Last night I was preparing my laptop for a talk that I’d be giving to our awesome Friends of the Library group. Among other things, I wanted to change my background to something slightly literary in nature so I started thinking; “Who are my favourite literary characters right now?”. I mean, I’ve got hundreds of favourite characters from books, but who are my current fan obsessions? It came down to two people: Lisbeth Salander aka The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and George Smiley from Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. Given that you can see his wallpaper over on the left, you can guess who won. As I looked at that wallpaper and talked online with a friend, I started thinking about Guy Smiley, the Sesame Street Muppet who usually showed up as the quintessential game show host. From George Smiley to Guy Smiley we came up with a parody idea called Tinker, Tailor, Muppet, Spy. I looked at George’s wallpaper and I knew, I absolutely knew, I had to do something similar using Guy Smiley.
I now do what other people only dream. I make art until someone dies. ~Jack Nicholson as The Joker. From the movie Batman.
I’m not your usual artist. I will go through streaks where I draw and paint and colour and all kinds of stuff and then go through streaks where I’m not even sure where my good pencils are. That’s okay, because that’s just how I roll. I’m not a photographer, but I take pictures. I’m not a colourist, but sometimes I want to digitally colour my drawings. To do this in the proprietary world, you need apps like Photoshop or Illustrator or Painter. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’ve used Photoshop and I’m kinda sorta good at it.
Photoshop also costs over US$600 for a new install.
Let me take a look around here. Pull open some drawers. Check under the couch and in the cushions. Let me look in my purse. Nope, no I don’t have $600. And even worse, when I was using Photoshop, I felt like I was probably getting $86 worth of a $600 programme. I’d use it for colouring, some photo enhancement and manipulation, and that stuff. So after the version I was using ceased to work on the newer versions of Windows, I sought out something that was within my price range.
What? You were expected some leather bondage guy?
As it happens, free is absolutely right there in realm of my wallet. I can handle free. And for free, you can have the GNU Image Manipulation Programme, more lovingly known as the GIMP. The GIMP is a free, open source image manipulation programme that does pretty much everything Photoshop does. Now, if you’re some big time artist or photographic expert who desires things that Photoshop dishes out, then yeah, the GIMP may not be for you.
But if you do happen to be part of the other 99% who probably doesn’t need professional, industry grade features, then by all means, occupy the GIMP.
From everything I’ve done with Photoshop, I’ve found I can do the same in GIMP. At worst, there is a little hunting around to see what they decided to name something that had a specific name in Photoshop. For me, the biggest challenge was the keyboard shortcuts, which may not matter to you at all. However, when you’re using a graphics tablet, knowing keyboard shortcuts to get to things like paintbrush or magic wand select or eraser saves a lot of time and hassle. Sure you can click on them using the stylus, but that takes your brush away from your drawing when you don’t have to.
Beyond the GIMP you’ll find some other useful artistic stuff at your disposal. Today I used a vector graphics programme called InkScape to render something into a scalable vector graphic so I could enlarge it without losing fidelity. In other words, I converted a JPG to an image format that works on math rather than pixels. Then I blew it up and saved it to another image format that works on pixels instead of math. Then I used an app called Posterazor to set it up as a multi-page print out one can paste together like a big ol’ puzzle. The result? This:
Let me just fully explain what you’re looking at there, besides an awesome friend of mine who posed for this drawing. I used a photo to draw her with her bass guitar. Then I scanned and imported the drawing into GIMP where I outlined and coloured it. Then I opened it in InkScape where I was able to make it really big without losing any clarity. After that, I saved it and set it up in Posterazor to print out on a 7×7 grid of papers which I taped together to make a big-ass banner for our library band.
In every way, from the original photo to the final product, that big poster was created using nothing but free, open source software and Linux.
Finally, before I get out of here, there’s one more programme you should know about. Krita is an app that’s specifically for digital drawing and painting . Much like Painter, it’s geared towards artists looking to take their work into the digital realm, whether it’s scanning a pencil or starting from scratch right on screen. I’ve only used it a little, so I can’t say much about it other than it did what I expected and I had no issues. Thing is, I’ve used GIMP for so long now, I prefer it because I know where everything is. Still, if you’re new to the artistic scene in Linux, give it a shot. I think you’ll like it.
Once again, it almost goes without saying that you’d find all of these programmes in your Ubuntu Software Centre. All of them are free!
Altered Carbon – by Ben Mauro
“Zao’s body was too old to cope with advanced augmentations, the hand-me-down neural implant from a few decades back was decent enough though. This body was old, frail…..but he could blend-in and stay hidden from the Envoys in the slums of Neo-Shanghai. It would have to do until he could afford a proper download into his combat sleeve and get the hell out of this city. For now, he waits.”
