KDE Artists

News | KDE-Artists

Sun, 06 Jun 2010 16:29:00 -0700

Well we have some new features for you to enjoy. We have added a simple community based forum. You may also notice the ability to rate all of the local content and comments. You can also flag any nasty comments or spam so the KDE-Artists Web-Team can deal with it quickly.

If you know of any KDE art related applications that we have not covered here please let us know by creating a weblink. If you come across any interesting KDE art related news while surfing around feel free to create a remote news story.

Our hosting should be a bit more stable now too. Sometimes the server would be down for hours before anyone told me about it but I just installed a network monitoring program that pings me if anything goes wrong with the site. Hopefully this will help us avoid those unnecessary downtimes.

submitted by KDE Artists .o web team on November 1, 2009

Tux going 220Mph!

News | Art Apps

The good folks over at c|net have put together a photo expose of the Tux500 car. If you have ever wanted to see tux going 220 Mph here is your chance.

Go Tux Go!

submitted by land0 on May 24, 2010

video of new digiKam Light Table in action

The new digiKam Light Table is currently under finalization on KDE repository. digiKam 0.9.2-beta2 will be released in a near future and will include this new tool as well. Today, i have released a new Flash capture of Light Table in action, used to compare similar pictures. The file can be downloaded at this url.I would than thanks all photographs witch have help us to design the Light Table, and especially, Arnd, Julien, Oliver andMik…The pictures using this can be seen at this ecommerce site: open house real estate signs, as well as this Brochure Holders website.

submitted by land0 on May 23, 2010

Faster “Gaussian” Blur and Pyramidal Sharpening

I have still trouble to feel at ease with KDE4 development, and fill the need to develop against a stable environment, so from time to time I do go back to Krita 1.6 and play with it and fill again my energy bar which I can then spend on Krita2. So last week I did wrote two filters (and I am still working on two others).

Faster Gaussian Blur

Bluring has always been one of the slowest operation in Krita (especially compared to what competitors do), mostly because of my laziness and, also, because for some reason the convolution code in Krita refused to work with non-square kernel (for absolutely no good reason). So, when I wrote the filter, I wrote it as a one pass filter, with one huge kernel, which means that for a bluring of 10 pixels radius, Krita was making 441 memory access and mathematical operations, while with a two pass blur filter, only 42 memory access and mathematical operations are needed, thus reducing the cost by a factor of ten, and the needed computation time as well.

submitted by land0 on May 23, 2010

Release of Krita-Plugins 1.6-1

Krita-plugins is now available for downloading here. It includes a slightly improved version of the red-eyer removal tool, and three new filters.

Included new plugins

Deskew

This filter is useful for people who scan a lot of text, as often the text will not appears well aligned.

It a port from a Karl Chen’s deskew gimp plugin.

Image Complete

“Image Complete” is a filter which attempt to reconstruct a part of the image which doesn’t exist. For instance, in the example bellow, there are some text written in the sky, you just select the text, and then launch the filter, and the text is replaced by a good approximation of what could have been below it:

submitted by land0 on May 20, 2010

Libre Graphics Meeting 2010 : Day 2

At LGM, even if it’s a not a big conference, at some point, you always need to split yourself in two or three.

Designer using Open Source software

The second day started by a talk by two designers coming from Belgium who made the choice to start a design agency which would only free software. Those guys seems to live on a different planet (well maybe there is three planets, one for designer, one for geeks and one for normal people), they show us some of their creation, I was a bit sleepy (and considering the number of people in the room, I guess nearly everybody else was sleeping elsewhere ;) ), but what stroke me most is that apparently, they have some “creative” session where they try various things, even reverse engineering coca.

submitted by land0 on May 20, 2010 Post with the help of Safety Signs Online

Thanks to Adobe for freeing XMP

I was suggested during last Libre Graphics Meeting edition, that Open Raster should use XMP for it metadata (XMP is the metadata specification that rules them all, exif, iptc… your own metatada specification as well). But until very recently, both the specification and the library were available under a very dubious license which was incompatible with GPL (and with a Open Formats). But Adobe did hear to our complaint, and decided to release under BSD. So, now nothing prevent a wider use in the Open Source world, and that’s really cool.

So thanks to Adobe, and if you want to play with it and thanks to Stop Signs for making this possible.

submitted by land0 on May 12, 2010

Libre Graphics Meeting 2010 : Day 1

Lets start this blog entry by the first artwork I did with the upcoming Krita 2:

And I must say, the developement version is really starting to be in a good shape, there are still a lot of annoying bug, but it only crashed once, which for a development version, which is still more than six month away of its release, is quiet amazing.

Then, back to the subject, I must say that this year edition of Libre Graphics Meeting was again a major success, and I am happy that I was able to attend it.

submitted by land0 on May 11, 2010

digiKam has a new Light Table…

digiKam | News feeds

Today, after 1 week of developement, I have finished the first implementation of the new Light Table tool for digiKam.This is a first implementation, certainly uncomplete but suitable as well. I have follow the user tips from this bugzilla entry.Some screenshots of this tool in action can be seen following these links:- The Light Table with thumbbar pop-up menu.- How to Insert new item to Light Table using Album GUI pop-up menu.i Left and right side bar enable.

submitted by land0 on May 7, 2010

digiKam has a new Light Table…

digiKam | News feeds

submitted by land0 on May 7, 2010

Featured Artist: Bastian Salmela

Sun, 06 Jun 2010 01:33:00 -0700

Featured Artist: Bastian Salmela
ImageBastian Salmela, (aka basse) is best known in the KDE community for his Konqi artwork and his Magical Rope animated short. He also very active in the Blender community. Bastian is a long time Linux user who has done work on several games and recently has been selected as a lead animator for Orange “the Open Source movie project”.

In what ways do you make a contribution to KDE?
Only graphics so far. icons, general art, clipart, backgrounds, stuff for websites, printing, posters.. etc.. I have been, however, thinking of doing some Finnish translations too.. but I didn’t get a very good start with that, and time is also limited.

When did you first hear of KDE?
I think it was around when I first started with Linux. It was Redhat 6.0. Back then it looked quite crappy, and I actually used Blackbox first as my Window manager but then the easyness and configurability of KDE made me switch.

How and when did you get involved in KDE?
Well, I’ve been using it almost always, but in the development part, I only have entered more recently. It was when I did the Konqi model. The original model looked outdated, and it was sad to see Konqi fade away slowly. I also needed the character for my own use, so after 3d model was done, I showed it around in a few KDE mailinglists, people liked it. I’m glad to see Konqi back in business!

What programs to do you use to create your artwork?
Blender, The Gimp, Inkscape. (surprise surprise :) )

How much time do you usually spend on KDE?
It’s on all the time. If you meant the time I put on doing pictures for KDE.. well, “too much” if you ask my wife :)

What are you working on currently?
The Orange Core Team

Well, I’m part of a Orange Core Team, which will start in September to create the first 3d Open Source animated movie. We are not only going just to do a nice short movie, we are also producing videos and tutorials on how to do something like this in Blender. You can read more about the project here: http://orange.blender.org.

For KDE, currently, just small requested pictures. People drop me mail and I try to send them the pics.

Any new Konqi movies in the works?
check this out!

I have a list of ideas to work on. and, I have something already animated. But as time is limited, it’s going slowly.
I’m trying hard to finish some things before I leave to Amsterdam for the Orange Project, since I know, that it will then take all my time once there (unless they give me extra computer, heh heh).

Which section of KDE is underrated and could get more publicity?
Stuff for kids! Stuff that is educational and fun! Don’t forget them, and don’t underestimate them.

What keeps you motivated to work on KDE?
I like it. I’ve used it long. I want to give something back and I think there is always room for more artwork.

What is your favorite widget style?
Everything that is simple and flat. I’m using QtCurve now.

What does your desktop look like?
I have dual monitor setup with three virtual desktops. On first I keep email, browsers, IRC things etc. On second, I have The Gimp and on third I have Blender.

Where are you from?
Finland.

Are you married/do you have a partner?
Married. 10 years.

Do you have children?
Yes, I have 2 boys. (3 and 7 year old)

a cilp from odd creatures
Kickfilp
Odd Creatures is a small movie project I am making with my kids. The idea came to us one weekend, that it would be nice to create music video for this one childrens song my kids really like.

My sons did concept drawings for the strange looking creatures, and I started modelling. Even though I do all the animations, the process is very controlled. My older son has lot of ideas and says what goes where and what has to happen.
Which book is on your bedside table?
I don’t have bedside table, but I have a small pile of books on the floor next to bed. Topmost in that are “Veronika Decides to Die” by Paulo Coelho, and “Kafka on the Shore” by Haruki Murakami.

How would you describe yourself?
Strikingly beautiful!

But I also found this from the web: http://www.basse.no/eng/make.htm It’s instructions how to make me, and looking at the picture, I think that sums it up quite nicely… I can relate to that.

What do you get passionate about?
Art in all of it’s forms.. exhibitions, shows, performances, happenings..

What’s your favorite web site at the moment?
I don’t do much surfing around. I’m quite boring internet user. My favourite site.. well, let’s say the most interesting site I found last was this called Akayism.

What did you want to be when you grew up?
I never grew up but I think i’m on the right track.

Which University/School did you go to?
Typical Finnish schools that everyone go, nothing extra.

If you could have two other lives/careers, what would they be?
I already have three. :) But if I would have more, they would be something completely different, something like fireman. That would be cool.

So what are you other lives?
I live 3 lives, really. heh heh :)
1) family man and city library worker
2) 2d/3d artist and designer
3) traditional media artist

And the people in these categories, usually don’t know I’m also doing something completely different with other people :) Well, my family knows of course.

Name your favorite quote/saying.
“Nothing is as important as tending garden and even that is not important”.

Stop by basse’s website to see more of his great artwork.
Last Updated ( Sunday, 11 September 2005 )

Vector Icon tips from Inkscape developer Silsor

Sun, 06 Jun 2010 01:27:16 -0700

ector Icon tips from Inkscape developer Silsor
Silsor: The problem with designing vector icons is that unless you design them just so, the pixel boundaries don’t line up quite right with the vector objects and you get blur.

Theobroma: so how do you “design them just so”? Any suggestions?

Silsor: You set your document to use the “px” unit of measurement, turn on a pixel grid, and use grid snapping. You also make sure that you don’t use wide strokes, since in SVG graphics, strokes are exactly centered on the boundary of an object. It’s better to either snap the outer edge of the stroke itself to the grid, or else use an outer object and an inner object but with no stroke, only fill.

Cmarqu: Maybe there should be a template for creating icons which has all of these set…

Silsor: There already are :)

Theobroma: Where?

Silsor: There are templates for 16px, 32px, 48px and 64px icons with the grid already set up. [They are] just under “New” in the File menu.
Last Updated ( Monday, 27 June 2005 )

Where do all the icons go?

Sun, 06 Jun 2010 01:22:00 -0700

This article hopes to clear up any confusion surrounding where application developers and artists should install their KDE icons.

First some (simplified) history:

KDE 1 used locolor icons, they only have 16 colors and look pretty plain. KDE 2 used the hicolor theme, similar style to locolor but with more colors. KDE 3 changed to the CrystalSVG theme which we know and love today.

KDE 3 also saw the adoption of the freedesktop.org standard which changed hicolor from being an artistic theme to being the fall-back folder. The hicolor theme was renamed to kdeclassic and most of the icons were moved to kdeartwork/IconThemes.

When an application is installed in KDE it is usually associated with an icon.

First it will look in the user defined icon theme. (CrystalSVG unless you’ve picked another one).

If there is not an icon located there it will look to Hicolor (fall-back folder).

If there is not an icon located there it will look in the KDE default theme (CrystalSVG currently).

Other desktops which support the freedesktop icon standard (such as Gnome) do much the same thing: user theme->hicolor->gnome default theme. If you run a KDE program under Gnome the icons still get looked for the same as when running it under KDE (it doesn’t suddenly start to use Gnome icons).

So what style of icon should you supply for your application?

Presently you should supply a complete set of crystal style icons as that is the current default. If your application is within KDE they should be installed to the CrystalSVG folder. Pretty simple really.

Here are a few things to be aware of:

The application icon, as used in the Kmenu, will also be used in Gnome’s application menu. Since Gnome doesn’t look in CrystalSVG there needs to be an icon in hicolor.

Remember hicolor isn’t an artistic style so you can just move your application icon to hicolor and not install one to Crystal.

In some of the quieter corners of KDE are applications which have been there since KDE 2 but still don’t have icons in a Crystal style. When KDE moved from using hicolor/kdeclassic to using Crystal a lot of these icons were just renamed to be Crystal icons, but their artistic style is not Crystal. This is considered a bug.

All applications included with KDE that do not have a Crystal icon should therefore put their current icons in the CrystalSVG folder. Then file a bug report on http://bugs.kde.org/. At this point you should request that a Crystal icon be created by the artists at the KDE-Artists.org Kollaboration forum.

Once you have secured a new icon that matches the crystal style you should move your old icon to the kdeartwork/IconThemes/kdeclassic folder. If your icon does not match the kdeclassic style it should be completely removed. At this point you should close out the bug report for your icon.

It is worth noting that there are two ways to install icons, either globally or per app. There are a lot of apps KDE based or not that currently use the global icon install method and end up placing their icons in the wrong folder. This can be easily fixed with a quick change to their code.

To install globally call your icon something like cr32-mimetypes-foo.png and add KDE_ICON=auto to Makefile.am. To install your icon per app add something like this to your Makefile.am:
kwordicondir = $(kde_datadir)/kword/icons
kwordicon_ICON = AUTO
There is not much difference between installing icons globally or installing per app, do it whichever way you think is best.

A small note on SVGs.

A lot of icons in KDE don’t have SVGs and they are set not to be used by the Crystal index.theme file. This is an unfortunate result of past practices and makes it hard to maintain a lot of the icons. So always make icons as SVGs (you can touch up the PNGs if you need to, you often will for smaller sizes) and always add your SVG to the repository, it might not get used directly but it will be of very valuable use when maintaining KDE’s artwork.

Looking to the future: One day (in the not so distant future) KDE may change it’s default theme from Crystal. At that time the CrystalSVG icons in SVN will be moved to kdeartwork/IconThemes. The new default icons will use existing crystal icons to fill in the areas where the new default set is not yet complete. This will also ensure a smooth transition from one default to the next.

However there are a lot of applications not released along with KDE and after this transition will suddenly be installing icons to Crystal even though Crystal is no longer used. So all applications external to KDE should install all of their icons to hicolor.

In conclusion, apps released with KDE need to have their icons installed into the CrystalSVG icon folder. The following exceptions apply: The application icon should be placed in the hicolor folder. KDE applications that use the global install method that are not released with KDE should point their icons to the hicolor folder. All third party applications that use the global icon install method need to point their icons to the hicolor folder. (2) Discuss this article Last Updated ( Thursday, 24 November 2005 )

Featured Coder: Ryan Nickell

Sun, 06 Jun 2010 01:20:55 -0700

Nick: pOz3r (my nickname from my old skater days)

In what ways do you make a contribution to KDE?
Window Decorations(i.e. Smooth Blend), SuperKaramba Themes, and SuperKaramba itself. I’m also working with the Plasma team for KDE 4.0, but that’s still a ways off.

How and when did you get involved in KDE?
It more or less started when I found kdelook.org. I really liked the community there and then Karamba was released. I picked up on making themes right away. Then came SuperKaramba and I hadn’t used Python before that was out. I really liked pushing the envelope of what could be done with such little time investment. I was such a fan that I contacted Adam Geitgey to become a developer so I could fix certain bugs in SuperKaramba.

What one of your SK themes are you most proud of?
iLaunch, because it really takes usability to another level. Once you use it, all other launchers, apps in panels, etc., just go away. I’ve not updated it in a while and plan to before the next SK release which should be _real soon_

^{“An interesting theme from the launcher category is iLaunch, which, although it displays only a single icon on the desktop, can ‘hold’ and start any number of applications by switching through them with the mouse wheel. This is a great idea to save space on the desktop and make applications accessible quickly in a common location.” - quoted from Karamba, what an attractive desktop! published by Newsforge}

Are you being paid to work on KDE?
Not yet. If someone is interested in paying me, forward them my email address. ;)

How much time do you usually spend on KDE?
Running it? All day, except when eating or sleeping, and even then I might be on it. When I’m home from work, I’m normally working on something code oriented or reading the kde-artists.org forums.

What motivates/keeps you motivated to work on KDE?
The community. People are always willing to pass on some information if you ask a question. I’ve always done the same when helping people in the SuperKaramba forums, and it’s nice to see the same sentiment with the KDE folks.

What makes you develop for KDE instead of the competition?
You mean there’s competition? Every environment has a purpose, and KDE just happens to have what I need. It’s more than just a window manager(which I used to be a big supporter of minimalism), and I’ve always liked the way it interacts with the user.

Which section of KDE is underrated and could get more publicity?
kdebindings. It’s going to be a big part of any applet in KDE 4.0. In fact, it’s on my TODO list to start learning KJSEmbed. ;)

What do you think is still missing badly in KDE?
Something that makes KDE stand out from other OS’s and other environments. Although I don’t think that will be a problem once we get Plasma working!

What are your future plans for KDE?
Flesh out the last remaining bugs for Smooth Blend. Get SuperKaramba into KDE 3.5 release. Work with the rest of the Plasma team for the highly anticipated 4.0 release.

Do you have any specific goals for KDE 4?
Get more involved, maybe meet some of the kde devs in person and of course Plasma.

Where do all the icons go?

Sun, 06 Jun 2010 01:18:29 -0700

KDE 3 also saw the adoption of the freedesktop.org standard which changed hicolor from being an artistic theme to being the fall-back folder. The hicolor theme was renamed to kdeclassic and most of the icons were moved to kdeartwork/IconThemes.

Welcome to KDE-Artists.org!

Sun, 06 Jun 2010 01:17:44 -0700

KDE-Artists.org is a new KDE sister website created specifically for artists and coders to use for reference and direction in creating a high quality consistant user interface. It is also the home of Kollaboration a new concept created by several people to give dreamers, artists, and coders a place to work together.

Here are just a few things you will be able to do at KDE-Artists.org, use Kollaboration to see your ideas or concepts come to life, interact with and learn from seasoned developers, learn new “tips and tricks”, easily find guidelines for creating high quality KDE artwork, acquire re-usable tools like color palettes, and icon elements, get involved with the “official development”, vote for preferences, help establish standards, get involved to help coordinate the look and feel of each release, and a space where coders can request specific artwork for their applications.