram of most images does not fully cover the full range from black to white: There is not real black (on the left of the histogram) and not real white (on the right). It may be an artistic choice, but in most cases this is merely a consequence of the limitations of the photo camera.

Step 1 - Histogram

I follow a two-step approach to extend to a full light dynamic range. First, by using the Exposure control to push the highlights to the right of the histogram. Here, I pushed the Exposure to +0.35 to align the last bit of the histogram with the right hand side (I ensured that the white pixels are actually completely white, not light grey and I don’t blow them out).

Step 2 - Fine tune highlights

Then, I do the same with shadows (and the left hand side of the histogram) using the Blacks, pushing only a little.

Step 3 - Fine-tune shadows

From this point, the picture dynamic range is maximal. It is also possible to correct the contrast, but it is not often necessary if the shooting conditions were average.Similarly, apart from significant problems in the original, it is not necessary to use the Fill light to lighten dark shadows.

The next step is to re-frame the image: Some will say that I have the bad habit of centering my subject too much, but when we speaking about very active animals, like the three jackals of this picture, I prefer to use the central AF zone of my Sony Alpha 700 which has the most sensitive and fastest AF sensor. So, I leave the re-framing job to Photoshop (even if I recognize that whenever it’s possible, it is simpler to think about framing correctly from shooting time).

For this, I use the re-framing tool in the tool bar at the top of the Adobe Camera Raw window and I choose the right frame with the mouse (thinking about painting traditions and the rule of thirds).

Step 4 - Re-frame

Some will prefer to start the whole process with re-framing (rather than waiting here for this). There are some good reasons for it (specially so when re-framing is used to remove an ugly over- or under-exposed area from the picture). I believe that in most cases, it’s more an issue of personal preference.

Next comes the most controversial step: Detail accentuation. It is easy to over-do it and I strongly recommend to keep the original Adobe settings rather than stepping all over it with too much accentuation (many people do it and I won’t give names). As a matter of fact, it’s true that I tend to force more of these fake details in web pictures than in quality prints.

The best is probably to experiment very lightly, in the Camera Raw settings, after zooming in onto the important area of the image (I’m less tempted to over-do it when it’s big in front of my eyes).

Step 5 - Accentuation

Then, it is simple to open a copy of the image in Photoshop from the “Open copy” button. It will be necessary to save a fine-tuned copy or to print it on your ink-jet printer.

I simply recommend to always convert colors (the impact is usually small but I tend to have confidence in Photoshop choices).

Step 6 - Export to Photoshop

And here is a nice additional step that I get from Patrick Fagot, photographer that I love and whose teachings I used as a basis for my own ideas to use Photoshop, thanks to his advice during photographic trips with did together in Brazil an in Botswana. He advises to immediately add a colored frame to the best photos in order to give them a little additional pro finish and this is true that it help the picture to “pop out”.

It’s only a matter of using the Photoshop Image > Canvas size... control…

Step 7 - Add a border/frame

…and to choose a new size increased by a few millimeters around the image (and the right Canvas extension color – Black is often good but you can experiment).

Step 8 - Size the border/frame

Some will prefer the Relative control which allows to give a relative increase size, but I feel it is less comfortable.

That's all folks!

From this description, it is possible to change a few settings around this. And I guess this will give inspiration to some of the readers.

If you want to go further: All other tips and tricks of YLovePhoto.