Spencer Kimball's OnlinePhotoLab 73
Spencer Kimball, best
known for co-creating that little app known as The Gimp, wrote in to let us know what he's doing these days. He, along with four other XCF members have created OnlinePhotoLab.com.
Using the Gimp as a backend, it provides 50 megs of storage, and the ability to perform many normal gimp functions on images. Also provides an easy facility for sharing your images. Most interesting is the hardware. Spencer says "We have ten Linux boxes,
each a dual processor running four GIMP engines, for a total of
40 engines. We estimate we can process about a million image
requests per day. The cost of hardware was less than $25k." Here's hoping it can withstand the Slashdot Effect: it worked great
last night ;)
you really must forgive slashdot-term (Score:1)
just imagine... (Score:1)
why is he doing it? (Score:1)
[I tried to get back to that text to cut-and-paste for you, but unfortunately dispite my best efforts, I can't get it back again].
So perhaps they'll be SELLING the images that people upload to other companies? That would certainly limit what I upload! (Would hate to see that picture of my drunken university buddies and I on the next ad for a drink-responsibly campaign). ;)
Actually, yes in most cases. (Score:1)
Mesa had to go through a 2-3 month (maybe shorter...) "Speak now or forever hold your peace" phase before switching from the LGPL to XFree86 license.
As to the original post - This interface is a completely (or at least can be) seperate application from The Gimp. Think of it as GIMP being the Linux kernel and this being a proprietary application using the kernel. (Yes, I know there are many flaws in that analogy, but it's a start.)
Not a bad way to work (Score:1)
One thing that annoys me about this way of working is the file transfer process before you can get to work. It's not so bad for just one service but right now you might have a bit of web space here, a mailbox there, some space for StarOffice with Sun, Office in Seattle, 50 megs with these fellows for graphics, etc etc. I wish it would somehow becomes transparent where the file you're working on happens to be.
Now they need to... (Score:1)
No need to link in a GIMP library that will be outdated in a couple months... No need to add yet another maintenance task (well, easy as it might be)... Get instant upgrades when they update the server code.
How long before Perl has an Image::GIMP::Transform library?
---------------------------------------------
Re:Yet another reason not to have a 'huge' compute (Score:1)
Re:Yet another reason not to have a 'huge' compute (Score:1)
~luge
Re:What no Source? (Score:1)
1) How many people know enough to run their own servers but not enough to figure out the gimp? I'm betting not too many.
2) Banner ads, man, banner ads! They aren't there yet... but they will have to be at some point, unless they can come up with a google-like way of "selling" pics or maybe HD space/processor time. They've got to make that $25,000 back somehow
Now that I've answered that, I just thought I'd add that the free picture distribution thing sounds really, really cool- royalty-free picture use for web-sites and such will get them a great deal of traffic in the long-run, I'm betting. Anyway, best of luck to them...
~luge
now why is this useful? (Score:1)
Re:now why is this useful? (Score:1)
Re:Yet another reason not to have a 'huge' compute (Score:1)
-----------
"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
Re:LZW (Score:1)
Re:What no Source? (Score:1)
Brings a warm glow to the heart seeing 2000 banner titles being auto-generated and saved to the right places with all the drop-shadows and everything in about 10 seconds... (mainly 'cos I was having such serious nightmares about doing it manually).
Re:baby pictures! (Score:1)
I bought my wife an HP Photosmart 1100xi. Printing with photo paper is amazing. You really can't tell the difference between it and the original picture from 1' away or more. You have to look closely to determine which is the original image.
-tim
Innovation (Score:1)
Note: this is not a troll...sorting through the cruft on the web to find what you actually need becomes more of a chore every day!
-binner
Revenue? (Score:1)
Re:Revenue? (Score:1)
>> perspective, anyways."
> That I really don't get.
Oh, what I meant was that it might be (slightly) easier to sell a name such as "onlinephotolab.com" than "onlineimagelab.com" (heh, or "onlinepixmaplab.com";). I just meant that perhaps more (non-geek) people have some intuitive feel for what a photo lab has to offer than an image lab. The term "photo" is an every-day thing, probably more so than a "general 2D bitmap image". Ah, whatever...
Re:why is he doing it? (Score:1)
and albums is yours. What you export to the
Photo Exchange becomes public, pending our review.
Re:So they get to profit with little compensation? (Score:1)
restrictions on use. It is a *part* of Online PhotoLab. You retain the rights to the images
that are in your albums and folders, but whatever you export to the Photo Exchange becomes free
for everybody.
Re:Revenue? (Score:1)
but it is not going to be ad-revenue, for sure.
Re:Copyrights/ File Sharing (Score:1)
on the "Photo Exchange" portion of the site
that will be visible/searchable by anyone
using the service. We, of course, review
each image and screen out copyrighted, inappropriate, or un-titled images before
approving its posting to the PhotoExchange.
HE'S WATCHING YOU (Score:1)
On a more major note; This is awesome. Giving the non Linux user a chance to use one of the best free graphics programs. This just might put some people over the edge to load it and try it for theirselves.
-Tim
Re:What no Source? (Score:1)
You don't need to modify GIMP to do this (Score:1)
You can't reduce every idea to one object specifically intended for it. Sometimes a tool's functions are greater than the sum of its parts. Quit being so materialistic.
Hmm... e-emergence... (Deeply sorry.)
Because it means you don't need to be a genius (Score:1)
That said, I still think this is a great idea. Especially for people who need to do simple things like select original size 3x5 select final size 30x50 and click ok.
Now what I'd like is a GIMP distro that has some of these scripts setup so I can serve GIMP functionality from home. B2B works. B2C is getting old. C2C worked when we had BBSes, now it will work again with DSL lines.
Re:What no Source? (Score:1)
People are too preoccupied with making things look pretty today. Function is the best course.
"And anyone can upload their snaps to use it, so you don't need to be a linux guru to get it to work, which is always a bonus."
All you have to do is install a program onto your computer. Learning the interface and the skill is the tough part no matter the status of the person.
"But, wouldn't it make more sense for them to also offer the webified gimp for people to download and run on their own servers?"
I think you are overestimating the speed of progress on various work projects.
"It wouldn't have to be open source, just available."
My theory is that the source is comming it's just that they have to keep their servers from being slashdotted and get some functional aspects of the site ready for production level use (aka a 1.0 or similar release).
cool text (Score:1)
If only... (Score:1)
Yet another reason not to have a 'huge' computer (Score:1)
Having to upload/download images can be annoying, though, even if you have a fast connection. Has anyone developed a secure way that a webserver could mount a local directory? What about an insecure way?
-
Re:This is great! (Score:1)
Having used the Win32 port, I would say that it would probably drag an NT server down in seconds under this kind of load. Although that might just be because of the GTK (which isn't an issue here).
Re:What no Source? (Score:1)
Are you under the mistaken impression that Kimball is doing this purely for philanthopic reasons?
Are you saying he's in it for the money?
Ad revenue maybe?
OK, maybe that's not what you meant :-)
Don't get me wrong, I think it's a great idea, and maybe a downloadable source/binary will come eventually once they have market domination.
It was just a thought of an alternative way to do things (and possibly make them money, if the GPL doesn't get in the way), that is all...
Check it out ... on your own HD. (Score:1)
Chances are, if you have an electronic copy of a photo, you've got access to ... some type of image manipulation program.
If you have access to FTP (AOL parental controls block FTP) at any of these sites [gimp.org], and you have a Unix-like system with X11 or a Windows 9x or NT system (it's been ported [gimp.org]), "you've got access to" the GNU Image Manipulation Program, better known as the GIMP.
Re:Yet another reason not to have a 'huge' compute (Score:1)
cd
So then you've mounted the dir over the web.
Re:This is great! (Score:1)
This is great! (Score:1)
tcd004
Re:Maximum file size (Score:1)
I didn't see that anywhere, I guess that is why it didn't seem to like the 35 meg tarball i was sending it.
I wonder how they are going to deal with all the porn people will throw up there.
Re:baby pictures! (Score:1)
Or, conversely, they could partner with processing companies to turn your now altered snapshots into prints. I ran across Shutterfly [shutterfly.com], where you can upload digital pics and have prints mailed to multiple addresses with captioning printed on the back.
carlos
AaaaHhhh! (Score:1)
I kept catching it out of the corner of my eye.
My voicemail light does the same thing occasionaly. I wonder if it has anything to do with staring at
Gimp on-line trial. (Score:1)
Could this be a viable Open Source evangelism approach, to offer free-access, web-based versions of popular programs? I wonder how Evolution would do as the back-end for a web-based mail service...
So they get to profit with little compensation? (Score:1)
Re:Clueless (Score:1)
Copyrights/ File Sharing (Score:1)
Re:What no Source? (Score:2)
...j
Re:neat (Score:2)
I remember someone was using GIMPs unattended filter application features to make it look as if the moving objects in his web cam were on fire.
cool strip! (Score:2)
Re:baby pictures! (Score:2)
http://www.fotoguide.com [fotoguide.com] is what you want
Full disclosure disclaimer : I work for guideguide.com who do the fotoguide amongst other things. The bad news is it's Germany only, so far. So give us dosh to expand ;)
PS We use gimp, mod_perl, Linux, and other Free software. Any UK based Perl/LInux hackers looking for new jobs ?
--
Not the first, tho (Score:2)
However, while it's essentially the same thing (web front end to Gimp functions) it's really designed for putting together logos. It's a quick way to come up with web-type graphics.
CoolText has been up for at least two years, and the banner ads make Bryan enough money to pay for some of his classes.
Make your own web-Gimp! (Score:2)
Anyway, it's not that hard to implement if you know a little Script-fu or Perl-fu.
I'm sure plenty of web masters have already figured this out, and have been using the Gimp as a backend for their sites for some time now.
Application serving. (Score:2)
This is an interesting twist on the concept of application serving, since it presents a real-world useful application, gimp, through a standard interface, html, and provides remote processing and storage of data. Could this become a significant means of software distribution in the future?
And most importantly, what does this mean for the GPL? Clearly this usage of gimp is not a violation of GPL, by the very design of the license. They could make all the modifications they want to gimp, but as long as they do not distribute the binary, they do not need to distribute the source. Is this a potential loophole in the GPL that should be taken care of, is it a necessary evil, or is this a positive combination of open source software and closed business models?
Can you serve images from your account? (Score:2)
--
Re:Slashdot Effect? (Score:2)
Re:Yet another reason not to have a 'huge' compute (Score:2)
-----------
"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
Re:This is great! (Score:2)
The real point is that it's running Gimp. You'd be hard pressed to turn photoshop into a backend server...
-----------
"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
Re:Reminds me (Score:2)
-----------
"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
Re:What no Source? (Score:2)
- cooltext.com [cooltext.com] (no source and limited to the 'standard' text logos with gimp)
- A Tutorial [weizmann.ac.il] for Perl Gimp Users, namely the section on the Perl Server [weizmann.ac.il].
however, you are going to have to be a little bit careful about opening up the full script-fu functionality over a cgi interface (unless you have no fear)...Maximum file size (Score:2)
Paying for Beta Babysitting? My experience (Score:2)
After a lot of struggle with Gimp (an old beta which undoubtedly was half the stability problem) I was able to build a Perl based compositing system and generate a thousand html pages and as many gifs and jpegs (with alpha masked, highlited thumbnails), using Perl-Fu to do repetitive operations and other Perl programs to rip representative layouts into templates and also to generate the pages with the right hypertext references (a db wasn't allowed). The data was a couple of CDs worth of Photoshop files (which I had to hand rip from layers into jpegs since many designers had worked on it) for 12 hotels.
It was all done from scratch in less than two weeks, and though I might have saved time using deBabelizer (I realized after I was hip deep in it) I ended up with some cool semiautomatic tools. The justification was that despite a very short deadline, changes were coming in from the client constantly. The volume was just enough (and my carpal tunnel looking scary enough) that I wanted to make it work badly. In particular new photos could be dropped into the source directory and a new site could build itself in about two minutes for page generation and two minutes for resizing and thumbnail generation. on a 450MHz PIII (Dell Inspiron laptop). Watching all the little windows open up and save themselves was honestly, a blast!
Some problems that I experienced were inability to open some seemingly good Photoshop files, 4-layer jpegs couldn't load, some functions I thought ought to work didn't, and other little bugs and crashes (the crashes were soft and quick). The biggest annoyance was Gimp's refusal to open dialog boxes on top of the main workspace, but this was not a Perl-Fu problem. Lots of time was taken with giving up on Scheme, figuring out how Perl-Fu worked, and adding fixes, like different numbers of thumbnails for different sections, preparing layout template code, deciphering strange source files from the designers, and automatically dealing with vertically oriented images.
This is great for when you have a ton of processing work, but if you want to run it from CGI or cron and don't have the author watching over the system I'd recommend very tightly limiting the kinds of operations you do with it, and watch the output. It might be very good for adding new images to a database-backed site.
If you want to experiment for a similar use as I did I recommend not trying to use scheme since you don't know what's going on, and start with running little programlets in perl, e.g. I modified the pgshell program so I could past a whole block from my processing programs into a buffer that would run it so I could test procedures.
On the other hand maybe this site is good advertising for Gimp stability.. at the very least with 40 processes they might handle the
Re:Revenue? (Score:2)
That or someone's large pocketbook.
"Also, I find the conceptual limitation to
photos somewhat interesting, as well."
That can be a bit intimidating at first.
"An image is an image is an image, I thought."
The better question that you have to ask is what is the difference between a sufficiently enhaced or chaged photo and an image?
"Well, it probably makes sense from a PR perspective, anyways."
That I really don't get.
"So, good luck, I guess!
Yeah any tool that is free and allows for greater expression and utility is usually a good thing.
Re:Yet another reason not to have a 'huge' compute (Score:2)
Woah there cowboy. I really don't think that's such a good idea. I think that running things on your own computer is a much better idea. Better control, better access, and faster development for all concerned. Distributing things to others and not having them yourself is a rather shoddy idea.
"Having to upload/download images can be annoying, though, even if you have a fast connection."
quite
"Has anyone developed a secure way that a webserver could mount a local directory? What about an insecure way?"
There are linux utilities that can allow you to access files from a remote location without the need of authentication.
The only similar type of thing I have seen is something for windows called X-drive or similar. You have a little addition to explorer that allows for a drive X: that is actually space on a remote machine. However I haven't seen anything for linux like that. Perhaps NFS?
Re:What no Source? (Score:2)
Doh!
"I needed to batch process and manipulate a ton of images for a print project."
go on
"It turns out that Perl for Gimp 1.0.x is not terribly supported, while Gimp 1.1.19 was just too damn unstable."
I am running I think version 1.1.14 or
"After much experimentation, frustration, trial and error: the only conclusion was that as it currently stands... Gimp sucks."
No the logical colclusion is that the perl support for gimp sucks. Also they have python I think.
"Now I hear about this!!"
pretty impressive huh?
"How is it being done?"
I remember discussion about batch and remote processing using the gimp for a while just a natural evolution.
"Does the guy have his own custom-hacked version of Gimp?"
Maybe some tweaks. If he one of the leaders of the gimp project perhaps something more far reaching.
"So why aren't the modifications being redistributed under the GPL?"
Most likely because they haven't found the time or thought that their code was ready yet. Sounds like the perl support you tinkered with should have also been better tested.
Re:What no Source? (Score:2)
- Correct me if I'm wrong, but since the GIMP is GPLed, wouldn't they also have to provide the source if they let people download a non-source version?
Since he's the guy who wrote it, no, he doesn't. GPL does not affect the owner's distribution rights in any way. All it does is grant a few extra rights (with restrictions) above and beyond normal the copyright law to the general public.After a little play (Score:2)
Great logo creation tools! (Score:2)
The preview of what each filter/logo/does is great. Half the time in the gimp I don't know exactly which filter I want to use. This makes the selection process easy!
Now...it would be nice if they were to release this cool "eGIMP" code in an easy to install form. I'd love to use it for myself on my own server. Web development "houses" would love a tool like this!
I think there is a market for this in package form. The whole online image storage would be great too, although I bet there are already some applications available that do that.
-Pete
What no Source? (Score:2)
So they've tied GIMP to a web server, and made it look pretty. Sounds like quite a good idea to me. And anyone can upload their snaps to use it, so you don't need to be a linux guru to get it to work, which is always a bonus.
But, wouldn't it make more sense for them to also offer the webified gimp for people to download and run on their own servers? It wouldn't have to be open source, just available.
That way, we don't need to upload our pictures onto their site, and they don't need to pay for all the bandwidth/processor cycles we use
or am i missing the point here?
Re:What no Source? (Score:2)
What the hell?! I spent countless hours trying to get Gimp Perl to work for an industrial application. I needed to batch process and manipulate a ton of images for a print project. It turns out that Perl for Gimp 1.0.x is not terribly supported [rru.com], while Gimp 1.1.19 was just too damn unstable. After much experimentation, frustration, trial and error: the only conclusion was that as it currently stands... Gimp sucks.
Now I hear about this!! How is it being done? Does the guy have his own custom-hacked version of Gimp? So why aren't the modifications being redistributed under the GPL?
I ended up using ImageMagick. I'd still rather be using the (promised) power and flexibility of Gimp, but ImageMagick actually works without dumping lots of core.
Re:LZW (Score:3)
----
Re:What no Source? (Score:3)
-----------
"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
Re:Revenue? (Score:3)
baby pictures! (Score:3)
Some photography studios are like vultures in hospital maternity wards. As soon as my wife had our baby, they started throwing flyers at us advertising their services which is pretty much a lame picture of your hour-old baby. It must be the drugs, but *everybody* buys into it. We did. Of course, the next thing everybody wants is for the pictures to be on the web so friends and relatives can see them. Most have this service too. BUT NONE HAVE ONLINE PROCESSING! I tried the processing and its really cool. The only thing I couldn't find was a function to remove "red-eye". I'm sure its there but slightly disguised in the color manipulation options.
Good job.
LZW (Score:3)
Checked It Out (Score:3)
I went over and looked around the site. I do think it could be useful for home computer users who want to build vanity pages... maybe even some web designers. People will always be impressed with certain canned image manipulations. Problem is, most of us who want to edit images of any sort (including photos) already have an image program we can use, and know how to use, faster than we could by uploading files over a 56k modem. Chances are, if you have an electronic copy of a photo, you've got access to a scanner, and hence some type of image manipulation program.
'Tis a good idea still, and I wish them all the luck in the world.
neat (Score:4)