My Summer Place
By David Shamah, The Jerusalem Post, Friday, April 8 2005
The weatherlady on TV is aglow, and the weatherman on the other channel is all a-giddy (you know the ones I mean). The weather voice on the radio babbles on and on like an excited third-grader, which he may very well be, and the birds, durn them, are singing like there's no tomorrow.
But there will be a tomorrow, and, like Little Orphan Annie says, the sun will come out like it does every day during the spring and summer. You'd think that after endless days of gray skies and cold weather, there wouldnt be anybody sorry to see winter go.
But there is, and it's me. And I bet I'm not the only one. Winter, you see, suits the lazy - like me and my kind. Warm weather and sunny skies mean fun and sun for the surfing and biking set, but for these nearing Social Security age bones, it just means work specifically, cleaning and fixing up from the ravages of winter. The cleaning season kicks off with a bang around this time of year, with affiliated Pesach chores but it doesnt stop there. Running around on extended walks with the dogs, gardening (hold me back if I ever find the guy who turned that word into a verb!), playing summer sports, barbecuing, hiking instead of it all being an unpleasant memory of last summer, like it was in February, it's become reality again. Help!
How do I cope with summer? With one of the greatest gifts G-d ever bestowed upon mankind: Air conditioning. Turn that baby down low, shutter the windows, and you're back in mid-winter instantly. And you'd be surprised how easily other family members can be fooled, especially since they, too, have my lazy genes! Give me hibernation any day, I say.
But isnt my world bleak, you ask? Who can live on a diet of cumulus white and thunderhead gray? You're right; everyone needs some color, and I get mine by looking at pictures of sunny skies and green meadows.
What? Look at a picture when all I have to do is open a window? Yes, precisely; you never have to mow a picture! A graphic tableau of the beach will never cause a case of sunburn. With photos, you get the experience without the work. Virtual spring and summer is far better than the real thing, and you never have to clean up after the pets or the kids, for that matter. What could be better?
But getting appropriate photos is a problem. The daily paper is not a good source, unless you have a subscription to a southern hemisphere publication. The local ones are usually full of kids at the beach eating watermelon and the like a little too realistic and close to home for my tastes. The ideal photos are those "anonymous" ones you find in advertising and such timeless photos that were shot somewhere "out there," pictures of horses drinking from a river, snow capped mountains grandly overlooking a field f pink and orange flowers, or lakes with hilly forests reflected in their waters.
There's a name for this kind of photo it's called a stock photo. Actually, stock photos, properly defined, can be any photo for general use as opposed to news photos, for example. Stock photos are all around us on calendars, in ads, newsletters, etc. For professionals, the attraction of stock photos is the fact that they already exist what you see is what you get, as opposed to the surprise that awaits you when you hire a photographer to take pictures for you.
Generally, stock photos cost money, although they are a lot cheaper than hiring a photographer. But there are a few sites out there generous enough to provide you with free photos. An absolutely fantastic site to pick up free stock photos for any purpose even commercial Web sites and publications is at the Morguefile, http://www.morguefile.com. The Morguefile has over 55,000 images available for downloading, and you can freely use the photos, which were contributed by thousands of photographers, for any purpose. There is one caveat: If using a photo of a specific person or site, you may need their permission, or the permission of the owner of the site, before publishing. All the images are high resolution, meaning that they are suitable for publication. The Morguefile image archive includes animals, objects, people, places, scenes, nature views, etc. There are photos on virtually any topic you can imagine, including some scenes from around Israel.
There are even more photos at the StockXchange (http://www.sxc.hu) over 100,000 also available for use by anyone for any reason, although some individual photos may have specific instructions for use (usually, the photographer asks for acknowledgment or a copy of the publication, if the photo is used in print). FYI, the StockXchange is noticeably busier and sometimes slower than the Morguefile.
With these two sites, I can have all the nature setting photos I want. But nobody likes looking at pictures where nothing's happening. The most popular photos are the ones with people in them, preferably people you know. That, however requires one of two things either going to the exotic locale you wish to see yourself in and getting photographed there, or acquiring a photography manipulation program that will allow you to combine, copy and paste, or otherwise edit photos.
Considering my terminal laziness, getting up and going to where they make the photos is out of the question. But so is spending lots of money on the premiere photo manipulation program, Adobe Photoshop.
Photoshop is a great program for working with pictures; it's relatively easy to use and has all the tools necessary for editing, colorizing, cropping and otherwise fixing up your photos. But there's one problem: Photoshop costs over $700! Its a wonderful piece of software, but way out of my league!
The good news is that there is a freely downloadable open-source photo manipulation program that has nearly all the tools you would want in a photo manipulation program for free! The program, with the unlikely name of the Gimp (which stands for GNU Image Manipulation Program, GNU being a Unix-like operating system). Gimp was originally designed for Unix, but is available for Windows, and Macs as well.
What does one want in an image manipulation program? The
ability to resize, crop, and reconfigure the pixels within a photo;
colorization and selection tools; the ability to combine graphics, colors, and
elements; and color correction. Some fancy plug-ins to add a little spice to
plain photos would be nice, too.
You expect this kind of performance from Photoshop, but of course, for 700 bucks you'd have every right to. Should you expect the same performance from a cheaper or even free program? The happy answer is a resounding "yes": The Gimp can do 90% of what Photoshop can, and then some.
I've been meaning to write about the Gimp for awhile, but until recently, I didn't like it that much because I'm so used to Photoshop's way of doing things. Both programs' functions are similar, but their interfaces are as different as night and day; with the Gimp, you get a bunch of floating panels and windows, as opposed to the menu-oriented interface in Photoshop.
But I changed my mind when I figured out how to mine the Gimp for its rich feature set (instead of relying on pull down menus for commands, you simply right click on the photo). It's all there form feathering to layers to the Magic Wand (called here Select by Color) and all the other cool Photoshop tricks. It also has a full range of plug-ins, all downloadable at the program Web site, which will electrify and solarize and painterize and clouderize your photos, just like the Photoshop plug-ins do. And, some would argue, the Gimp actually has one over Photoshop its Script-fu feature lets you write you own extendable plug-ins.
On the other hand, the interface thing is a big deal for many users. And the Gimp has one major drawback; it does not come with "out of the box" support for four color (cmyk) separation printing, a requirement when submitting work to a printer for color newspapers, brochures or catalogs. Fortunately, there are plug-ins to allow you to save files and print in 4 channel cmyk, instead of the native 3 channel rgb supplied with the Gimp. There is also a plug-in that allows exports to postscript files, another biggie for printing, and it also allows you to open postscript, as well as PDF files.
If there's one criticism I could render about the Gimp, is that it is far less well documented than Photoshop. If you're new to digital image manipulation, you should check out a site that offers basic information about Photoshop (like the ones at http://graphicssoft.about.com/od/photoshop), and then check out the manuals and guides at the Gimp site (also see http://www.gimpguru.org and http://www.cubicdesign.com/gimp, among others). Otherwise, jump right into the Gimp. If you already own Photoshop, you'll probably want to keep it but if you've been hankering for a photo manipulation program you can call your own just by downloading it, check out the Gimp, and use your free stock photos to create a winter montage that will keep you inside all summer!
Get the Gimp at http://www.gimp.org. For Windows 98 or better, most Unixes and Linuxes, and Mac OSX
ds@newzgeek.com