My favorite programs for Graphics:

1: DigiKAM (KDE program Available in Linux-Windows-OS X) I can’t say enough for this program. It really is a great manager and editor of photography. There is also a great book called DigiKam Tricks that really helps get the most out of this program.

2: Krita (KDE Office Program) http://krita.org/ Works in Linux-Windows-OS X Best kept secret EVER. If I was talking general graphics program this would be number 1. The only difference is the DigiKam works so good with photography.

3: GIMP — I can’t wait for the single window gui coming in the next update (Pushed to later this year)

Freeware (Not open Sourced) I like Paint.net and Picasa

Great article. But I needed to try it myself to get the finer details. I’ve posted my resulting similar image at:

https://picasaweb.google.com/jbarresi/PointPleasantParkHalifax#5594023374996701810

Though they are pretty explicit, I had a few problems following the instructions.
First: I couldn’t get from Picasa to Gimp by the right click, at least for the image I used. I had to go directly to Gimp to obtain the image, which then put it into UFRaw.
Second: My initial settings for the image in UFRaw were not at 0 but .71. I had to hit the reset on the right to get it to 0. Probably this is needed due to previous settings on UFRaw.
Third: I had a bit of trouble figuring out what you did on getting 0 from the clipping. I was able to raise the left or black end of the line up a bit and it changed numbers for my image in a similar way.
Fourth: I did figure out that one could put dots into the line and change exposure to a curve like you did, though it didn’t help my image, no doubt because it had different exposure.
Six, I next had a problem with layering. I had to look up on the web to find out how to do the mask, by choosing “mask” and “add mask” in the Layer list, then “white or full opacity”. After this I was able to ‘paint’ through it, though I had trouble with choosing a brush size.
Seventh: I’m not sure whether the two versions merged in my final output. Is this automatic? It seemed that I may have only gotten the background original image, but I couldn’t really tell.
Eighth: Related to this, I couldn’t save it in JPG, but had to Export it instead, because it had a transparent layer.

Anyway, whether I did it right or wrong, this was a great tutorial, and I’ve learned a lot from it on how to use UFRaw and GIMP on images.

Thanks,

John