Local Newspapers Use F/OSS For a Day

An anonymous reader writes "The Journal Register Company owns 18 small newspapers, and in honor of the July 4th holiday and Ben Franklin, the company's newsrooms produced their daily papers using only free software. The reporters were quick to note that 'the proprietary software is designed to be efficient, reliable and relatively fast for the task of producing a daily newspaper. The free substitutes, not so much.' I applaud the company for undertaking such a feat, but I hope their readership's impression of free software won't be negatively affected by the newspaper's one-day foray into F/OSS."

Comments

Summary inaccuracy

[PrecambrianRabbit]

While the summary states that they used free and open source software, the article only states that they used free software. Their writers used Google Docs, which is free but not open source, instead of Microsoft Word.

I barely use it

[YesIAmAScript]

But I find horrifying problems every time I try.

Make an image with two layers. Set one to 50% transparency and put it top. Now try to move one on top of the other and resize it to line up a few points in the images. I for example was trying to line up the wheels in two car silhouettes.

In the GIMP, the layer you made 50% transparent turns opaque while you try to resize it, so you can't see how to line up the layers. What a mess.

I went home later and did it in Photoshop CS3 (that own, but only at home) and it worked fine, remained transparent during resize.

I know it's free and all, but if you make your living doing image editing, the GIMP is absolutely no substitute for Photoshop. You'll easily waste more money in labor than you saved not by buying Photoshop.

Re:I barely use it

[pjt33]

Works for me in GIMP (2.6.8 on Linux with nVidia closed-source drivers). I'm sure I remember it working in earlier versions too, because I've done just this for years.

Re:I barely use it

[JohnBailey]

I set the layer opacity to 50%.

You're saying there's another opacity slider that overrides the layer opacity during a resize?

Yes. If you look at the tool pallet the bottom section often has quite a few fine controls there. In the case of layer resize, the option to make it use a given degree of transparency is there. I didn't know about it myself up until a few minutes ago. But layer scaling isn't a tool I often use.

If you think about it a little.. There are drawbacks to having the layer go transparent by default too. If instead of a fully occupied layer, the layer you want to resize just contains an already cut out image on a transparent background, or some text, do you really want that to go transparent as you resize? And can you make the resize go opaque in Photoshop independent of the layer opacity.

Well, that's interesting to know. I'm not at all sure why I was supposed to guess that. I would presume that a layer when being resized would be no more opaque than it is when it isn't being resized.

You're not really supposed to guess. You are supposed to learn the way the program works if you want to use it to it's fullest extent.. This applies to every program on every OS. And a second tool is always harder if you are trying to make it work like the first one.

Photoshop is not that straightforward either, despite the cries of how intuitive it is. It's familiar. That's all. In Photoshop (from vague memory) Some modifiers appear on the top of the window. Easy to miss. As easy as the missed opacity slider that you missed.

A friend of mine was having problems getting the cropping tool to allow him to make the crop he wanted in Photoshop. He didn't notice the aspect ratio was defaulting to a specific fixed one, and he wanted to do a freehand crop.

To echo your point.. Why should he be expected to guess the check box need to be unchecked?

Re:Could be useful as well as interesting

[ddt]

For future reference, suggestions are better received when they come with funding to write them, even if the pay is very modest.

Re:For a day?

[gyrogeerloose]

While I'm told by friends who are designers that Adobe Illustrator is a much more powerful product (and I believe them), I really struggled with it.

Illustrator is much more powerful; unfortunately, it's also a real bitch to learn. Once you do, though, it's amazing what can be done with it beyond plain vector drawing. Being able to apply Photoshop filters to a vector drawing is almost enough to justify the effort to learn it all by itself. Of course, whether or not it justifies Illustrator's ridiculous price is another matter altogether. I'm still using an ancient version (that I know is gonna break one of these days following an OS update) because I can't afford to upgrade to a newer one.

Re:For a day?

[r00t]

when removing the white to transparency in a picture, it made the whole thing translucent. I still don't know why or how it happened, since all I did was use the "colour to alpha" tool, which is supposed to turn that specific colour to transparent.

It is "supposed to"??? Why, because that's what it means in Photoshop?

My expectation would be that the amount of the chosen color is used to determine transparency. In your case (you chose white) only pure black would remain opaque.

I will admit that having both alpha and layer masks is complex, but I'd be surprised if Photoshop didn't have this complexity as well.

I think you'd be better off making a color-based selection, paying attention to the feathering and anti-aliasing options. Better yet, use the magic scissors tool, which is sort of a freehand-select that snaps to edges. Hit the quickmask button to fix any defects, especially if you selected by color and there might be areas of that color within the object you want to keep. Once you have the selection, make that transparent or just invert it and copy the object alone.

Remember that the selection, the alpha channel(s), and the layer mask(s) are all interchangable and invertable. You can move the object outline from one to another.

Re:For a day?

[r00t]

Gimp has all that.

Hint: to run filter tools on masks, you can enable quickmask mode (a toggle button in the corner) or you can convert the mask to/from a regular layer.

Re:For a day?

[PinkyGigglebrain]

Maybe you should check it out again before making disparaging comments about it.

Just last night I was working on a multi-layered composite image for some cover art and it was working great. Not quite sure what you mean by "fine control of selections", with GIMP I can select and position image elements down to 1 pixel resolution without a problem.

Since I've never used Photoshop I'll refrain from making comparisons about it, other than for someone who can't afford it, doesn't want to pirate it or can't run it since they use Linux anyway it might be worth their time try using GIMP.

Re:clearly you have no knowledge of the industry

[GlassHeart]

No, they bitch because some advocates told them that free alternatives are just as good or better.