Mrhars Easy Digital Negative book and Gimp.

[glbeas]

Since my Photoshop went belly up I’ve been working with Gimp 3.0 and I think I have a handle on how to integrate it into the techniques outlined in Mrhars book. Im still working on getting the right profile but all the components are falling in place for me. Anybody else having to go the same direction?

 

[Derek Lofgreen]

I have dumped photoshop and lightroom all together. I am using Gimp 3.0 and darktable now. 3.0 is a nice upgrade from the previous versions with the new non destructive editing. I don't do digi negs now but from what I have read and seen videos of, I think it will be much easier to come up with a curve or profile that can be reused for any given process.

Good luck and let us know how you go with it.

D.

 

[F4U]

When the HD in my Dell Latitude E6410 with Win 7 laptop went bad a year or 2 ago, I got another cheapo ebay used hard drive drive and loaded Linux Mint on it, which also necessitated using Gimp instead of Photoshop. No, it wasn't the same, but I manage. Once or twice a year I have to dig out my XP laptop with its Photoshop CS2. But being a cheapskate, I'm NOT buying any more laptops with new Windows, And I'm CERTAINLY not going to fall for the Adobe monthly payments system, or whatever they're doing these days, just to have the very latest. I don't have to worry about taking updates, or upgrading, or any of that foolishness. And now that AI is all the latest talk, I'm perfectly happy to let "technology" pass me by. I believe we may have reached the point where the 'law of diminishing returns" has kicked in.. Is GIMP Photoshop? No, and probably never will be. but when you need a shovel and all you have is a hoe, you can still get your tomato and squash plants in the ground just fine. And I can't find the wire to hook my Nikon F up to the computer and download my photos. Must have lost it.

 

[koraks]

I don't do digi negs now but from what I have read and seen videos of, I think it will be much easier to come up with a curve or profile that can be reused for any given process.

GIMP also in previous 2.x versions had a feature that allowed a curve adjustment to be saved and recalled at will. I've used it many times - precisely for digital negatives.
I can't comment on the Mhrar procedure, but as long as it basically relies on a compensation curve, GIMP will do just fine.

Btw, my suite of choice at the moment is GIMP + RawTherapee; DarkTable gave me some trouble with network shares IIRC. As I recall, Darktable's UI was a little nicer. But I'm happy with RawTherapee now. And GIMP has been improving at an admirable rate over the past few years; yes, the transition to 3.0 was a major step forward. The dynamic filter (adjustment layer) feature is a major step, although it's presently still kind of limited in its usefulness, since it's difficult/impossible to edit the mask of these filter 'layers'.

There's also a bit of an annoying performance problem that arises if I have GIMP open, put the computer to sleep and then wake it up again. It's little things like these that Adobe really has the edge in, still. That, and Adobe's print-world orientation. For home photography etc. GIMP is fine, but if you have to interface with the printing world, Adobe is really the de facto standard and somewhat challenging to work around (although it's often possible).

 

[glbeas]

I finally got the worst bug worked out. The invert function was driving me batty, the highlights were not fully inverting after applying the curves. Found out its a hidden layer and fixing it involves flattening the image. After that its all straightforward. Heres the workflow I found effective.
I previously found the blocking color and saved it as a preset in the colorize menu. I also have several presets saved in the curve function.

Open file
If its a color image set to greyscale in mode
Set mode to RGB
Flip image left to right in the Image-Transform menu
In Curves apply your save preset.
Flatten image
Invert
Colorize image with your blocker color preset in the Colors menu
Set the print size and sent to the printer.

 

[glbeas]

Got my first real print

this is what the source file looked like

 

[Derek Lofgreen]

@glbeas if you don't mind me asking what process is that print? Thanks for the example.

D.

 

[glbeas]

Its a van dyke print. 100% cotton rag paper.