[plug] anyone here REALLY good with GIMP?

[Gavin Chester]

On Sun, 2005-05-08 at 14:00 +0800, Alex Nordstrom wrote:
> > >If possible to change the source of the
> > > graphics you will, of course, get far better mileage
> > > (kilometreage?) if you use vector graphics (SVG) from eg,
> > >sodipodi, inkscape, etc.  Gimp and the like are really
> > > only good for photos (flame on).
> >
> > Thats all well and good but the image I was making was a Corporate
> > Wallpaper for a XP environment..
> > I very much doubt that XP will allow SVG wallpaper :-P

and ...

On Sun, 2005-05-08 at 14:51 +0800, Alex Nordstrom wrote:
> > Of course it doesn't help that they only had the logo in .jpg the
> > slogan was in .bmp and done in a custom font that they don't seem to
> > have a copy of :-P
> 
> In that case, you're pretty screwed. You may still be able to
> vectorise 
> it, but the effort involved and the quality of the result depend on
> the 
> resolution and complexity of the original.
> 

Senectus I guess I didn't re-read your first post about the source of
your material.  I don't know about XP supporting svg backgrounds, so
can't help you there.  However, a quick search on converting bitmaps to
svg (terms used: "text bitmap trace linux convert gpl") reminded me that
there are some good tools out there if you want to explore that option.
Inkscape, I mentioned previously, will do it and so will a gpl
application called autotrace (http://autotrace.sourceforge.net).  The
search gave lots of useful hits and makes for good reading.  I had gone
down this path a little myself once, but had forgotten everything :-(

Thing is, once you convert the original (at least the text) to svg you
can then save it in bitmap/jpeg/whatever for web use at the scale that
you need rather than magnifying the pixels by working with bmps as your
originals.  Oh, and see if you can get a higher resolution original of
the jpeg image to minimise the degradation as you scale and manipulate
that.  Just a couple of thoughts.

Regards, Gavin.