Ubuntu Gimp Intelligence

Well, I was going to have to do it sometime. I got out the USB cable and plugged the camera into the Ubuntu box, not expecting much.

What a pleasant surprise; some little program popped up, told me I’d plugged in a Canon S70 and wondered where I’d like to download the pictures to. Had a nice little slide-show thingie too for quick review. It doesn’t seem to preserve the names the camera gave the pictures; a pity. [Update: Hubert Figuiere, maintainer of gPhoto2, wrote to point me at the “Preserve Filenames” option right there in front of me. Gphoto seems excellent!]

Then it was time to break out the Gimp.

The Gimp. Well, I think I could learn to live with it, you know? I haven’t figured out how to resize a rectangular selection, but everything else I needed to do pretty well just worked. Sure is amazingly like PhotoShop, isn’t it? Except for I’ve been using Elements, not full PhotoShop, and Elements doesn’t have a Curves control, but the Gimp does, which is kind of nice. Levels and curves don’t preview in real-time, but that hurts less than you’d think. And if you’re wondering how much rotating you need to do, there’s a “Measure Distances and Angles” tool.

And then there’s performance: the Gimp on a 2.6GHz Sun Ultra 20 stomps all over Elements on the PowerBook.