Fading Memories

Well, yesterday we wrapped up the 2007 Libre Graphics Meeting. As you've no doubt gathered, it's been a blast. I really feel I've got inspiration and energy for another year of hacking from this meeting. The organizations has been excellent, the venue outstanding, the participation great (250 attendants!) -- thanks Louis!

For Krita, this will mean renewed energy, increased development, better awareness of the requirements of users, and more confidence in ourselves. For the free graphics world as a whole it's been, I think, the same. After Louis' final speech people kept saying how great it was. There will definitely be another LGM!

Where? We don't know yet. Amsterdam has been requested (but I am not organizing it! I want to get Krita 2.0 out before LGM 2008.), as has Poland. Somewhere in Europe seems likely. There has been a great attendance from the Americas, but I think Europeans were still in a majority. Besides, it's Europe's turn again.

Last night we would have gone out with ace panorama photographer Yuval Levy and Pablo D'Angelo, but I was too tired to get the thing decently fixed. And when I woke up (I fell asleep on my hotel bed almost as soon as I'd got there after the closing ceremony) -- and on waking up I just went with the flow. I was even too tired to realize that I had a) a telephone on my room and b) Yuval's business card with his telephone number. I need to get used to this business card thing!

Instead we sort of joined Keith Packard (Intel jumped into the breach when sponsorship failed and sponsored the LGM, making it possible), Liam Quin and a crowd of other LGM attendees. We went to "Le Taj" (if I remember correctly -- I was really tired), a high quality Indian restaurant. Those chickpeas -- to die for! Intel paid the tab -- thanks! -- and we had a great and instructive evening. It may seem silly, fifteen geeks at a table, but it was, I feel, really useful. Lots of knowledge gets spread, lots of insight is gained by lesser geeks like me.

On Sunday, Pablo D'Angelo, lead developer and maintainer of Hugin presented his application to the LGM crowd. Cool stuff in itself, but the really cool thing was this:

Pablo proposes to develop a database that would contain characteristics for lenses like distortion and vignetting. Every lens is subject to those problems, and they are specific for specific types of lens. There's even a commercial company that sells a database with this information for lots of money, and there used to be a free database, too, but that was taken proprietary.

Together with that database would come a small library that applications like Digikam, Gimp or Krita could use to fix distortion, vignetting and chromatic aberration -- based on the lens used for the input image. Applications could do that at the import stage, or, in the case of Krita, as an adjustment layer or effect mask.

Hugin, because it uses large numbers of shots and analyzes them, can provide the necessary information. There would then be a web app for photographers to upload the data, which could get checked and coordinated by volunteers.

Pablo is going to get this jumpstarted real soon now by getting the CREATE community involved. And as soon as we've got a prototype, Krita will add support. This is exciting stuff!