Converting Photoshop curves to the GIMP

[Big Picture ]

Too much time on my hands? Here's a quick and dirty Perl script called acv2gimp that converts a Photoshop curves action file (.acv) to a GIMP curves file. Just run it on the ACV file and redirect stdout to a new file, which should then be put in your .gimp-2.*/curves/ directory. E.g.:

$ acv2gimp FancyCurve.acv > ~/.gimp-2.2/curves/FancyCurve

The file format was taken from this PS6 file format specifications document. There are some caveats:

• Photoshop can have up to sixteen channels, with a curve for each. However, most ACV files seem to contain only five curves for the K, R, G, B and Alpha channels, and GIMP curves files appear to match this.
• Photoshop allows up to 19 points on a curve (v3.0 - may be more in later versions?), whereas the GIMP only allows 17 points. My script outputs all the points (with a warning), but I have no idea what the GIMP will do with the extra data; it may crash. You can hand-edit the output and delete some of the points if this is a problem.

Update: Thanks to Ron Hickson for discovering a rather foolish bug: the script does not handle platform endianness variations. Fixed now, download again if you tried it previously.

GIMP tricks for B&W photographers

[Big Picture ]

Just a few tricks I've learnt, discovered or regularly use on my own shots.

Burning and dodging

Create a new, transparent layer. Sent blend mode to Overlay. Paint in black where you want to burn the underlying layers and white for dodging. Use shades of gray for lesser degrees (where neutral gray - 127/127/127 - has no effect). Vary layer transparency to adjust overall effect. To increase the effect, duplicate the layer or try a different blending mode (e.g. Multiply or Soft grain). (Taken from John Beardsworth's excellent Digital B&W Photography book.)

Edge burn

As above but set blend mode to Multiply. Draw a rough selection border around, but not close to, the image edge and invert it. Feather the selection by a few hundred pixels. Bucket-fill the selection with black. Adjust layer transparency as required.

Sharpening

Download the smart-sharpening script from the GIMP FAQ site. Apply as the final step. Edit the sharpening layer mask to remove the effect from areas you don't want sharpened, such as grainy skies (paint on black). If resizing, resharpen the sharpening layer slightly afterwards using Unsharp Mask (1.0/0.5/0). To avoid sharpening grain, run the Despeckle filter over the mask.

Soft focus glow

Duplicate the image layer. Set blend mode to Multiply. Apply Gaussian Blur (10-30 pixels radius) to the layer. Increase the lower output level for the layer to 10-30 AND/OR add a layer mask containing the same image to avoid darkening the shadows. Increase overall brightness using Curves if required. Reduce layer transparency to avoid too extreme an effect. Excellent for child portraits and mid-tones.

Blown highlights

For small areas, use the Clone tool with a soft brush of approximately half the same size of the area to cover, and set the mode to Value. Clone from a nearby area that has some abstract detail (e.g. leaves in trees).
For larger areas, try selecting using the Contiguous selector with a suitable threshold, then lower the top anchor in Curves. NB. This rarely works well; it's almost impossible to fix large blown areas convincingly. Reshoot if you can.

Toning

The GIMP Guru has a nice technique using Sample Colourise, but a quick way to warm an image uses Curves. Select a shadow, mid tone or highlight point and fix the other two tonal areas. Move the selected point for each channel by the following amounts vertically: Red +3, Green -3, Blue -12. Save the curve for reuse. Swap these figures around to cool the image (-12, -3, 3). (Numbers from Paul Butzi.)

Improving contrast

Duplicate the layer. Change the blend mode for the new layer to Grain Merge. Reduce opacity to 10-40%. Use a layer mask to mask out either the subject or the surroundings, which helps to differentiate them.

Edits have no effect or image is corrupted

Is there a selection in effect? Check View -> Selections in the menu. Are you applying a colour transformation to a greyscale file? Change Image -> Mode to RGB.

Editing 16 bit images

Download and build the latest version of Cinepaint. Make the initial curves adjustment in this (warning: Cinepaint's Curves tool is still based on the GIMP 1.x), convert to 8 bit and save to a new file. Make the remaining edits to this file in the GIMP. (I only do this when I need to make severe adjustments that would otherwise cause posterisation on an 8 bit file.)

Editing images at work

If you have spare moments in the office, try the Windows version of the GIMP; it works identically.

WebSphere on UNIX in print

[Big Job ]

My document about WAS on UNIX has been republished by WebSphere Journal (part two next month). They've loosened up the language somewhat to suit their cool, hip image, but the definitive - and updated - version remains my original paper.

We found Ade Rixon's "Putting WAS on Unix" in a serendipitous way, simply by surfing the web in search of ideas one blessed week-end. "But I only posted it on my website two days ago," he said. "How did you find me?" It's simple, we are omniscient, I reminded him, and therefore knowledgeable enough to know a good subject and good writing when we see it, and give it a much wider audience.
- Roger Strukhoff, WJ Editor

Coming soon, my new article: "Giving up work for a life of abundant luxury". Over here, Forbes magazine!

Look upon these works and rejoice

[Big Words ]

Of all the fascinating topics covered by BB, Warrington Bus Station must rank in the top five and we therefore expect our hit rate to treble after this post (so a warm welcome to our two new readers). And the big news for fans of this mighty edifice is: it's going.

Those who have visited the northern utopia of Warrington and perhaps made their grand entrance via the hallowed grey portals of what might be considered a bus cathedral (but shouldn't be), from which they emerged squinting into rheumy daylight, will doubtless be saddened... no, wrong word... overjoyed... no... faintly pleased to hear that thirty years after it built, and only one minute less since they realised what a vile deed they had wrought upon the earth, Warrington Council are about to bulldoze the place and replace it with something less injurious to mankind's legacy (...one assumes - BB hasn't seen the new plans, but only a painstaking replica of the Bull Ring could be worse). It isn't recorded whether the original planners will be invited to swing the wrecking balls or, preferably, stand in front of them.

BB ought to remember the current station being built, alongside the spiffing new Golden Square shopping centre, but our only memory is a photo of a huge hole in the ground on the front page of the Warrington Guardian, as construction started (in fact, we can't even remember that end of town existing before then). Sadly, it would never look so good again. The finished article was a monolithic, grey, concrete dungeon that even bus drivers didn't deserve to enter (and most exited at speeds in excess of safe limits, with the occasional brave soul pausing long enough to rescue some queuing passengers). It was truly a gift of the seventies, that decade when the country knew that it's one enemy was Communist Russia, yet somehow contrived to import much of the architectural glamour and style of Brezhnev's Moscow to its towns and cities.

As your bus swung beneath the high vaulted beams, the little sunlight that made it through the choking clouds of smog from the Lever factory would be blotted out and a terrible darkness would descend over both your eyes and your soul. Leaving the vehicle, you would pass through a thick glass partition, smeared with appreciative felt-tip messages from previous travellers ("CAZ LUVD DAZ ERE 4/5/84") and enter the ambient bays with their pale walls and dimpled rubber floor, a theme continued at the top of the escalators, with added fag ends, where you passed the bijou newsagents selling the latest copy of Big 'Uns before entering the flourescent wonderland of the Mall. (At the time, Warrington was considered to have leapfrogged to the preeminent position in the northern shopping centres league. Thirty years on, almost all the gloss has worn off, long surpassed by enormo-domes like the Trafford Centre, and it must now feel like a small, forgotten, colonial outpost of retail Britain.) A similar experience was provided for those who parked in the Leigh Street multi-storey and arrived via the soaring span of the link bridge that carried them across the ring road.

But worse was always to come: the return trip meant waiting in the same place until the bus arrived and the driver had sat there reading his paper with the doors closed for the requisite ten minutes before moving off to the next bay down (a quaint old tradition that continues to this day). There were no seats, which would have spoilt the fine lines of the decor, only thick steel bars to coral the herd. Even leaving Warrington, a moment that should have been a cause for wild elation, became a miserable, tedious experience.

And it's all going, only thirty years too late. The new facility will apparently have an airport terminal feel, which isn't so bad if you've ever stood under the glass roof at Heathrow Terminal 2. Well, it probably won't be that good, and it's hard to compare First drivers with BA pilots, but at least it's unlikely to see large scale use of concrete.

Meanwhile, if you know anyone who was involved with the building of the old station, spare no effort in ensuring that they play a key role in the construction of the new one - the foundations are being poured any day now.

Kiss this

[Big Tangent ]

"Which braying, wide-eyed simpletons watch this stuff ... ?"
- Rock star's crazy, crazy nights at Christ's

BB has very little to add other than that we tremendously enjoyed this news story, though more for what it says about "reality" TV than the ridiculous, posturing loon that is Gene Simmons.

A true picture?

[Big Picture ]

BBC4 is running a series on Sunday nights called A Digital Picture of Britain, which is supposedly a companion to A Picture of Britain on the main channel. The latter is a look at the influence of the British landscape on the arts hosted by a rather grumpy David Dimbleby ("I suppose it's worth it," he harrumphed as he set off up Helvellyn in dangerous winter conditions), with each programme concentrating on a particular region. Unfortunately, the former forsakes the opportunity to draw comparisons between the artists and scenes mentioned by Dimbleby and the work of landscape photographers, in favour of pointless "Gee whizz, these digital cameras are really neat!" technolust.

It's not a terrible programme and it's certainly watchable. For example, in the first one, Joe Cornish, who normally shoots for the National Trust using a traditional 4x5" view camera, was given a tiny cameraphone. Ian Berry, a diehard film and rangefinder shooter, was lumbered with the huge and expensive Nikon D2x DSLR, with pro zoom to match. And the Guardian's Dan Chung was handed a standard Canon digicam.

None of the participants could be said to be wildly enthusiastic about their gifts. They all attempted to take the same type of photographs they normally shoot, but found themselves struggling without the benefit of their accustomed working methods. That's not to say the resulting pictures were at all bad, but you knew that they would have been a whole lot better had each photographer been allowed to use their own gear. Cornish pointed his miniature phone at similar compositions to those on his view camera's glass, then swore as it failed to focus or struggled to expose everything clearly. He even resorted to clamping it to his tripod, before finishing with the (extremely valid) point that a camera obviously intended to capture spontaneous moments yet having a shutter delay of 2-3 seconds was practically useless, something which doubtless went down well with the manufacturers hoping to see their products showcased here. Berry moaned about the complexity and obstrusiveness of his Nikon, and eventually captured a great, evocative shot of a Cumbrian farmer that had "I normally use a Leica" written all over it. He seemed happy reviewing his work on a laptop later that day, but there was no evident advantage to him in using the DSLR. Chung tried to shoot the action at a local football match before being beaten by digital shutter lag again and falling back on "slice of life" scenes that are probably his bread and butter.

What was the point? Could anyone imagine Cornish throwing his view camera in the nearest skip and crying "Whoopee, I'm liberated!" as he danced off into the sunset waving the Crappyphone aloft? Did digital capture result in radically different approaches or results from any of these unfortunate guinea pigs? The old saw that a great photographer can produce great results with any kind of camera proved true, but didn't necessarily lead to any further insights. The level of artistic exploration produced by either the cameras, the subjects or the programme itself was virtually nil. There is, however, a certain comedy value in watching Joe Cornish balance a tripod on the roof of his car with a mobile phone attached to the head of it, desperately wishing it was a Linhof.

Running alongside the programme is a competition on the BBC web site for viewers to submit their own pictures of Britain. BB was about to complain that the rules stated a picture must be taken by a digital camera (because pictures on negatives would somehow be old-fashioned and fail to reflect 21st Century Britain?), and remain uncropped and unaltered (what, no B&W conversions? no levels adjustments? no toning?), but these clauses appear to have since been yanked. The precise nature of the £500 prize isn't explicitly stated, but we're betting it's a digital camera. Nevertheless, this hasn't stopped us submitting our own work: 1, 2, and 3.

Good fer you

[Big Words ]

When we look back on the things we've done, we tend to forget the minor annoyances (how hot it was, all the flies, busting to get to the toilet) and the boring bits.

It takes on a rosy glow, becoming better in recall than it was in reality. We even laugh over misadventures we found most unpleasant at the time.

- Activity is the goods for true satisfaction, Sydney Morning Herald, 18th Feb 2004.

Three years. Three years of lying awake at night thinking, "Please god, don't make me go back there!" It's been almost three years since BB took a three week vacation in New Zealand and there's still no sign of a "rosy glow" of remembrance, only the cold shudder of an unpleasant dream. But at least we can talk about it now. In fact, we can whinge at length.

Where did it all start to go wrong? Was it the inordinate delay while we waited to collect our hired campervan? Was it when said van started to break down, at night and four hours out of the capital? The first cold, drizzly night in Taupo? Stepping off the plane? Stepping off the plane during a stopover in Bombay on the way over, to be confronted with armed soldiers and the earthy whiff of the Indian subcontinent?

If I'm honest, the problems started at the travel agents, somewhere around the moment where we pointed at the two small islands just above Antarctica and said, "We'd like to go there". Specifically, the psychological wound occurred when we suddenly found ourselves forking out the entire four figure cost of the holiday on the spot, rather than the nominal deposit we'd been expecting. (Apparently, if you book your flights less than nine years in advance, you have to pay the lot upfront - presumably, they're worried that the truth about NZ will be out any day.) My bank account, while not plunged into the red, was suddenly looking a lot less wealthy than I had previously been used to. For the same money, I could have bought, for example:

• A top of the range Apple Mac.
• A semi-pro digital SLR outfit.
• A small used car.
• Enough beer to forget everything.

You may argue that instead of satisfying shallow consumer lusts, I was buying memories that would last a lifetime. Unfortunately, you would appear to be correct. As we walked out of the agents, a small voice in my head muttered, "It can't be worth it. No mere holiday could be worth all that." Six months later, the muttering had become a plaintive whine. Thus I was not in a good frame of mind by the time I fell wearily off a 28 hour long haul flight and into the Auckland sun.

The van, as has been alluded to, was a disaster. The depot was a shambles, with various travellers kicking up a stink because their vehicle was too small/large/long in coming. We suspect a German couple who complained vociferously about the small Bedford they had been assigned were actually upgraded to the one intended for us, in the interests of making them go away quickly. That meant we got the leftovers - there, that one at the back that the last bloke said kept cutting out! Does the engine turn? Then shut up and give it to those two English lamers. Throw 'em a bottle of cheap plonk to sweeten them too - two headaches for the price of one!

"Don't ever drive with the gas bottle left on!" said the cheerful girl who showed us around the vehicle, while unbeknownst to us leaving the gas tap open, a fact we would discover - to some distress but thankfully no loud explosions - a hundred miles later. Perhaps it was another attempt to keep us quiet.

Long story short: EMS warning light came on several hours later and would intermittently repeat this after every panicked stop we made. Took van to Ford dealer in Taupo, who swore blind he'd seen the same van with the same problem travelling north three days earlier (hmmm...). Arranged swap at Wellington depot. Tore up itinery, followed diversion along west coast (overnight stop at Wanganui, one of the precious few highlights of the trip, although my opinion might be coloured by the sun coming out that day). Exchanged van, also picking up the chairs we had been promised too. The new one turned out to have a broken waste outlet tap (we couldn't empty the tank until we managed to borrow a wrench in Christchurch), but the rest of it worked. If only we could stop banging our heads on the cramped interior, usually at moments of maximum stress such as when discussing whether to sack it and go back home. (Note: it would be rude to name the company, or write something like "Do not hire a van from MAUI ever, they are a useless, unreliable bunch of baboons." Particularly in light of their almost adequate response, weeks in arriving, to our complaints on our return home and their generous offer of a 10% discount on any future hire that we would definitely never take up, even at gunpoint.)

But what are a few niggling mechanical problems when there's so much else in NZ to dislike? For example, there's the weather, which can be so much better than the UK but frequently is very similar or worse. There's the scenery, which is spectacular - like Wales or Scotland only...bigger! But who wouldn't travel round the world at great expense to see mountains that are, although the difference is hard to perceive, much higher? However, you'll hardly have time to appreciate them, as the only stopping places are either unsigned or hemmed in with pine trees: "Bet that was a nice spot!" we laughed to ourselves as we drove past another layby and found ourselves unable, or in my case unwilling, to turn back.

There are even glaciers, to which you can book helicopter expeditions that will inevitably be cancelled due to the inclement weather, leaving you vainly trying to glimpse the face of the glacier across a large expanse of fog and drizzle. (Did I mention that it rained a lot in NZ?)

By this time, nerves frazzled by unreliable transport, unreliable itineries and reliably dilapidated holiday parks, I was unable to relax for a second, even during a quiet moment on a sunny day amidst pleasant surroundings. Something was bound to go wrong again at any moment. Either that or it would start raining. And what was it with these New Zealanders?? They weren't quite ... normal. You couldn't talk to them - well, I couldn't. English humour flew right over the heads, as two hundred years of "no worries" had bred the cynicism and sense of irony out of them. Like their namesakes, in the absence of any natural danger, they could do nothing more useful or interesting than peck at the ground and look slightly quizzical. If you mistook their insouciance for laziness and asked for something twice - like your dessert course, a safety harness, or a noose in the face of their goddamned persistent insouciance - they gave you a mildly concerned look as if you might be hysterical or neurotic. Which, being English tourists in a land of bohemian hippies, we obviously were.

For example, I worried about all the little white crosses by the roadsides, despite the lowly 62mph limit. I worried about the hairpin bends on steep mountain roads that had no safety barriers alongside the sheer drops. Most of all, I worried that the little white crosses always lined the long straight sections rather than the hairpin bends. These people were clearly dangerous maniacs. Home of bungee-jumping, 'nuff said. If you were minded to leap from a high place in NZ, the mystery was why you'd want a rope to bring you back.

Other lowlights:

• Detouring to see a huge railway viaduct in the pouring rain. Even through the fog of blissful ignorance that surrounds most train enthusiasts, a small glimmer of self-awareness made me realise the deranged and desperately tragic individual to which I had been reduced.
• The fifties-style concrete holiday park apparently run by Norman Bates and his mother. "Oh yes, Manchester is lovely," twittered Mrs Bates as we booked in. It's a sign of how bad things were that I found myself agreeing with her, longingly.
• The dolphin-watching expedition in Kaikoura. The perfunctory safety checks and two minute training video for those intending to swim with the dolphins did not alert me, but the distinctly weird and unnecessary victory dance performed when we passed a killer whale brought sharply into focus the fact that we were far out at sea in the hands of a gang of escaped lunatics. And anyone who thinks dolphin watching must be a magical experience clearly has no concept of the utter tedium in watching what are basically big fish jump briefly out of the water for hour after hour while a PA system squawks uninteresting facts of nature at you. There are only so many photos of disappearing fins that one can take.
• The place that was so supremely dull and grey, I can recall almost nothing about it, other than that we drove out to observe a seal colony in the rain at one point: one bunch of dumb animals looking at another rather smarter one that had thick, waterproof coats of blubber to keep them dry and warm.
• The horse trek with the woman whose father "did some of the horse training for Lord Of The Rings" (I suspect every riding stable in NZ claims this). Despite my evident and confessed inexperience, I was given two minutes instruction, no hat and an animal which was admitted to be "wilful", and fell off shortly afterwards as it galloped away across the paddock. The subsequent journey with a much calmer, indeed almost stationary mount was no better, as it turned out I am horribly allergic to horses.
• The motel owner's terribly amusing anecdote in Napier. Some story about a friend of a friend who went for a ride with some bloke that owned a microlight in which he liked to perform loops. "Oh yes?" we grinned, assuming that it was going to be a funny story about copious amounts of vomit landing on startled observers (fairly typical for Kiwi humour). "...And he went into a spin and crashed and they were all killed!" he finished. Oh. Ah. Not that kind of funny story then. See, you can never read these people.
• The hot springs at Hanmer. We came out in our swimming cossies, took one look at the sleet blown across the pools by a howling gale and scurried back to the changing room. Yeah, they might be lovely and warm once you're in. But am I gonna freeze to death to get over there, knowing I'll be wet too on the way back? Hellooo, hypothermia?? (This was our most pathetic moment. By this stage, an attitude of Do Not Risk Having A Good Time held firm sway.)
• The hot springs at Rotorua. We drove right past, mainly because by this stage I was in a desperate hurry to get back to Auckland and ensure we caught our return flight, even though it didn't leave for two days - ghod forbid we ended up staying a day longer. I've heard they're smelly and crowded with tourists though so no loss.
• The hot springs at "Craters of the Moon". Did go here, must be some divine retribution for skipping Rotorua. Smelly, crowded with tourists and extremely boring unless you're a kettle enthusiast.
• My Glamorous Research Assistant declaring she wanted to live there permanently. Oh. God. No. (On the plus side: endless Spirulina and Tim Tams. On the minus: New Zealand and four million insouciant Kiwis.)

Oh, there were highlights too, of course - some wonderful and very cheap meals, the odd pleasant interlude amidst the misery and very occasionally the sun coming out - but I'm not going to mention those in case it detracts from how bloody awful the rest of it was, thus tempting me to return one day.