Swamp-raiding weekend

Went for a doggy walk in the woods this weekend with hopes to take some autumn nature pictures at the same time too. Ended up in a small swamp crouching over an old rotten birch tree, trying to make a photo out of it. So I finally got to this:

Turned around and there was Terra, my swamp raider, staring and wondering what on earth I am up to for so long...

She ended up posing for the best picture of the day :)

On the way home found a tree that actually still had leaves on! A photo of some nice yellow blur came from that

I don't normally post-process my pictures so much, but the first two above got a bit abused with a couple of new plugins for Bibble I had installed recently. Various layer blending modes, different opacity settings, extra blur and even my website address added on to the photo directly in Bibble.

There is a whole community building plugins for Bibble 5, but it is quite scattered and unorganized... Already started writing about the plugins I use, so a separate article is coming soon as one of the Friday posts about photographers life with Linux.

By the way, the good old Nikon D70s is starting to fool around :(  The DOF preview button closes the mirror, no matter what f number is set. Viewfinder goes pitch black as of today... And the auto focus misses sometimes completely in some weird manner... It's been almost 5 years now... Hope the new camera will be at least as good!

Weekend over. Back to life...
Cheers
//M.

Beefing up the hardware

Last Friday I mentioned that I upgraded the hardware of my photo PC a bit. And it feels like such a good bit!

First it's the processing speed. Surely the 4 new cores feel like lightning compared to the old Intel Celeron driven laptop. Especially when using Bibble 5 as it can utilize all 4 of the cores, which means it is 4 times faster already. Batch processing will never be the same again :) Add 4GB of memory to that computing power and my relatively small NEFs from D70s are digested in under a second each (yes yes, depending on how heavy the post-work is)! That is 0.8s now compared to around 8s before! Obviously the new CPU helps reduce photo editing time as well because any change that I make to a picture in Bibble is instantly reflected on screen without no delay what so ever. Even layer masking (not one of Bibbles strongest points, imho) is much easier and workable now. That is a sweet deal right there.

In addition to the CPU power I got better storage. Now the PC is running on two mirrored hard drives which means that both are identical copies of each other, they hold exactly same information and if one HDD breaks down physically there is still the other one to work with. This mirroring into two hard drives is called RAID 1.

To solve potential software-failure-related data loss I do manual backups to an external USB HDD. I never bothered to find any software to do backups for me... Maybe I should. Will update if I ever get around to it. For now I just try to keep a clean and easy to maintain folder structure.

It did not work out to install the PC from the same USB memory stick as I used to install Fedora 13 on my laptop. This is more related to funky (incompetent) hardware (or me not knowing what I'm doing...). Maybe with time computers will get better in recognizing the USB drives at boot time. For now we deal with what we have and just burn ourselves a good old CD.

This was the second computer I installed Fedora 13 on. Again- no problems. As mentioned last week, there was an additional challenge to get the NVidia graphics adapter working 100% correctly, but just something I've never done before, not a bug or problem.

Now I feel comfortable enough to say- get your latest version of Fedora from here:

I can not realy put my finger on it, but it somehow feels good, this whole thing with moving away from Windows to open source. It will probably sound way too geeky, but I feel like home when I sit infront of my PC now :)

Cheers!
//M.

Slow crop in Bibble 5

A couple of posts ago I mentioned that Bibble 5 interface was a bit slow and jerky when using the crop tool under Linux (Fedora 13 in my case). A bit more digging arround pointed to a newer version of Bibble that has this issue solved, so for those of you trying out RAW photo editing on Linux today, just be sure to install the latest version, get it directly from BibbleLabs download page and you should be fine.

Yes, I said 'should' once again. Because it did not help me whole 100%. I have learned that built-in graphics drivers for Linux are not that great (still better than the default delivered by M$! :p ) and that I need to install proper driver for the GeForce 8800 GTX (jep, I did upgrade my hardware a bit, so no more slow laptop! But that's a post for another Friday ;) ). The newer graphics cards from NVidia have good support for Linux. Just check out their homepage for details. Fedora users are able to install the drivers via Add/Remove Programs; Just search for NVidia.

After installing the latest version of NVidia drivers s**t realy hit the fan. Now all of the XWindows got hanging when I was using Bibble... Or even try to open a youtube page in the browser... Did not find anything specific for my graphics card, but gave a shot adding a parameter to the kernel settings:

pcie_aspm=0

Add the above to your kernel configuration in /boot/grub/grub.conf file.

No idea what this thingie does as I just found it on some forum as a suggestion to solve simmilar interminent crashes for a different NVidia card, but it surely worked for me! No more crashing no matter how hard I abuse the GeForce!

So Linux does have some buggers hanging loose still... I did need to poke around to get things smooth. In any case, I am happy all of that is over now and I can live happily ever after. Or wait... I can't print on-line any more like I used to...Nothing major, but some strange Java plugin failing... More on this next time.

Need some color in this gray n dull post... A shot of a lovely sunset this autumn:

Surely the photo was processed under Linux with Bibble 5 B-D Except for the watermark that was added with the GIMP... can't get the Bibble watermark plugin to work :(

Have fun ;)
//M.

The missing piece of Linux puzzle - monitor calibration

When preparing my photographic self for transition to Linux there was this one last thing that was bothering me -  how on earth am I going to calibrate my monitor and will the gods of OSS accept my EIZO-labeled Spyder 3 colorimeter?! Well, worse case, I figured, I'll just find a windows laptop and fix myself an ICC profile on it; never tell anyone and live in shame for the rest of my days.

So, after I installed all of the other tools like Bibble and GIMP and Hugin, I got to work on the colors. First thing I do is plug in the USB cable of my Spyder 3. No whining or crying so far. Then look for some software for it... Initial googling around points to some strange command line tool - Argyll CMS it's called... At this point I am ready to take anything that goes as no page mentions support for Spyder 3 in a positive way.  Go to Add/Remove Software in Fedora System menu, Search for argyll, select both packages and install.

Reading through Linux Photography... Doesn't sound promissing, but I still go for the test:
sudo ./dispcal -v -y l ./test

A root password later I can clearly see that my Spyder 3 is recognized by the system (because Argyll states the device name clearly). The main menu appears and I am ready to rock! This seriously made my day! I was so happy with this whole color calibration working out :D and now I can easily shout out so that anyone can hear it:

YES, IT IS POSSIBLE TO CALIBRATE YOUR MONITOR UNDER FEDORA 13 LINUX USING A SPYDER 3 CALORIMETER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Here is a screenshot of my Spyder being abused by Argyll to prove it:

There! And don't let the lack of info be misleading. It does work and it works like a charm!

The whole process of creating an accurate ICC profile for your monitor is described by Linux Photography in here. Yes, a lot of reading, but it will also allow you to understand better the process behind creation of the ICC profile.

The only thing that I would like to add to above post from LP is that there is a strange bug in the tool and when it says 'Press any key to continue' it actually means pres Enter. Took a while to get there as I was hitting a spacebar and was being kicked out of the program for a couple of minutes :)

OK, hopefully by now you have an ICC profile file. You need to add it to Bibble, GIMP and set it as the default system profile for this monitor.

System->Preferences->Color Management
Select the active monitor, click the dropdown menu to select the profile and choose Other profile... Find the file you have just created with Argyll CMS. Done with system default.

Bibble should automatically find the system default profile. Note the word should. Even BibbleLabs say that it's well worth the hassle to point out the same file one more time for the tool, just to be sure.

GIMP will not even try to find the profile, so jump into Edit->Preferences->Color Management and point the Monitor Profile to the ICC you've created.

For browsing the calibrated internet I use Firefox. Install 'Color Management' extension and point it to your newly created monitor profile. Restart Firefox and all photos you see will be as real as they can be! You can now try it out by exporting a raw picture from Bibble to JPEG and opening it in Firefox. What you see in Bibble should be almost identical to what you see in Firefox.

Seems like we're done now! All colors calibrated, tools set up and ready to go!

Enjoy your accurate colors ;)
//M.

Stitching panoramas with Hugin under Linux

If you are one of the panorama folks trying to move off to Linux, you'll surely like to try out Hugin panorama stitcher (it does work on other platforms too, so Win and Mac users could make use of it just as well!).

As you know I have migrated to Linux some weeks ago therefore I will only talk about Hugin on Fedora 13 and no other platform (all flavors of Linux act in a similar fashion). The only thing to get done before starting with Hugin is to install autopano-sift-C package. The trick to it is that it is not available in the standard repository of Fedora. So, first install RPM Fusion from here. After that is done you should be able to go to System->Administration->Add/Remove software and search for 'autopano'. Select the package, install. Now search for Hugin, select it, install. And now you are all set and ready to go! You can find Hugin under Applications->Graphics menu.

After starting up, you land in Assistant tab. This is all I used to create the above image out of 4 tiff files. So you click '1. Load images...' select all the files that should be included and click Open. For verification it should display how many images you have selected, what focal length was used and the crop factor.

Also button '2. Align...' becomes active. Click it and Hugin will pick up all the control points that will be used to stitch the pictures together. A new window opens up. Here the only thing needed for a quick startup is the Crop tab. Choose that and click Autocrop button. Worked great for me! If it fails for you just readjust manually.

Close the Align window and click button '3. Create panorama...'. Specify the output file name and click Save.

Congrats, you have just finished your very first Hugin panorama.

There are tons of more advanced options and possibilities in Hugin but more on those some other time!

A geek note- all 4 pictures taken hand-held with D70s and Nikkor 70-300 lens on an amazing evening in Swedish west coast.

Keep shooting!
//M.

Speeding up Bibble 5

In case you are running on a system with slower hardware (like I am limping on Intel Celeron 1.86GHz with 2GB RAM) you might run into problems with Bibble while handling folders with large amounts of pictures in them (valid for both Linux and M$ Win). In some cases I even had the Preview generator hang right on the start and it never let go of the hanging preview generator even if I closed down Bibble and started from scratch again. It is useful for us slow folks to completely disable this feature.

In the main menu of Bibble 5 go to File->Preferences and choose Import and Cache from the side menu. Uncheck the box like so:

I have also changed the time cache is kept from 2 weeks to 2 days.

Now it takes a moment longer to open every image, but in general it is well worth it as Bibble never crashed after this change again.

By the way, last weeks post about moving to Linux from MS Win also is a good trick that speeds up Bibble performance. The startup time is almost nothing compared to what it was on M$! Yet another reason to migrate to open source ;-)

In all honesty, one glitch did pop up on Linux. When using crop tool in Bibble, it is hard to move around the selected area as it is not following the mouse smoothly. There are minor glitches when moving the Curves sliders too. Not sure yet if that is because of something in the default Fedora configuration or if it's something with Linux version of Bibble. More on this after I figure it out.

Cheers
M.

First photo workflow breath under Fedora 13 Linux

Finally it happened- after just one and a half hour of work I have my Fedora Linux up and running with GIMP and Bibble as my tools for digital photo workflow. Yes, it is possible and yes, it does feel good!

Why Fedora? Because there are two flavors for us not willing to fiddle with tech details too much - Fedora and Ubuntu. And I like colors of Fedora better. OK- as serious as it gets- Fedora has been there for a few years longer than Ubuntu. Bigger community, more support, hopefully more stable.

I have not worked on a Linux machine for at least 5 years now... And (this is great news) there was no need to remember anything! Installing the system took no time at all and was as easy as clicking the Next button under M$.

Nowadays (if your computer supports booting from USB) you don't even need to burn a CD to get this working. Download the Live USB creator here. It will create a bootable memory stick from your ordinary USB stick. Reboot and off you go! The system should start up and become fully usable without the need to install - that's what Live CD means. It allows you to use a completely functioning computer without any installation at all. When you've made sure that you like it, just click Install to hard drive icon on your desktop and follow on screen instructions. It is a really quick and painless process.

One note for you who have never seen Linux before- root user is like administrator under win. You'll need to supply a password for that one during installation. Remember this password as you will need it every time you are installing new stuff on your machine.

Everything else is very much self explanatory. All software updates are delivered automatically afterwards so you don't have to worry about things getting old or staying buggy.

To install the GIMP just go to System->Administraion->Add/Remove Software. In the search box type GIMP and select the packages you want to add. Click apply button, wait till it's done and you have GIMP installed on your computer! Didn't even need to download it yourself ;-)

Bibble is not ported into Fedoras package list therefore you will have to go through the 'hassle' of downloading. Get it from Bibble Labs download page. Just run the package after downloading and it should install all by itself.

That's about it! You are now a proud owner of a Linux system and should be fully capable of managing your photo workflow on it!

Here is the first picture I've developed under Linux (from one lovely evening at the Swedish coast):

This is it for now. It is time for me to do more playing around with Fedora so I can write more stuff for you folks! Keep checking the Linux tag and enjoy being M$ free! It is easy and effortless nowadays!

//M.