The Stripe Project: Backlog

I went on a stripe-hunt the other day. My plan was to get a backlog of images that I could post one of per day when I got busy during the week. Well, that was one of the plans anyway.

The other plan was to get serious with my little Fuji camera and start shooting in RAW mode.

Brilliant. The files that come out of the thing are HUGE in comparison, take a hundred percent more time to download and presumably have a shitload more data trapped in them. That is, if I can open them.

The programs provided by Fuji with the camera are shithouse to say the least. They seem to be aimed at first-time users who just want to see the pretty things they snapped in a window only slightly larger than the LCD display, and then print them to palm off on to all their admiring friends. I installed them, I tried them, I deleted them.

Photoshop... My dear pirate copy of CS3 that runs in some european language other than my own wouldn't go near my raw images. The english version of Photoshop 7 wouldn't touch them either. I tried, just in case the europeans were fucking it up for me.

So... delete.

I'm now running GIMP. It's free. It seems to work. In fact it seems just like Photoshop without the price tag or piracy. Getting my raw images to open is still a bitchy little hassle, but eventually I'll get a workflow again.

So here's three shots I took the other day, that I've finally got through veiwing and editing.







Methinks I could avoid all the hassle by upgrading the camera rather than the software...