Re:Comments from people who actually create Creati
on
Beginning GIMP
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· Score: 1
While not a designer, I am a photographer and own another photography company and use The GIMP every single day.
Photo editing, upsizing(better than photoshop and it's 110% method), composites, everything.
If you're a designer, you might be better off using Inkscape for your projects. That's what I used to design one of my logos. It always confused me why people wanting to do random original graphic work want to use a Photo Editing package.
On a side note, Akkana is a member of my local LUG and did a little presentation a few months ago when the book came out. I think the book might disuade regular users of The GIMP from picking it up, but there's lots of good stuff in there even for experienced users.
Now, everyone has complaints about some software package and being a photographer my biggest is the lack of IPTC editing in The GIMP. Filed a bug a while ago... the powers that be seem to think that IPTC is the same as EXIF!! Got around it by writing my own ITPC editing tool:)
There are lots of poeple who had issues with the interface, I'm not one of them. In fact, I find the photoshop interface to be very awkward to use and am much more efficient in The GIMP.
"Project Guttenburg is awesome and would be my first stop for classics, but it would be a pretty big mistake to think 20th and 21st century authors are irrelivant."
And ironically, UT has a Guttenburg bible on campus! It's in the Harry Ransom Center:-D
The UGLy library has been drifting away from a books library for well over a decade. When I was at UT from 1990-1996 (went back after I graduated, and worked there...), I rarely used the UGL except for the computer labs.
UT has 17 libraries (or more by now), shifting the books to other libraries won't be a problem.
He's right on the money here (to keep that price point theme going:)
I saw this little device at LinuxWorld and at first I was like "what's up with the windos box?", then the demo from scratch started...Ahh, VERY COOL.
Ok, say you're out and about and you need to SSH someplace, how many public windox PC's out there have an SSH client installed? Plug this in and bam! you're in an environment you are used to: shell, ssh, firefox with your bookmarks, your mail app, etc, etc.
Sure, the storage could be increased and more memory would be nice, but it was just released on Tuesday. They said they're making more powerful units. Plus there's a SD slot for additional storage.
To all the people who want it to have keyboards, LCD's, etc, those units already exist, buy one of those! This is a different approach and a nifty one at that.
This thing is small, MUCH smaller than a PDA or blackberry (which is a stupid name in my opinion), it's like a large keychain attachment:o
Ok, I am a professionl photogrpaher and are you insane? Print your photos at home?
The only pictures I print at home are single little snapshots that I want very quickly.
There's NO reason to NOT use a photo lab. Say you need 50 4x6 prints from your vacation. Wal-mart/Costco/Walgreens/etc $8.50 in less than 1 hour on Fuji Crystal Archive paper. Now, how long and how much ink and babysitting is it going to take your ink-jet printer to do that?
Shockingly Wal-Mart, Costco, Walgreens, Longs, etc all have really good printers (Fuji Frontiers, Noritsu's or Durst Theta's) [BTW, same systems that Shutterfly uses!] A $15,000-$200,000 machine is going to do a slightly better job than my $99 Epson R200!!
You've never seen a drum scan have you? Check out slide/negative scanners as well. Even with my little Poloroid SprintScan 4000, I've got 18x24's hanging on my living room wall and they're gorgeous.
There's nothing wrong with releasing the digital negative (hi-res version) of an image. You just need to include a release with them and inform the clients that they can make prints, but nothing else. We sell "digital negatives" over at http://www.actionathletics.com/ It's an easy sell, less work for me and my profit margin is higher. I'm not selling the image. I'm selling a copy of the image the rights to use the image.
It's just like when you buy a DVD in the store. You own a copy of the movie, but not the rights to do whatever you want with the contents. You own a copy of someone else's work. If you're selling illegal copies of the DVD, then well, you've committed a crime and Hollywood will come and get you:-D
I'm glad that the big box store photo labs question certain photos.
A while back, I needed some quick proofs of a portrait shoot I had done for a client. Went to the local Walgreens for the 1 hour prints. They said "these look professional, we can't print them". I said "Thank you, they are". Then handed them by business card, business license and sales tax resellers permit. No problems, they know me now.
I often use Costco for quick 12x18 and 11x14 display prints for events we're about to do with http://www.actionathletics.com/. They're cheaper than my pro lab, faster and the quality is pretty good, not as good, but good enough. They did question me at first, but I showed them the docs and luckily I have a business account there as well.
As far as wedding photographers giving up copyrights... You're way off base here. If I'm doing an editorial shoot and the client wants copyright transfer, they're paying 10X my normal price.
Protecting copyright is not "old-school" thinking. We live in an IP intense age. The US doesn't produce widgets anymore, it's all intellectual property. There's nothing wrong with protecting your rights, in fact you're a moron NOT to. Apply the same logic to programming and see if you have the same response.
You can still get the "digital negatives" from a shoot. The photographer can license you the right to make prints from those images. You cannot sell them, you cannot publish them, but you can make as many prints as you would like. What's wrong with that?
Going back to the programming example. Say I need you to write an accounting app. You're an independent(not my employee). You write the code, I pay you $XXX. Do I have the right to turn around and claim that it's mine? Depends on the contract. By default, you own the rights to everything you produce unless you explicitly grant those rights to someone or you're an employee. Same thing with photography. It's all about the rights:)
When does digital exceed film? 5 megapixels? 6 megapixels? More? It seems when digital cameras came out, the sales people said 2 megapixel is better than film for 4 by 6 prints, and 3 megapixels is better for a full page.
Megapixel does an image not make. Judging based on megapixels has ZERO bering on the quality of the image. That's like comparing Mhz/Ghz in CPU speed. Does the higher the number always equal a faster system? NO.
I have 2 different 4 megapixel cameras(from the same manufacturer even). Canon 1D, and Canon S400. Now the battery of my 1D is larger than the entire S400. You want to tell me that these 2 cameras will produce the same images? I think not! I'm not saying that battery size determines the quality of an image, but the sensors on these 2 cameras are no where near each other. Megapixel is NOT a good indicator of image quality.
I'll put my 4 megapixel 1D up against a 6 megapixel P&S camera anyday.
Instead, film is more concerned with lighting conditions, the time of the exposure.
So, you're saying that I don't care about lighting conditions nor my exposure? Are you NUTS!! Properly exposing digital is the same as exposing for chrome. Just because you're shooting digital doesn't mean you no longer care about lighting and exposure.
What will last longer? Film or digital content? What can you be 100% certain to be able to view in the future? CD's get rot, and go bad.
Never hear of negatives crumbling? I have. Heck, I had a printfile get stored in the wrong place and those negatives are gone. That was only a 15 year old roll of film. Negatives are useless from that shoot. Now, they're gone because of my fault granted, but still...they're gone.
Sure, CD's and DVD's will eventually need to be replaced, but that's easier to convert than the thousands of rolls of film I've shot over the years, esp when they start to degrade. Film is NOT permanent. Not saying that digital is, but film not either.
But what about quality? Will digital ever come close to the quality film when blowing up an image to full page size or more? Will digital ever be as true as film, can an algorithm on a camera that converts colors and images to zero's and one's be as good as film which reacts naturally to the light?
Uhh, Yes. Most professional photographers shoot digital now. Photojournalism, sports, wedding, editorial, even the commercial studio guys. Full page size? You mean a single page or a double truck at 11x17? Oh, you'd be suprised as to how many of the images you see published are shot digitally.
Digital is being used for billboards and large (4' x 5') display prints. I personally have around 15 20x30's for display prints and they are amazing. And I shoot with a camera that 3 1/2 years old (the original Canon 1D)
Digital doesn't mean printing on some home inkjet. Most pros, don't produce images that way, they still send them to a pro lab to be printed if making physical prints. Offset printing does their own thing.
The capture on the latest crop of cameras is amazing. The colors are beautiful, and crisp.
You think film captured colors true? Wow, where have you been? Film manipulates color all over the places. Ever wonder why there are so many types out there? Provia, Velvia, Astia, NPS, NPC, NPH, E100G, E100GX, E100VS, etc, etc. Each capture the image in a different manner.
Just like there are different types of paper. Each delivers slightly different results. All present color differently. Which one is true? Which combination of paper and film is true? Seems rather subjective if you ask me. But what do I know, I just do this for a living;p
I grew up and went to school in Texas. I had to wait for the bus in the dark. Still here today, 20 years later!
Our school started at 0730, I was at the bus stop around 0640. The argument that kids would have to go to school when it's dark out is STUPID!
I like DST. The more lite we have in the evening the better if you ask me. As far as it saving more in energy...which is worse, running the AC until 2230 or turning on a few 100watt litebulbs at 2130? I no live in the SF Bay Area now and we don't have AC so that argument is kida moot here:/
We were using some of these systems (http://www.atoz-ezgo.com.tw/) for over 1 year. It even has a gigibit jack and a pcmcia slot.
I'm not saying these are the best, but just something that's been on the market for a while.
Also, why do most people assume that when someone says PC, they think that == windos OS? It hasn't occured to me in the last 5 years to intentionally put a windos OS on a system.
I've got nothing against Apple nor the Mac (nowadays that they have a real OS), the stock has made me a lot of money over the past 9 months and I just ordered a Mac Mini the other day to port my software to the OS X platform.
And to answer the question about who would these small computers appeal to...me. We currently use Shuttle (http://us.shuttle.com/) systems as our in-field servers. We do action sports event photography and are schlepping 15+ computers with us. The smaller the better if you ask me:) It's not always about price, there are people who use computers for things other than games and neon add-ons.
Also if you travel and do a lot of demos and need several headless systems(not laptop)...these will do just fine. Pack 6 of these systems in your carry on and you're good to go.
So, photojournalists aren't professional photographers? WOW, I guess I need to turn in my CPS card.
Only studio guys who spend 2-3 hours setting up a shot with lots of gobos, shims, grid spots, and octabanks are professional photographers?
I find studio work boring. I'd rather be in the field covering events for publication or clients. I've certainly done studio work, but it just doesn't do it for me, hense why there's only 1 studio shot online. I have other work, it just hasn't been updated in a bit.
I don't think I ever claimed to be an "authorative professional photographer". I asked a question as to what else do I need?
I can do CMYK, when the occasion calls for it. Postcard mailers most of the time. The last time I had some run off, the printer said they were some of the best he's seen in a while.
Are you nuts?!? Pro photographers can't use Linux? What can't they do? I guess I haven't really been a professional all this time.
We average 3500 photos a month with the max of 16000 and ALL of it has been on Linux (SuSE in particular) for nearly 3 years.
What exactly do I need to run on windose or a mac? iPhoto is a nifty tool, but not needed, Photoshop...The GIMP works just fine.
Now, I no longer futz with chromes and haven't scanned anything in quite some time, so maybe you got me there. I also don't do any MF work. Been shooting with the Canon 1D for over 2 1/2 years.
Now I do admit that NeatImage and NoiseNinja are great products and I do use them when I have to shoot in ungawdly dark venues that I can't strobe. Work fine under wine, you're right on that point. It would be great if those products could run natively, but until then, the once every 2 months that I need it... wine it is.
The workflow that I use, gets me through a rough edit of 100 images in 4-5 minutes(cull, rotate, rename, watermark, IPTC keywords, resizing for web display, and copyrighting). http://actionathletics.com/actionimage/ ActionImage moves through images fast!
Prepping images for printing or submition... looking at a recent folder, 1-2 minutes per image, I'd say that's not bad.
So, what exactly is it that makes you say "professional photographers CAN'T use Linux"? What else do I need?
I shoot some random editorial assignments for magazines, newspapers and other clients, but have been focusing recently on my sports photography. Weddings are doable, but I'm going to shoot them like the photojournalist I was:-)
I'm also contemplating selling the digital workflow software that I wrote for Action Athletics. The application sorts, renames, does simple color adjustments, rotates, watermarks, copyrights, inserts IPTC header information, and generates web pages of images from events. It can move through images fairly quickly (i.e. 100 images in 5 minutes). It's really designed for photographers who need to move through A LOT of images and prepare them for viewing onsite or online: event and wedding photographers.
Ask them what commands they need to run and let them have sudo access to run thoes commands only. Make sure they can't edit those commands through. If they are shell/perl programs, write a simple C wrapper script and give them sudo access to that if you're really paranoid.
Even as a sysadmin for 9 years I didn't login as root. 99% of the stuff is done through sudo. Root is for console access to deal with hardware issues in single user mode and to fix NIS issues.
If you're using the sudo that came with your distro, just make sure that it is logging every time someone runs sudo. If not snag a new tarball from the URL above. It should compile right out of the, but if you're having issues, then check out the RUNSON file. It'll tell you what options to use.
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While not a designer, I am a photographer and own another photography company and use The GIMP every single day. Photo editing, upsizing(better than photoshop and it's 110% method), composites, everything. If you're a designer, you might be better off using Inkscape for your projects. That's what I used to design one of my logos. It always confused me why people wanting to do random original graphic work want to use a Photo Editing package. On a side note, Akkana is a member of my local LUG and did a little presentation a few months ago when the book came out. I think the book might disuade regular users of The GIMP from picking it up, but there's lots of good stuff in there even for experienced users. Now, everyone has complaints about some software package and being a photographer my biggest is the lack of IPTC editing in The GIMP. Filed a bug a while ago... the powers that be seem to think that IPTC is the same as EXIF!! Got around it by writing my own ITPC editing tool :)
There are lots of poeple who had issues with the interface, I'm not one of them. In fact, I find the photoshop interface to be very awkward to use and am much more efficient in The GIMP.
"Project Guttenburg is awesome and would be my first stop for classics, but it would be a pretty big mistake to think 20th and 21st century authors are irrelivant."
:-D
And ironically, UT has a Guttenburg bible on campus! It's in the Harry Ransom Center
The UGLy library has been drifting away from a books library for well over a decade. When I was at UT from 1990-1996 (went back after I graduated, and worked there...), I rarely used the UGL except for the computer labs.
UT has 17 libraries (or more by now), shifting the books to other libraries won't be a problem.
Hook 'Em Horns!
He's right on the money here (to keep that price point theme going :)
:o
I saw this little device at LinuxWorld and at first I was like "what's up with the windos box?", then the demo from scratch started...Ahh, VERY COOL.
Ok, say you're out and about and you need to SSH someplace, how many public windox PC's out there have an SSH client installed? Plug this in and bam! you're in an environment you are used to: shell, ssh, firefox with your bookmarks, your mail app, etc, etc.
Sure, the storage could be increased and more memory would be nice, but it was just released on Tuesday. They said they're making more powerful units. Plus there's a SD slot for additional storage.
To all the people who want it to have keyboards, LCD's, etc, those units already exist, buy one of those! This is a different approach and a nifty one at that.
This thing is small, MUCH smaller than a PDA or blackberry (which is a stupid name in my opinion), it's like a large keychain attachment
Don't know about AU, but in the US, you can deduct the cost of tax prepartaion fees (CPA, tax preparer, tax software, etc).
:-D
If you need a windos computer to prepare and submit your taxes, the entire cost could be a write off
Probably not, but interesting loophole don't you thing?
Ok, I am a professionl photogrpaher and are you insane? Print your photos at home?
:-D
The only pictures I print at home are single little snapshots that I want very quickly.
There's NO reason to NOT use a photo lab. Say you need 50 4x6 prints from your vacation. Wal-mart/Costco/Walgreens/etc $8.50 in less than 1 hour on Fuji Crystal Archive paper. Now, how long and how much ink and babysitting is it going to take your ink-jet printer to do that?
Shockingly Wal-Mart, Costco, Walgreens, Longs, etc all have really good printers (Fuji Frontiers, Noritsu's or Durst Theta's) [BTW, same systems that Shutterfly uses!] A $15,000-$200,000 machine is going to do a slightly better job than my $99 Epson R200!!
You've never seen a drum scan have you? Check out slide/negative scanners as well. Even with my little Poloroid SprintScan 4000, I've got 18x24's hanging on my living room wall and they're gorgeous.
There's nothing wrong with releasing the digital negative (hi-res version) of an image. You just need to include a release with them and inform the clients that they can make prints, but nothing else. We sell "digital negatives" over at http://www.actionathletics.com/ It's an easy sell, less work for me and my profit margin is higher. I'm not selling the image. I'm selling a copy of the image the rights to use the image.
It's just like when you buy a DVD in the store. You own a copy of the movie, but not the rights to do whatever you want with the contents. You own a copy of someone else's work. If you're selling illegal copies of the DVD, then well, you've committed a crime and Hollywood will come and get you
I'm glad that the big box store photo labs question certain photos.
:)
A while back, I needed some quick proofs of a portrait shoot I had done for a client. Went to the local Walgreens for the 1 hour prints. They said "these look professional, we can't print them". I said "Thank you, they are". Then handed them by business card, business license and sales tax resellers permit. No problems, they know me now.
I often use Costco for quick 12x18 and 11x14 display prints for events we're about to do with http://www.actionathletics.com/. They're cheaper than my pro lab, faster and the quality is pretty good, not as good, but good enough. They did question me at first, but I showed them the docs and luckily I have a business account there as well.
As far as wedding photographers giving up copyrights... You're way off base here. If I'm doing an editorial shoot and the client wants copyright transfer, they're paying 10X my normal price.
Protecting copyright is not "old-school" thinking. We live in an IP intense age. The US doesn't produce widgets anymore, it's all intellectual property. There's nothing wrong with protecting your rights, in fact you're a moron NOT to. Apply the same logic to programming and see if you have the same response.
You can still get the "digital negatives" from a shoot. The photographer can license you the right to make prints from those images. You cannot sell them, you cannot publish them, but you can make as many prints as you would like. What's wrong with that?
Going back to the programming example. Say I need you to write an accounting app. You're an independent(not my employee). You write the code, I pay you $XXX. Do I have the right to turn around and claim that it's mine? Depends on the contract. By default, you own the rights to everything you produce unless you explicitly grant those rights to someone or you're an employee. Same thing with photography. It's all about the rights
Wow, I must really be lame. Only 14 of the top 100.
:(
I didn't see Shawshank Redemption on that list
Megapixel does an image not make. Judging based on megapixels has ZERO bering on the quality of the image. That's like comparing Mhz/Ghz in CPU speed. Does the higher the number always equal a faster system? NO.
I have 2 different 4 megapixel cameras(from the same manufacturer even). Canon 1D, and Canon S400. Now the battery of my 1D is larger than the entire S400. You want to tell me that these 2 cameras will produce the same images? I think not! I'm not saying that battery size determines the quality of an image, but the sensors on these 2 cameras are no where near each other. Megapixel is NOT a good indicator of image quality.
I'll put my 4 megapixel 1D up against a 6 megapixel P&S camera anyday.
Instead, film is more concerned with lighting conditions, the time of the exposure.
So, you're saying that I don't care about lighting conditions nor my exposure? Are you NUTS!! Properly exposing digital is the same as exposing for chrome. Just because you're shooting digital doesn't mean you no longer care about lighting and exposure.
What will last longer? Film or digital content? What can you be 100% certain to be able to view in the future? CD's get rot, and go bad.
Never hear of negatives crumbling? I have. Heck, I had a printfile get stored in the wrong place and those negatives are gone. That was only a 15 year old roll of film. Negatives are useless from that shoot. Now, they're gone because of my fault granted, but still...they're gone.
Sure, CD's and DVD's will eventually need to be replaced, but that's easier to convert than the thousands of rolls of film I've shot over the years, esp when they start to degrade. Film is NOT permanent. Not saying that digital is, but film not either.
Uhh, Yes. Most professional photographers shoot digital now. Photojournalism, sports, wedding, editorial, even the commercial studio guys. Full page size? You mean a single page or a double truck at 11x17? Oh, you'd be suprised as to how many of the images you see published are shot digitally.
Digital is being used for billboards and large (4' x 5') display prints. I personally have around 15 20x30's for display prints and they are amazing. And I shoot with a camera that 3 1/2 years old (the original Canon 1D)
Digital doesn't mean printing on some home inkjet. Most pros, don't produce images that way, they still send them to a pro lab to be printed if making physical prints. Offset printing does their own thing.
The capture on the latest crop of cameras is amazing. The colors are beautiful, and crisp.
You think film captured colors true? Wow, where have you been? Film manipulates color all over the places. Ever wonder why there are so many types out there? Provia, Velvia, Astia, NPS, NPC, NPH, E100G, E100GX, E100VS, etc, etc. Each capture the image in a different manner.
Just like there are different types of paper. Each delivers slightly different results. All present color differently. Which one is true? Which combination of paper and film is true? Seems rather subjective if you ask me. But what do I know, I just do this for a living ;p
I grew up and went to school in Texas. I had to wait for the bus in the dark. Still here today, 20 years later!
:/
Our school started at 0730, I was at the bus stop around 0640. The argument that kids would have to go to school when it's dark out is STUPID!
I like DST. The more lite we have in the evening the better if you ask me. As far as it saving more in energy...which is worse, running the AC until 2230 or turning on a few 100watt litebulbs at 2130? I no live in the SF Bay Area now and we don't have AC so that argument is kida moot here
We were using some of these systems (http://www.atoz-ezgo.com.tw/) for over 1 year. It even has a gigibit jack and a pcmcia slot.
:) It's not always about price, there are people who use computers for things other than games and neon add-ons.
I'm not saying these are the best, but just something that's been on the market for a while.
Also, why do most people assume that when someone says PC, they think that == windos OS? It hasn't occured to me in the last 5 years to intentionally put a windos OS on a system.
I've got nothing against Apple nor the Mac (nowadays that they have a real OS), the stock has made me a lot of money over the past 9 months and I just ordered a Mac Mini the other day to port my software to the OS X platform.
And to answer the question about who would these small computers appeal to...me. We currently use Shuttle (http://us.shuttle.com/) systems as our in-field servers. We do action sports event photography and are schlepping 15+ computers with us. The smaller the better if you ask me
Also if you travel and do a lot of demos and need several headless systems(not laptop)...these will do just fine. Pack 6 of these systems in your carry on and you're good to go.
dcraw is a great little RAW decoder http://www.cybercom.net/~dcoffin/dcraw/
And if you go down to the "Commercial Software" section, you'll see that it or parts of it are used by quite a few people.
So, photojournalists aren't professional photographers? WOW, I guess I need to turn in my CPS card.
:-D
Only studio guys who spend 2-3 hours setting up a shot with lots of gobos, shims, grid spots, and octabanks are professional photographers?
I find studio work boring. I'd rather be in the field covering events for publication or clients. I've certainly done studio work, but it just doesn't do it for me, hense why there's only 1 studio shot online. I have other work, it just hasn't been updated in a bit.
I don't think I ever claimed to be an "authorative professional photographer". I asked a question as to what else do I need?
I can do CMYK, when the occasion calls for it. Postcard mailers most of the time. The last time I had some run off, the printer said they were some of the best he's seen in a while.
BTW, it's not my cat!
jpegtran will do lossless rotations
"professional photographers CAN'T use Linux. "
Are you nuts?!? Pro photographers can't use Linux? What can't they do? I guess I haven't really been a professional all this time.
We average 3500 photos a month with the max of 16000 and ALL of it has been on Linux (SuSE in particular) for nearly 3 years.
What exactly do I need to run on windose or a mac? iPhoto is a nifty tool, but not needed, Photoshop...The GIMP works just fine.
Now, I no longer futz with chromes and haven't scanned anything in quite some time, so maybe you got me there. I also don't do any MF work. Been shooting with the Canon 1D for over 2 1/2 years.
Now I do admit that NeatImage and NoiseNinja are great products and I do use them when I have to shoot in ungawdly dark venues that I can't strobe. Work fine under wine, you're right on that point. It would be great if those products could run natively, but until then, the once every 2 months that I need it... wine it is.
The workflow that I use, gets me through a rough edit of 100 images in 4-5 minutes(cull, rotate, rename, watermark, IPTC keywords, resizing for web display, and copyrighting). http://actionathletics.com/actionimage/ ActionImage moves through images fast!
Prepping images for printing or submition... looking at a recent folder, 1-2 minutes per image, I'd say that's not bad.
So, what exactly is it that makes you say "professional photographers CAN'T use Linux"? What else do I need?
Well, my "side-job" is what I did before I got into IT 10 years ago...Photography http://www.brianjacksonphoto.com/, mostly sports photography http://www.actionathletics.com/.
:-)
I shoot some random editorial assignments for magazines, newspapers and other clients, but have been focusing recently on my sports photography. Weddings are doable, but I'm going to shoot them like the photojournalist I was
I'm also contemplating selling the digital workflow software that I wrote for Action Athletics. The application sorts, renames, does simple color adjustments, rotates, watermarks, copyrights, inserts IPTC header information, and generates web pages of images from events. It can move through images fairly quickly (i.e. 100 images in 5 minutes). It's really designed for photographers who need to move through A LOT of images and prepare them for viewing onsite or online: event and wedding photographers.
sudo http://www.courtesan.com/sudo/ is your friend.
Ask them what commands they need to run and let them have sudo access to run thoes commands only. Make sure they can't edit those commands through. If they are shell/perl programs, write a simple C wrapper script and give them sudo access to that if you're really paranoid.
Even as a sysadmin for 9 years I didn't login as root. 99% of the stuff is done through sudo. Root is for console access to deal with hardware issues in single user mode and to fix NIS issues.
If you're using the sudo that came with your distro, just make sure that it is logging every time someone runs sudo. If not snag a new tarball from the URL above. It should compile right out of the, but if you're having issues, then check out the RUNSON file. It'll tell you what options to use.
good luck