Shiny, ain't it? Fun with Gimp. I have yet to find anything that can be done with Photoshop that can't be done with Gimp. Maybe Gimp is a little less elegant and some things may take a little longer, but the end result is just as good.

My new hobby is attempting to make a good picture better. Our camera is really bad. It's great for snapshots, but not photographs. With good lighting and patience, it can take good, not great, photographs, but it's not really designed for that.

I found a pretty good podcast that's teaching me a lot. It's called Meet the Gimp.

The producer lives in Germany and (to the American ear) speaks with a heavy accent, but he is very knowledgeable and I have learned a lot.

Anyway, As I said, I've been working on making my snapshots into photos. Some I have good luck with, others, not so much. Unfortunately, they all live on my desktop computer and I can't access them with my Xubuntu laptop, for some unknown bizarre reason, so I don't have them to show you in this post. But you can see some of them at the family blog at the link to the left.

Are there any other Gimp hobbiests out there? Not pros, but those using Gimp to tweak and fix your home photos? What successes have you had? What failures? Any tricks you've learned? Any filters or scripts you've found that are you favorites?