Photo editing - a general workflow

This guide requires the free editing software GIMP, which you can download here, and also some basic understanding of how to use the program. A good idea before following this guide is to check the basic tutorials on the GIMP homepage.

So you have taken the photo and you have transferred it to your computer, and now what? Most people are in possession of a camera, and most people take good, or even great, photos, but very few do anything more with them. Sometimes I have a small memorial for all the photos sitting on peoples hard drives, without being watched or shared. I light candles and there is a lot of crying. So in order to cut my Kleenex expenses, I decided to do a small post on my editing workflow.

Suspend fix for Joli OS

Hello dear peoplez! Vacation! In my book that means spending more time with linux and figuring out small problems which might or might not drive me nuts. Since one of the previous upgrades I have not been able to suspend my netbook, which runs Joli OS 1.2. This drives me nuts. I figured out I have too little swap space for suspend or hibernation to work. If you, like me, installed Joli OS from Windows, using a windows installer (Wubi), go ahead and follow this small tutorial. If you installed Joli OS on its own partition, you should use GParted to increase the size of the swap partion (I won't go through that here though). Happy tweaking! 


UPDATE1: I've added a link to a script which will turn off WLAN when entering suspend mode. This is also essential for suspend to work with Vaio P on Joli OS (or Ubuntu). Your suspend troubles may depend on either too small swap space and/or WLAN keeping your netbook awake.

Smart Saturation

I have been looking around GIMP plugins for a smart way to increase saturation without the overly processed and unrealistic look. The problem, I concluded, is that the saturation tool in GIMP doesn't distinguish between light and dark areas of a picture, and often the dark areas of the picture are too saturated to give a natural look. This problem can easily be avoided by using a layer mask which filters the saturation effect depending on the luminosity. Sounds interesting? Please read on...

Vaio P, OpenGL and Windows 7

Hi there, fellow nerdz! I was going to turn this into a how-to and pro/con article on OpenGL on the Sony Vaio P (on Windows 7). But since I installed the XP IEGD driver for Intel GMA500 I have had nothing but trouble with it. For those of you that want to try it out for yourself, and/or want a bit more information on my massive fail, continue reading. To others: don't bother with this driver.

Update1 (2011-08-03): Seems like mmmsheen at notebookreview forums has discovered a way to unleash the performance of the GMA 500. Function keys still don't work, but wakeup from sleep does. Watch the video here.