graphics category archive

Converting PDFs into Image Files (Citimortgage PDF Reprise)

I didn’t receive a response from Citimortgage about their ghastly PDF files, but on my next visit I was again able to view my statements in Evince, the GNOME PDF viewer. (Although they were still obnoxiously large files for the amount of data represented.)

But then on my next visit after that, the following month’s statement was again not viewable. Come on, Citimortgage, this shouldn’t be that difficult.

However, I had already invested some time in learning a couple of things about free software programs for working with PDF files in GNU/Linux, hoping to either shrink the files down or convert them into another format with less storage overhead. I’m a small man with small ambitions, and it had become a mission to not waste so much space on these records.

(You’d think …

Displaying a Scaled Image with Java Swing

I’m working on a small application to help me with naming and sorting my pictures, so one of the basic things it needs to do is load and scale an image. Found lots of information here and there on this, and this post is to share what I came up with.

When searching around trying to figure stuff like this out, it’s hard to credit where you found everything. A lot of search results point to forum.java.sun.com, with discussions that are alternatively helpful and abusive to newbie questions. When I started leaning towards a solution based on overriding the “paint” method, one of the forum threads pointed to a good tutorial: “Lesson: Performing Custom Painting,” and an in-depth explanation: “Painting in AWT and Swing.”

The core of this is a class that …

NautilusSvn and New Emblems

After writing last week about how I missed the Windows-only Tortoise(CVS|SVN) in GNU/Linux and sharing my simple scripts for running Subversion commands from Nautilus, I found Nautilus Svn by Jason Field, an Extension written in Python. (And available under the GPL v2.) It’s very nice, and adds (among other things) a major feature that you want in a graphical source control tool integrated with your file manager: visual cues of file status via icons. It uses Nautilus’s Emblems:

Those are what I have by default with the “Human” theme in Ubuntu 7.04/Feisty Fawn. So what are emblems? I’ve previously noticed the house emblem on my home dir and the lock emblem on system directories (hard to miss them). There is also a tab in file …

GNU/Linux Firefox image display problem caused by CSS padding

Do not adjust the picture on your television set. There is nothing wrong with the horizontal. That’s what the accompanying image is supposed to look like. This image, with this post, but not most of the other images on this site.

Continuing on the theme from my last post of “moving to fewer problems with this web site,” I fixed one more problem that has been nagging me ever since starting to use Mozilla Firefox on Ubuntu (and Fedora) last year. I hope posting about this one will help someone else in their searching, since it seems like kind of an obscure problem.

When I started using Firefox on GNU/Linux systems, I noticed that images would often be garbled on web pages. They …

GNU/Linux Graphics Programs in Ubuntu

My graphics/image manipulation needs are relatively simple. I’ve gotten by pretty well with MS Paint and IrfanView in Windows.

In the past several months I’ve started using the GNU Image Manipulation Program (the GIMP!) for Windows and have learned how to fix red eye and make downgraded transparent PNG files that display properly in Internet Explorer 6, but that’s mainly all that I’ve used it for. I’ve never used Adobe Photoshop so I can’t compare them from personal experience, but the GIMP is apparently loaded with comparable features. For those Photoshoppers who are confused by the GIMP interface, or for people who want to use Photoshop tutorials in GIMP, there is GIMPshop which emulates the interface of Photoshop.

I’m looking forward to …

You’re a Mean One, Mr. GIMP

In one of my “moving to freedom in stages” projects, I’ve started to use the GIMP on Windows XP. GIMP is the free software counterpart of Adobe Photoshop.

I’ve mentioned previously my bewilderment when faced with its amazing power and feature list. I have to confess that I often just fire up MS Paint or IrfanView for quick image manipulation jobs. That previous post mentions how I found tutorials to do more sophisticated things like changing transparency in .png files and removing red eye, but there are a lot of simple jobs I can do in Paint and IrfanView that would take me a good chunk of time to learn …