Retouching with Perl

Color Play

© Saniphoto, Fotolia

© Saniphoto, Fotolia

Article from Issue 94/2008
Author(s):

In many cases, whole series of digital images need the same kind of modifications, which forces the photo-grapher to repeat the same steps time and time again in GIMP. Have you ever considered retouching in Perl?

Before posting snapshots I've taken with my digital camera to the web, I used to go through the same old steps with GIMP. First, I'd reduce the image size to a width of 1,000 pixels because the image size my Nikon D70 gives me is just too much for the web and uploading the images takes too long. Also, to improve the contrast, correct any color casting, and make images tack-sharp with GIMP's Sharpen function, I typically select a value of 20.

As you might know, GIMP has a convenient scripting interface that lets users automate recurring tasks, and you can even run it at the command line without launching the GUI. GIMP developers have made some fairly significant changes to the whole API and nothing works the way it used to. Fortunately, GIMP documents the functions completely and thoroughly in the Xtns | Procedure Browser menu.

The standard interface is implemented in the rocket scientist's favorite programming language, Scheme.

[...]

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