In honor of my word of the year “Be”, I played around in photoshop using a dandelion picture I took on my summer road trip to Wisconsin and the quote, “If you want to be happy, then be”. These are my results:
Image 1
Image 2
Image 3
Image 4
Image 5
Image 4 is my favorite. What about you?
∞Jessica
Recently, I’ve taken it upon myself to archive some of my grandmother’s pictures of our family. Archiving photos is a daunting task for anyone who does it correctly. Hundreds of images, (many of them with important information on the back such as names and dates) need to be scanned (matching both front and back image), and cataloged in some way. I am not a person with a lot of time on my hands, so I came up with a more automated solution to archiving by modifying some GIMP plug-ins to help me with most of the tedious parts. This is the first part of a series dealing with archiving and genealogy.
For archiving scanned images of family photographs, I modified some scripts to use with Gimp to speed the process along. This post will explain how to install these scripts to the correct folders in order for them to work.
First, You need to install Gimp photo manipulation software. This is similar to photoshop, but it is free and open source. Gimp is available for Windows, Linux and Mac. Since I run Linux on my computer, I can’t easily install photoshop, and Gimp does just as well once you learn to use it. Instructions for downloading and installing Gimp can be found on their downloads page.
If you want the script to automatically attempt to straighten your individual images automatically before saving them to file, you will need to install the ‘deSkew’ plug-in. You can find which folder to install it in GIMP in a similar fashion to above “Edit–> Preferences–> Folders–> Plug-ins.” Note that this is different from the scripts path! For some reason the original host of this plug-in has disappeared, but the files are available in links in the comments of the ‘deSkew’ page of the GIMP Registry.
Windows:precompiled executable available here.
Linux: Download this project by clicking the “Zip” button on the GITHub page. Unzip the folder and read the install instructions from the README file. You have to make the project, but it isn’t complicated. You will need to give the resulting program executable permissions, and then copy it to your /…/gimp-2.0/plug-ins folder.
You can download the archiving scripts I modified from our GitHub Code site. You will need both of the scripts shown on the webpage. If there are multiple version, be sure to get the ones with the latest dates. Simply install these into the “scripts” folder in the gimp installation directory as shown in the video.
This video explains where and how to install all of these files:
When creating before and after pictures, snazzy arrows add the perfect touch. My new favorite source for arrows is the LaGirouette font from FontSpace.
Here is an example of these arrows in action.
I guarantee you’ll be seeing more of these pointers!
∞Jessica
This past summer Adam and I went on a road trip to my family farm. My great uncle currently leaves there and owns some peacocks. This is the original picture I took of one of his peacocks. It inspired the idea of showing your true colors and being your true self.
From that idea, I found this Dr. Seuss quote: “Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.” Isn’t it lovely?
I played with font types, font sizes, and font spacing. These are the resulting beauties.
The one above uses the free font Hero, and the one below uses the free font Metropolis.
I thought the font was too small so I made it bigger.
I also like the idea of the font being hard to read – like a mirage of thought.
I researched to find out which Seuss book this quote came from and it seems to be a mystery. Many sources site the quote (“Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.”) to Seuss, but there is a similar quote by Bernard Baruch which states “Those who mind don’t matter, and those who matter don’t mind.” Anyone have insight over this mystery?
Whatever the source, they are words to remember.
∞Jessica