Graphics SIG report July 2009
By Myles Strous

Yahya started by welcoming new faces Frances and William (thanks to John Swann for the map that got them to the meeting), and announced a new format for the meeting, with more regular segments.

Q & A:
On a question from David on producing a "colour-scale" version of a photograph rather than a grayscale version, Yahya demonstrated a solution using IrfanView.

This led to a further question from William on gamma. Somewhat to our dismay, the new hard disk didn't have any suitable software, so Yahya quickly downloaded Paint.NET and while Roger Wragg ably described the concepts involved, Yahya demonstrated them on-screen.

Technical Skills:
After a tea-break during which a number of graphics topics were discussed, John Swann used a trial version of Xara Xtreme 5 to demonstrate variations between GIF, JPEG, and PNG formats with reference to filesize, colours supported, and transparency. Unfamiliar with the new object tree in this version, he still used it to good effect to hide and reveal relevant material.

Tools update:
Myles Strous covered some new features introduced in new releases of a few vector programs, and mentioned sketching programs for use with tablet PCs or graphics tablets.

Photographic expertise:
Roger Wragg explained the inadequacies of the in-built flash on pocket digital cameras, and how to get far better results using indirect flash from movable flash units that can be fitted on some cameras.