Cropping photos (Astronomy, Graphics & Video Software [WAS: VMWare / Wine))

[Eric Dunbar]

On 26/02/07, Duncan Lithgow <dlithgow at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sun, 2007-02-25 at 14:23 -0800, Patton Echols wrote:
> > On 02/24/2007 10:56 PM, Eric Dunbar wrote:
> > > On 24/02/07, Tommy Trussell <tommy.trussell at gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > >> On 2/24/07, Eric Dunbar <eric.dunbar at gmail.com> wrote:
> > >>
> > >>>> If all you need to do is resize, crop, simple color adjust, etc., then
> > >>>> the gThumb image viewer that comes with Ubuntu ought to do what you
> > >>>> want. It's pretty straightforward. Just right-click on an image and
> > >>>> choose "Open With ...--> gThumb Image Viewer"
> > >>>>
> > >>> I must agree -- cropping images just doesn't seem to exist in FLOSS.
> > >>>
> > >> uh... Did you try gThumb image viewer as I suggested? It crops quite
> > >> nicely. I'm not sure what you're agreeing with.
> > >
> > > Sorry, the context was not properly articulated. ... should have
> > > been... in the apps where it was needed (OO.org and Abiword) it wasn't
> > > an option to crop effectively (or at all) and that's where the
> > > functionality was needed. Jumping to another app was an onerous step
> > > when (ugh) Word could do it cleanly and with no fuss whatsoever.
> > > Anyway, I suspect (hope) that somone's working on a functional crop
> > > for OO.org.
> > >
> > While I have no direct knowledge of it, I recall being told that ughWord
> > does not actually crop an image, What it is actually doing is applying a
> > mask for what you want to see.  Even though the data is forever hidden
> > from the user (except through "undo") it stays in the document, adding
> > to it's size.
> That is also my understanding - otherwise Word and OOo would need to be
> able to resave any picture they can import - that's not an easy task -
> and it's not a job for a word processor.
>
> OpenOffice does in fact have what Eric was looking for, but they're more
> honest about it than word. Simply right click on an image and choose
> 'Picture...' form the context menu. Then there is a tab called 'Crop'
> there you can change the part of the image which is visible in the
> document - exactly what word does except visually explained.

Unfortunately I would classify that as a solution that _does not
work_. You may as well have to dive into the CLUI for how useful that
is. Trying to crop an image that way is pretty much useless (may as
well fire up (and wait and wait and wait for it to open) GIMP). But,
as you may have noticed, that's neither here nor there since,
PRESUMABLY, the OO.org devs are working on a fix to that deficiency
given that it's a known "bug".

> So, Eric, as with any software you are unfamiliar with, ask how to do
> something. Assuming that you would fall over it is asking a lot of your
> intuition and the software interface. I have to also mention that typing
> 'crop' into the OpenOffice help window gives a very clear explanation of
> how to crop an image.

FYI #1 I did find it and figured it was about as useful as doing it
with something like imagik ;-).
#2 If you need to read a help file to do something as simple (and
important) as cropping, it means it's not properly implemented yet.

Ouch. Make one little suggestion that a FL/OSS app doesn't work as
well as a closed source app and some people are all over it ;-). Ah
well, c'est la vie.