“A whole article on page numbering?” someone asked when I said I was doing this article. “Isn’t that kind of basic?”

The answer is that, at the simplest level, it is. However, add different numbering styles, restarting numbering, or automating numbering, and the apparently basic topic quickly becomes more complicated. Set up a master document, and still another dimension is added. What at first seems like a straightforward task has far more options than many users imagine.

Moreover, in LibreOffice (or OpenOffice.org, for that matter), generally, you’ll want to put page numbers in headers or footers, so they are separate from the rest of the text on a page and easy to read. Setting up a header or foot is not difficult, but it does add another step or two to the apparently basic task of adding a page number.

Basic page numbering

The simplest scenario for page numbering is a file in which all the pages have the same layout and the page numbering is continuous. Here’s the basic procedure:

• Select Insert -> Header or Insert -> Footer, depending on where you want to place the page number. The header or footer appears as a separate text frame on the page.
• Place the cursor in the header or footer. Then select Insert -> Fields -> Page Number. The page number appears as an Arabic numeral with a gray background to indicate that it is a field (this background doesn’t print, as you can see by going to File -> Page Preview)

Align the page number. Select either Format -> Alignment -> Left, Right, or Center. You might also want to put a period or forward slash after the page numbering field, or a number sign (#) before it.

Now, every header or footer in the document will look the same. However, you have no option to arrange page numbering in a different format. For that, you have to use page styles (see below)

If you want to indicate a page number within a range of pages, at the second step, select Insert -> Fields -> Page Number, add “of” after the page number field, and, perhaps, “page” before. Then select Insert -> Fields -> Page Count. The resulting numbering will be something like “2 of 5″ or “page 3 of 8.”

And if you don’t want Arabic numerals? Go to Insert -> Fields -> Other -> Document -> Page instead. There, you’ll find every page numbering format you can imagine, and probably some you can’t.

You also have the option of offsetting the numbering with a plus or minus sign followed by a numeral. For example, entering “-2″ in the offset field will mean that the first two pages aren’t numbered, and the third page is number one. This is a format you often seen when the copyright page and other unnumbered front matter are included in a book.

Restarting page numbers and using different numbering formats

In some cases, you might want to restart page numbering. For example, the introduction might be numbered separately from the body of a novel. Similarly, In technical writing, each chapter is sometimes numbered separately, or the appendices are numbered separately from the rest of the text.

To restart page numbers:

• Add a header and page number as described above. If you look at the status bar a the bottom of the editing window, you will see that page are formated with the Default style.
• Create a page style to mark the first page on which page number changes. Select Format -> Styles and Formatting -> Page Styles, and create a page style formatted to your liking. Be sure to turn on a header or footer on the appropriate tab. Call the new page style something like Chapter First Page so you can easily identify it. 

• If you want to use a different format for page numbering, go to the Page tab for the new page style. In the Layout Settings pane of the tab, select the Format field to choose the page numbering format. If you leave out this step, the new page style will use Arabic numerals for page numbering
• Position the cursor at the bottom of the last page before the one on which you want numbering to restart.
• Select Insert -> Manual Break -> Page Break. Specify the name of the new style that you created.

• Click the Change Page Number box. Then select the number at which you want page numbering to restart and click the OK button. The manual break appears as a thin, solid line at the top of the page that uses the new page style.
• Place the cursor in the header or footer of the page that uses the new page style, and select Insert -> Fields -> Page Number. If the new page style uses a different numbering system from the rest of the document, select Insert -> Fields -> Other -> Document -> Page -> As Page Style instead

With a little ingenuity, you can automate this process by defining a paragraph style that is always the first one used after a page break. Title or Heading 1 are often useful paragraph styles for this purpose.

To automate renumbering:

• Select Format -> Styles and Formatting -> Paragraph Styles. Either select the style to use for the purpose or make a new one, and format to your liking.
• Go the Text Flow tab for the paragraph style. Go the Breaks pane on the tab and select Insert, Type -> Page, and Position -> Before. This selection enables the With Page Style box, which you can now check.

• Specify the style and the page number to restart the numbering at. Then click the Apply button at the bottom of the dialog window

Whether you are manually or automatically adding page breaks, once they are inserted, each page style functions separately from the others with a different page numbering format, or, perhaps, a different position for the page number.

Page Numbering and Master Documents

A Master Documents is a collection of files grouped as a single document, each of which can be opened separately. They are less common than they used to be, because, thanks to the amount of RAM in modern computers, most people no longer need Master Documents to allow them to work on large documents without slowing down their systems.

However, that only means that LibreOffice can handle larger documents than before, so Master Documents are still useful for the handful of users who want to work with documents that are hundreds of pages long.

If you do use Master Documents, you can add page numbering to the entire Master Document, just as outlined above. However, when you open a file in the Master Document, what you see is the page numbering that has been applied to that file — and nothing else.

This is not an error, as you might think at first. It is simply the result of two different views of the file: first as part of the Master Document, then as a stand-alone file. The only time that you will not see a difference in page numbering is when you use the same automation tricks with page styles in Master Documents as in separate files.

Numbering and page styles

Page numbering is an example of how style-oriented LibreOffice is. On simple documents, you can apply basic page numbers simply and quickly. However, if you want any advanced features other than an offset count, then understanding page styles becomes a necessity.

In addition to the features mentioned above, you should pay particular attention to the Next Style field on the Organizer tab of each page style. This field can apply styles automatically.

For example, you can set the First Page style so that it is followed by the Left Page style, which is followed by the Right Page style, which is followed by the Left Page style. If you have different layouts for page numbering for each style, then setting up the Next Style field properly will greatly ease advanced numbering for you.

Many people for many uses will not need anything except basic page numbering. However, it’s reassuring to know that the power and efficiency is there if you ever need it.

BY BRUCE BYFIELD

Linux and free/open source software are the best computing environments for children because they can get under the hood and learn to control and shape the technology, rather than be trained like lab rats to click buttons and be good little unquestioning consumers. Here is a batch of excellent educational and creative software for children, and for beginners of any age.

Tux Paint

Here at Worldlabel we have a special fondness for Tux Paint, the cross-platform drawing and painting program. (We even hosted a Tux Paint drawing contest with awesome prizes last summer!) Tux Paint teaches the fundamental functions used by most computer painting programs such as drawing tools, shape tools, special effects, and labels and captions. It has a giant assortment of stamps and sound effects. And it has a helpful assistant that is actually helpful, and teaches file management and how to use the program. (Linux, Mac, Windows.)

Figure 1: A colorful Tux Paint doodle.

Tux, of Math Command!

The fine folks who give us Tux Paint, New Breed Software also created Tux, of Math Command!. This is an excellent math tutor with plenty of educational action. Like Tux Paint it is designed for children, but it’s great for anyone who needs to brush up on their basic math skills. It has exercises with great graphics and fun sound effects, and also a selection of fast-paced games for honing math, mouse, and keyboard skills. It supports network play, and has special options for teachers or parents to organize competitions. You can even create custom games. Figure 2 shows Commander Tux using her quick typing and math skills to defend against the attacking equations. (Linux, Mac, Windows.)

Figure 2: Commander Tux defending against marauding equations.

There is one more from the fine New Breed folks, and that is the Tux Typing tutor. Computer users need good typing skills, and Tux Typing is a fun and effective tool for learning to type, or improving your existing skills. (Linux, Mac, Windows.)

KDEdu

The hardworking people at KDE have assembled a nice batch of excellent teaching apps aimed at older kids in the KDEdu package. This contains 20 high-quality apps including math, algebra, trigonometry, and geometry; a periodic table of the elements; desktop globe; vocabulary trainer; memory trainer; the excellent KStars astronomy and planetarium program, and the Kturtle programming teacher. (Linux.)

Figure 3: The Marble virtual globe, part of KDEdu.

Etoys

Etoys is an ambitious application that teaches concentration, critical thinking, and problem-solving. Kids learn math, science, and programming concepts by creating sketches of various projects, such as building a car, building a moon rocket, making a movie, or going wherever their imagination leads them. (Linux, Mac, Windows.)

Figure 4: Etoys teaches kids how to think, imagine, and create.

Fly Through Space With Celestia

The Celestia Space Simulator takes you on journeys through space. It needs some horsepower, so you should have a PC with at least a dual-core CPU and a good OpenGL 3D video card. It opens in Earth orbit, and you can visit any of 120,000 celestial objects in the included Hipparcos catalog. Tour our own Solar System, visit newly-discovered extrasolar planet rho-1 Cancri e, and many of our galactic neighbors. The better your video card the nicer it looks, because it supports several different texturing modes. So you can use lower resolutions with less detail for lower-end video cards, or crank it all the way up for better video cards. (Linux, Mac, Windows.)

Figure 5: Approaching Venus in Celestia.

GCompris, a Feast of Activities

GCompris is an award-winning suite of over 100 activities for children aged 2 to 10, though as with all the others in this article it’s a high-quality feast for beginners of all ages. The name is a French pun. GCompris is pronounced like “I have understood”, J’ai compris.

GCompris teaches basic computer skills such using the mouse and keyboard, reading, memory training, all kinds of science, geography, math, reading, how to tell time, how to draw cartoons, puzzles, understanding money, games, and even Braille training. (Linux, Mac, Windows.)

Figure 6: Learning about water systems in GCompris.

Operating Systems for Kids

There are only two operating systems that are customized for children: Sugar, which was originally created for the OLPC (One laptop per child) program and is now installable on a number of Linux distributions, and several Linux distributions.

Sugar is a radical departure from the computer operating systems we’re used to. It is designed to encourage exploration, learning, and sharing, to learn problem-solving and creative thinking.

There are a number of Linux distributions aimed at children: they bundle kid-oriented software and artwork, and have simplified interfaces that are friendly to little hands learning to use mice and keyboards. Some of these are:

• Qimo 4 Kids
• Foresight Linux
• Doudou Linux
• LinuxKidX
• Edubuntu

My favorite is Qimo (pronounced Kim-oh) because I think it does a great job at bundling first-rate software and inviting kids in, and it’s the only one that is available pre-installed on a cool-looking PC, thanks to excellent independent Linux vendor ZaReason. All of them are excellent in their own way, and it costs nothing but a bit of time to try them out.

by Carla Schroder

One of the funnest features of digital image editing is taking pieces of different images and blending them together in a single image, like putting a funny hat on your mom or putting your dog on a jet ski. Or even something serious, like improving a photo of a landscape by adding an element from a different photo. Today we are going to learn how to do this in GIMP, the excellent open source image editing program.

GIMP is not LAME

Computer geeks think they are funny, and that how we end up with names like GIMP and LAME. GIMP is short for GNU Image Manipulation Program. LAME is a recursive acronym for LAME Ain’t an MP3 Encoder. Together they form my mildly amusing subheading. At any rate, whatever the shortcomings of the name, GIMP is an excellent open source painting, drawing, and image editing program. It is free of cost and runs on Linux, Mac, and Windows, and supports a number of drawing tablets like Wacom.

You’ll need a batch of existing images to follow this tutorial– photos, clipart, anything is fine. You can copy images from Web pages by right-clicking on them, and then left-clicking “Save as” in the right-click menu. This is legal for private, personal use; don’t commit copyright infringement by distributing copyrighted images without permission. Visit the Wikimedia Commons to find excellent permissively-licensed images, and you can even share your own.

Saving Your Work

The first and most important lesson is to make a habit of saving your projects as .xcf files. This is the native GIMP file format. You can create composite images out of any mix of image file formats such as JPG, GIF, and PNG. But always save a master file as .xcf because it saves all of your layers and all other editing information, so you can easily re-edit your images. You can export to any image file format you want from .xcf such as JPG, PNG, GIF, BMP…as long as you have that master .xcf file you can do anything you want.

Fun With Layers

Understanding how to use layers is the #1 most important feature of any higher-end image editor. This is your mighty power tool that gives you fine control over your images. In figure 1 I opened an existing image of Tux, the Linux penguin. Tux was created by Larry Ewing using GIMP. GIMP can take a little getting used to because the toolbars and dialogues are all in separate docks, instead of a single window. You can expose just the ones you want to use and drag them anywhere on your screen. Some users love this, some don’t. (GIMP 2.7.3 includes the long-promised single-window mode option, and will soon be available.)

Figure 1: Tux the Linux penguin in a new GIMP session, with the Toolbox, first image layer, and Layers dialogue.

Now let’s put a hat on Tux. I have a red fedora downloaded from Wikimedia Commons, and this image is given to the public domain, so I can do anything I want with it. I want to put it on Tux’s head. The first step is to go to File > Open as layers in Tux’s window (figure 2.)

Figure 2: Hat image opened in a new layer on Tux.

It’s the wrong size and in the wrong place, but that’s OK. It’s in a separate layer so I can edit it just as though it were in a separate window. Note how the Layers dialogue shows two entries now (figure 3). If you don’t see the Layers dialogue, then press Ctrl+l or click Windows > Dockable Dialogs > Layers to open it.

Figure 3: the Layers dialogue displays two layers and several controls.

The first image you open will always be labeled “background” in the layers dialog. You can change this name by right-clicking on it, and then left-click Edit Layer Attributes. Note how this right-click menu offers you a whole lot more controls (figure 4). GIMP has a lot of redundant controls, so you’ll see the same ones in multiple locations.

Figure 4: Right-click any item in your Layers dialog to see this menu.

But let’s not get distracted by all these new controls, for we have a hat to edit. Aim your eyeballs to the left and take a look at the Toolbox. This should always open by default (figure 5).

Figure 5: The GIMP Toolbox.

The Toolbox contains a selection of cursor tools. By default it becomes a paintbrush when you pass it over your image. I don’t want a paintbrush, I want the Move tool. That is the little four-pointed dealie. Click on it so you can move objects (figure 6). Remember to always select your tool first.

Figure 6: The Move tool.

Now I’m going to drag the hat onto Tux’s head. And oops, my canvas is a little too small. Which is no problem, because Image > Canvas Size makes it bigger. A little more height and I have room for the hat (figure 7).

Figure 7: A slightly bigger canvas for more headroom.

Well now, that’s not too bad, except the hat is too big. First I click on the hat layer in the Layer dialog to select it, and then click Layer > Scale Layer in the image window. This opens a dialog for changing the size of the image just in that layer. Note the little chain link between the Width and Height values; when these are linked changes are proportionate. Click the link to un-link the values and control them separately.

With the hat resized and positioned, I’m still not satisfied because the hat points to the right, and I want it to point to the left. Layer > Transform > Flip Horizontally turns it to the left. A little tweaking the position, and voilà! Tux has a stylin’ hat (figure 8).

Figure 8

There is one last task, and that is creating a caption. To launch the text editor, go to the Toolbar and click the big A. This also automatically creates a new layer for the text. GIMP has a habit of opening dialogs in inconvenient locations, so drag the text dialog anywhere to get it out of the way. When I type my caption into the text dialog it appears on the image at the same time, and gives a live preview of size, font, and color (figure 9).

Figure 9: Adding a caption.

By default layers are transparent, and my text doesn’t show up very well. So one way (there are several ways to do this) to give text a solid background is to click Layer > Transparency > Remove Alpha channel. This results in Figure 10.

Figure 10: Tux now has a hat and caption with a white background.

Now my stylin’ Tux can be saved as any image file format, but don’t forget to always first save your work in .xcf format. Then if you need to make any changes simply select the layer you want to work on. Take a look at the Layers dialog and you’ll see a wealth of useful options: delete, re-order, stack in whatever order you want, duplicate layers, all kinds of modes, and lots more. Which we will explore in future installments. If you like good howto books, Beginning GIMP: From Novice to Professional is the best GIMP book.

By CARLA SCHRODER

Check out this post: Gimp resources to take you from Newbie to Power User

The free software world moves rapidly, but every individual project also moves at its own pace and rhythm. Consequently, it is easy to get behind on the news. Here is a look at the state of the art in the open source desktop publishing (DTP) arena for fall 2011.

What’s new in Scribus

Scribus remains the solid leader among free DTP applications. The big news at the moment is that the next major revision of Scribus, 1.4.0, is in release candidate status. That makes it short of a recommendation for stable usage, but worth testing, and a possible option if you find yourself in need of one of the new features.

1.4.0 will sport a port to the Qt4 application framework, the newest version of Qt. A lot of the internal changes to Scribus during this development cycle have been refactoring updates; as a result the list of bug fixes from the code cleanup is impressive, while the “new feature” bullet points are not as numerous. The canvas now uses Cairo, vector file import is significantly improved, and users who have not tried the unstable builds will get their first taste of render frames, which allow embedding of externally-rendered content like TeX, gnuplot, and Lillypond.

The biggest change in development is support for tables courtesy of Elvis Stansvik, which is important because these are popular structures in word processors, but often an afterthought when doing DTP layout. Stansvik’s work is a Google Summer Of Code (GSoC) project, as is the new Scripter2 Python scripting engine.

You can download Scribus 1.4.0 RC 5 (the latest release as of press time) from scribus.net. Builds are provided for Windows, Mac OS X, and Debian/Ubuntu packages.

Apart from the official releases, the Scribus scripting community has been hard at work this year, too. ScribusStuff is a site managed by OpenDesktop.org (the same folks who brought you the leading theme browsing sites for KDE and GNOME); several new scripts have been added in recent months, including a mail merge generator and utilities to work with CSV files and the new table functionality. Also of note on the scripting front is Olivier Berten’s Pantone script, which allows you to import Pantone swatches into Scribus. Since Pantone does not allow the Scribus project to ship its named spot color lists, this is the best solution for most users.

For a more complete listing of Scribus scripts, consult the Scripts category at the Scribus wiki. Most scripts are the work of single authors, and often do not see individual release announcements when updated.

What’s new in other layout tools

Despite Scribus’ well-earned heavy hitter status, there are several other DTP layout tools that deserve a place on your Applications menu. Tom Lechner’s Laidout tackles a task not covered by Scribus: impositioning a document or image onto the page (or, in most cases, across multiple pages) for printing. Laidout received a minor update at the end of 2010; since then Lechner has been working on Polyptych, a program to “unwrap” 3-D polyhedra, and a configuration tool for XInput2 pointers. Laidout is one of the first applications to support multiple pointing devices in X (officially known to X.org fans as Multi-Pointer X or MPX), so it is definitely ahead of the curve.

Arguably at the other end of the creative spectrum is LyX. While Laidout is a visual artist’s tool geared towards customized output for image-heavy output, LyX is a GUI application designed for typesetting professional-looking articles and papers. LyX is a front-end for TeX and LaTeX, but designed to provide immediate visual feedback as is generally provided in word processors. It received a major update in May of 2011, bumping to version 2.0.0, incorporating literally dozens of new features. Among them are formatting-aware search-and-replace, inline spell-checking and thesaurus, export to XHTML, LuaTeX, and XeTeX, improved table handling, and many new math rendering capabilities.

A new project named PressBooks was announced in 2011, although it is still in alpha development. PressBooks is a book publishing system designed to help authors prepare a single text for printing, output as an ebook, or online publication in HTML. Finally, LibreOffice has been making leaps and strides since it forked from the older OpenOffice.org code base. A new release (numbered 3.4.3) was made in August, and the project announced a public repository for extensions and templates in September.

What’s new in fonts

There have been two major developments in the open font world in 2011. The first is Google’s Web Font Directory, an online repository of open source fonts covering a wide variety of scripts and styles. Although the emphasis of the project is serving the fonts over HTTP (for use in web publishing), all are also downloadable and freely resuable.

The other banner development was the relaunch of the Open Font Library with a new back-end system built on the open source Aiki framework also used by Open Clip Art Library. The revamped OFLB site makes it easier to search and test out new fonts, and to collaborate with other font developers.

In addition, the developers and designers at Open Source Publishing (OSP) in Brussels have been working on the OFLB site design and some documentation. Finally, the open source font editor FontForge made a new release in February, focused mostly on bugfixes.

What’s new in imaging

Of course, DTP without images would just be word processing, and the raster and vector applications most designers depend on have been busy as well.

Inkscape made two minor releases, 0.48.1 and 0.48.2, in March and September respectively. Both focused on bugfixing. But the project was very active in 2011′s GSoC, adding a new, faster caching system, improved support for CSS code embedded within SVGs, and support for preserving JavaScript in files. Work is also progressing on SVG Font support and a new measuring tool. These and other changes may be ready for 0.49, the next release.

Three raw photo editors made major releases in 2011, RawTherapee 3.0, Darktable 0.9, and Rawstudio 2.0, and one (UFRaw 0.18) made a minor update. In all four cases, the list of bugfixes and image development features either added or improved is substantial — perhaps too long to summarize in a paragraph. If you are a DTP designer, however, what you care about is compatibility, and all three will provide you with higher-quality photos to embed or link into your documents.

There were also updates to Hugin, MyPaint, and Digikam, and a major new version of Krita is expected to arrive shortly.

What’s new in printing

The open source printing stack saw an important new color mangement feature, a newly-revitalized project, and interesting movement on several other projects.

The color management feature is found in two important CUPS filters, foomatic and gstoraster. Both are image processors that take intermediate document formats (PDF or PostScript) and produce raster image data to be sent to the printer. The change is that both now use the colord system daemon developed by Red Hat’s Richard Hughes. Colord allows users to manage device ICC profiles at a system-wide level. Instead of maunally changing the settings for every color-aware application, programs simply query colord for the preferred profile and get back the correct result. The system automatically handles multiple profiles for different paper/ink combinations, and has a graceful fallback mechanism for coping with inexact matches.

The newly-revitalized project is Black Five Imaging’s suite of printing tools: PhotoPrint, CMYKTool, and DuoToner. All three have seen intermittant releases as the main developer’s schedule allowed, mostly in the form of source code tarballs. Now they are also hosted in a public git repository at Gitorious. The Black Five tools are still largely developed by a single coder, but moving to a public source code repository is always a healthy sign and may attract new blood.

Several other pritning projects received minor updates in 2011, including the Gutenprint driver collection (version 5.2.7), the GPL version of the Ghostscript PostScript interpreter (9.0.2), and the CUPS printing framework (mentioned earlier in the colord context).

Finally, although it is not code per se, Alexandre Prokoudine published an updated and revised version of his guide to using CMYK and spot color with Scribus and Inkscape. It is an oft-circulated myth that working with spot colors or CMYK is “impossible” in open source DTP; the truth is that if you want to do it, you can — you just need to know where to look, because RGB data is still the norm assumed by most of the tools. The guide will take you a long way.

There are still three months to go in 2011, and there are likely to be several new releases in that time frame, but then again, that is always true: open source just moves that quickly, DTP in particular.

BY NATHAN WILLIS

We are pleased to announce the winners of the 2011 Tux Paint Summer Contest. We thank all the participants for thier entries. We must admit, judging was extremely difficult so we decided to add an additional 10 winners who will each get a Tux Paint t-shirt.

FIRST PLACE

• Artist’s name: Tzujo Laurel Chang
• Artist’s age: 8 years
• Title: The blue bird in our back yard
• Country: USA

SECOND PLACE

• Name of Artist: Nadia Nuril Kariem
• Age of Artist:  10 (08-April-2001)
• Title of Drawing: Holiday In Jungle
• Country: Indonesia

THIRD PLACE

• Artist’s’ name: Annabel Mair
• Artist’s age: 10 years old
• Title of drawing : Off to see the World
• Country where the artist lives: United Kingdom

RANDOM WINNERS FROM FOUR TO TEN (win Sugar-on-a-Stick and T-Shirt) 

• Artist Name: Gracie Bagadiong,
• Age:  8
• Title of Drawing: Dad’s Scuba Diving Trip
• Country: USA

• Artist name: Odin le Roux
• Artist age: 3
• Title of drawing: Monkey
• Country: New Zealand

• Artist’s name: Frida Wollmann
• Artist’s age: 10 years
• Title:  ”Die Grille” (“The cricket”)
• Country: Germany

•  Name: Ella Arguelles
• Age: 12
• Title: Dancing Waves
• Country: Republic of the Philippines

• My name is Abdulmohsen Al-Dharrab.
• I’m 10 years old.
• I’m from Saudi Arabia.
• This is my drawing : تحت أعماق البحر اﻷحمر

• Name :  Devita Mayanda Heerlie
• Age :  8 years old
• Title:  Playing with My Friends
• Country  :  Indonesia

• Entrants Name: Samantha Ray
• Age: 7
• Title: Crazy Night
• From: Australia

ADDITIONAL RANDOM TEN WINNERS (Will recieve a T-Shirt)

• Artist’s Name:  Melissa Chu-Fong
• Artist’s age:   12
• Title of the Drawing:   RMS Titanic
• Country where the artist lives: New Zealand

• Artist’s Name:  Ian Chu-Fong
• Artist’s age:  10
• Title of the Drawing:  How the Kiwi lost it’s wings
• Country: New Zealand

Artist’s Name: Nur Farahanim Abdull Jamal
Artist’s Age: 11
Title: Ocean View
Country: Malaysia

• Artist’s nam: Suran Gao
• Artist’s age: 4
• Title of the drawing: My Park
• Country where the artist lives: USA

• Artist’s name: Sarah Aiesha Rizal
• Artist’s age: 7
• Title of the drawing: My Dino
• Country where the artist lives: Malaysia

• Artist’s Name:  Sarah Cartan
• Age:  12
• Title of Drawing: Birds in Summer
• Country:  USA

• artist name: Giulia Santandrea
• age: 7
• country: Italy
• Title: Grape rabbit

• Artist’s name – Shulin Singh Kohli
• Age – 10 years
• Title of Drawing – Toucan and the Crab
• country – India

• The artist’s’ name: Andrea Cepkova
• The artist’s age: 4
• The title of drawing: Srdiecko zlaticko (free translation to English is Little Lovely Heart)
•  The country where the artist lives: Slovakia

• Artist’s name  Tyla Morgan
• Artist’s age      7
• Title of the drawing  MY PICNIC TREE
• Country where the artist lives : UK

 Tux Paint was recently awarded SourceForge.net Project of the Month. It will run on all versions of Windows (including Tablet PC), Mac OS X 10.4 and up, Linux, FreeBSD and NetBSD. And it’s FREE! Download Tux Paint now and let your kids start drawing!

Grab Tux Paint, make a cool drawing, win one of 3 OLPC laptops, one of 10 Sugar-on-a-stick and other awesome prizes!

The 2011 Tux Paint Summer Drawing Contest is sponsored by Worldlabel.com and is open to all children aged 3 to 12 who live anywhere in the World!

Here’s a chance to show off your talent using a great drawing program made especially for kids. Tux Paint is an award-winning drawing program you can download to your computer. Tux Paint was recently awarded SourceForge.net Project of the Month. It will run on all versions of Windows (including Tablet PC), Mac OS X 10.4 and up, Linux, FreeBSD and NetBSD. And it’s FREE!

PRIZES: Worldlabel.com will give out prizes to 10 winners! 1st prize wins a OLPC notepad computer, Sugar-on-a-stick loaded with Tux Paint, a Tux Paint T-shirt and button. 2nd and 3rd wins a OLPC computer, Sugar-on-a-stick and a T-shirt. 7 more winners will be chosen and will receive a Sugar-on-a-stick and a Tux Paint t-shirt.

HOW TO ENTER:

• Download Tux Paint
• Make your drawing in Tux Paint and save it in png format
• Send your finished drawing in png format to worldlabel@gmail.com and include “Tux Paint” in the email subject line
• In the email submission include: 1) the artist’s’ name 2) the artist’s age 3) the title of drawing 4) the country where the artist lives
• All artwork must be the contestant’s original work created on Tux Paint.
• Only one entry per child

Entries will be judged on the quality and originality of the artwork. Extra points will be given to drawings that tell a story.

Entries must be submitted by midnight USA Easter Standard time on 12 September 2011. Winners will be announced no later than 22 September 2011.

All entries will be licensed: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported and will be exhibited on this page.

Contest Judges

Linda Goin

Dmitri Popov

Marguarita Suti

ABOUT THE PRIZES

ABOUT THE OLPC (One Laptop Per Child):

Three Grand Prize Winners will be chosen to receive a OLPC notepad computer:

A real world laptop for real world change. The XO laptop was designed collaboratively by experts from academia and industry to combine innovations in technology and learning. We considered the need to weather extreme environmental conditions such as high heat and humidity, and to support easy field repair by children and local language support. As a result, the XO laptop is durable, functional, energy-efficient, responsive, and fun.

The XO is about the size of a textbook and lighter than a lunchbox. Thanks to its flexible design and “transformer” hinge, the laptop easily assumes any of several configurations: standard laptop use, e-book reading, and gaming. It has rounded edges, an integrated kid-sized handle, and (in most cases) a sealed, rubber-membrane keyboard.

Design was a priority from the start: the laptop could not be big, heavy, fragile, dull, or dangerous. The distinctive appearance both appeals to the intended users and discourages gray-market traffic. There is no mistaking what it is and for whom it is intended.

The XO is also designed for constant connectivity. A few children working together under a tree can connect to each other without any other hardware, and a class full of students can share collaborative activities with one another and see what their classmates are doing.

ABOUT SUGAR-ON-A-STICK by SUGARLABS:

10 winners will receive a Sugar-on-a-stick

Sugar is based on the following principles:

• everyone is a teacher and a learner;
• humans by their nature are social beings;
• humans by their nature are expressive;
• you learn through doing; and
• love is a better master than duty.

ABOUT THE T-SHIRTS:

10 winners get a T-shirt 6.1 oz. 100% cotton

Eligibility

The Tux Paint Contest is open to kids exactly 3 years and older but not older than 12 years of age. We reserve the right to demand a proof of age. The winners must provide a proof of age upon request. Employees (and their immediate families) of Worldlabel.com and its subsidiaries, affiliates, suppliers, advertising agencies, and persons living in the same household as such employees are not eligible to participate in the Contest. Contest is subject to all applicable federal, state, local laws and regulations and is void where prohibited by law. The Contest begins on  29 June 2011 and ends on 12 September 2011. Entries must be received by midnight USA Eastern Standard time on 12 September 2011 to be eligible.

DOWNLOAD TUX PAINT FOR YOUR KIDS AND LET THEM START DRAWING

Visit the Tux Paint Gallery

Read our review on Tux Paint by Nathan Willis

 (1)

• Artist Name: Gracie Bagadiong,
• Age:  8
• Title of Drawing: Dad’s Scuba Diving Trip
• Country: USA

(2)

• Artist’s Name:  Fatima Rego Bhalla
• Age:  3
• Title of Drawing: Picture Candy
• Country:  Canada

(3)

• Artist’s Name:  Sarah Cartan
• Age:  12
• Title of Drawing: Birds in Summer
• Country:  USA

(4)

• Artist Name: Nathan Payne
• Artist Age: Six
• Drawing Title: “Motorstruction”
• Artist Country: Australia

(5)

• Name: Thaddeus Mann
• Artist Age: 9
• Description: “Afternoon Pond”
• Country USA

(6)

• The artist’s’ name: Andrea Cepkova
• The artist’s age: 4
• The title of drawing: Srdiecko zlaticko (free translation to English is Little Lovely Heart)
•  The country where the artist lives: Slovakia

(7)

• Artist name: Abigael Brown
• Artist Age: Age 6
• Name of Drawing: “A Pretty Picture”
• Country: USA

(8)

• Name: Zadok Montgomery
• Age: 3
• Title of the drawing: Spiderman’s Rainbow
• Country: Canada

(9)

• Name: Zechariah Montgomery
• Age: 5
• Title of the drawing: Witch House On The Hill
• Country: Canada

(10)

• Name: Todd Franks
• Age: 10
• Title: Bird Care
• Country: USA

(11)

• Artist’s name  Tyla Morgan
• Artist’s age      7
• Title of the drawing  MY PICNIC TREE
• Country where the artist lives : UK

(12)

• Artist name: Isaías dos Santos Aluízio
• Age: 10
• Drawing Title: “Preserved City”
• Coutry: Brazil

(13)

• Artist’s name: Louis MASSON
• Artist’s age: 8 years
• Title of the drawing: Tank factory
• Country where the artist lives: France

(14)

• Artist’s’ name: Annabel Mair
• Artist’s age: 10 years old
• Title of drawing : Off to see the World
• Country where the artist lives: United Kingdom

(15)

• Name: Emma Ricker
• Age: 8
• Title: Frosty and Tux
• Country: U.S.A.

(16)

• GAUTHAM PRAKASH
• the artist’s age : 10 YEARS (27/06/2001)
• the title of drawing: VILLAGE
• the country  :INDIA

(17)

• Artist name: Nicole Louise Cassiano Nunes Dias
• Age: 7
• Drawing Title: “A house in the forest”
• Coutry: Brazil

(18)

• artist’s’ name: Maavin Munthasir
• artist’s age: 10 years
• title of drawing: Return to my island
• live country: Maldives

(19)

• artist’s’ name: Ruusa Rantalainen
• the artist’s age 6
• the title of drawing: Tosi hieno kuva (“Very great picture”)
• country:  Finland

 (20)

• the artist’s’ name: Terho Rantalainen
• the artist’s age 4
• the title of drawing: En tierä ( “I do not know”)
• Country: Finland

(21)

• Artist’s name: Sarah Aiesha Rizal
• Artist’s age: 7
• Title of the drawing: My Dino
• Country where the artist lives: Malaysia

(22)

• Artist’s name: Nur Liyana Rizal
• Artist’s age: 12
• Title of the drawing: Bathtub in the Forest
• Country where the artist lives: Malaysia

(23)

• Artist’s name: Gabriela Glueck
• Artist’s age: 12
• Title of the drawing: Decisions
• Country where the artist lives: U.S.A.

(24)

•  Artist’s name: Johanna SUTTER
• Artist’s age: 6 years (then 5)
• Title of the drawing: “Fairies fly about” (German: “Feen fliegen herum”)
• Country where the artist lives: Germany

(25)

• The artist’s’ name: Johann Franco
• The artist’s age: 11 years old
• Title of drawing: Reciclar
• Country: Mexico

(26)

• Artist name: Odin le Roux
• Artist age: 3
• Title of drawing: Monkey
• Country: New Zealand

(27)

• Artist’s name: Jethro Robinson
• Artist’s age: 3 years
• Title: Lotsa Different Colours
• Country: Scotland

FROM THE MURCH FAMILY :: 4 Entries

(28)

• Name of Artist:  Jackson Murch
• Artist Age: 9
• Name of drawing: Ship
• Country of Artist: USA

(29)

• Name of Artist:  Tsehay Murch
• Artist Age: 9
• Name of drawing: Sunny Day
• Country of Artist: USA

(30)

• Name of Artist:  Tigist Murch
• Artist Age: 9
• Name of drawing: Dog under Water
• Country of Artist: USA

(31)

• Name of Artist:  Tuke Murch
• Artist Age: 9
• Name of drawing: Peace
• Country of Artist: USA

(33)

• Artist’s name: Tzujo Laurel Chang
• Artist’s age: 8 years
• Title: The blue bird in our back yard
• Country: USA

Different kinds of migration birds come to the back yard of our home in different seasons.  Some of them have burgundy feathers and some have red feathers.  Others have gray feathers with a little bulky body.  Among those migration birds, the ones with blue feathers are my favorite, because blue stands for “well-being” in the children’s story book “Blue Bird.”  Those blue birds look so pretty to me.  I wish they can come to our back yard everyday.

 (34)

• Artist’s name: Frida Wollmann
• Artist’s age: 10 years
• Title:  ”Die Grille” (“The cricket”)
• Country: Germany

(35)

• Artist name: Owen le Roux
• Artist age: 7 years old
• Title of drawing: Universal
• Country: New Zealand

(36)

• Name of Artist: Nadia Nuril Kariem
• Age of Artist:  10 (08-April-2001)
• Title of Drawing: Holiday In Jungle
• Country: Indonesia

(37)

•  Name: Ella Arguelles
• Age: 12
• Title: Dancing Waves
• Country: Republic of the Philippines

(38)

• the artist’s’ name:  Maija Laitinen
• the artist’s age: 12 years
•  the title of drawing: ‘Sateenkaari videokuvassa’ (‘Rainbow in video’)
• the country where the artist lives: Finland

(39)

• artist’s’ name: Konrad Wollmann
• artist’s age: 9
• title of drawing: Feueralarm auf dem Friedhof (“fire alarm on the graveyard”)
• country: Germany

(40)

• My name is Abdulmohsen Al-Dharrab.
• I’m 10 years old.
• I’m from Saudi Arabia.
• This is my drawing : “تحت أعماق البحر اﻷحمر

(41)

• The Artist’s name : Fitriatma Maulani Akbar
• The Artist’s age : 8 years
• The Title of drawing : Musim Panas (summer)
• The Country : Indonesia

(42)

• The Artist’s name : Rizqina Maulani Akbar
• The Artist’s age : 4,5 years
• The Title of Drawing : Keindahan Malam ( Night Beauty)
• The Country : Indonesia

(43)

• Artist Name: Sierra Lapchynski
• Artist Age: 9
• Name of Drawing: Man on a house on a smnowy Night in the Winter
• Country of Artist: USA

(44)

• the artist’s’ name = Abril Palm Petrizzo
• the artist’s age = 3 years
• the title of drawing = Espantapájaros
• the country where the artist lives = Mérida, Venezuela

(45)

• Artist Name: Dayyan Nashrul Haq
• Age of Artist :  8
• Title of Drawing: Dragon’s Eggs
• Country: Indonesia

(46)

• Artist Name: Mujahid Habiburrahman
• Age of Artist :  7
•  Title of Drawing: The Bat
• Country: Indonesia

(47)

• Name of artist: Master Yash R.Akkara
• Age: 7 years
• Topic: Midnight Willy
• Country:India

(48)

• Artist’s name – Shulin Singh Kohli
• Age – 10 years
• Title of Drawing – Toucan and the Crab
• country – India

 (49)

• Artist’s name – Biniti Shetty
• Age – 8 years
• Title of Drawing – Deep Sea
• country – India

(50)

• Artist’s name – Chinmay J. patel
• Age – 8 years
• Title of Drawing – The space Aircraft
• country – India

(51)

• Artist’s name - Ishaan Sheth
• Age – 8 years
• Title of Drawing – sea imagination
• country – India

(52)

• Name :  Devita Mayanda Heerlie
• Age :  8 years old
• Title:  Playing with My Friends
• Country  :  Indonesia

(53)

(54)

Artist’s Name: Aidiel Danish Zulkifli
Artist’s Age: 10
Title: Fishing At The North Pole
Country: Malaysia

(55)

Artist’s Name: Muhammad Anas Zul Qarnain
Artist’s Age: 10
Title: Warfare
Country: Malaysia

(56)

Artist’s Name: Muhammad Imran Rosli
Artist’s Age: 11
Title: The Band
Country: Malaysia

(57)

Artist’s Name: Amirah Zul Qarnain
Artist’s Age: 9
Title: Making Coffee
Country: Malaysia

(58)

Artist’s Name: Nur Syamimi Husna Yaakob
Artist’s Age: 10
Title: House On A Lake
Country: Malaysia

(59)

Artist’s Name: Nur Hanis Syamimi Anis Afindi
Artist’s Age: 11
Title: Volcano Eruption
Country: Malaysia

(60)

Artist’s Name: Nur Aina Balqis Syarizan
Artist’s Age: 11
Title: Scenery At My House
Country: Malaysia

(61)

Artist’s Name: Nur Aniyah Syarizan
Artist’s Age: 9
Title: Hillside
Country: Malaysia

(62)

Artist’s Name: Nadine Qathira Sahzan
Artist’s Age: 11
Title: Not So Happy Birthday
Country: Malaysia

(63)

Artist’s Name: Nur Fatin Adlin Nor Ismee
Artist’s Age: 11
Title: Playing Music For Fun
Country: Malaysia

(64)

Artist’s Name: Nur Farahanim Abdull Jamal
Artist’s Age: 11
Title: Ocean View
Country: Malaysia

(65)

Artist’s Name: Nureen Aulia Mohd Zaini
Artist’s Age: 10
Title: Adrift In Space
Country: Malaysia

(66)

Artist’s Name: Nadia Nazurah Amri
Artist’s Age: 9
Title: Happy Birthday
Country: Malaysia

(67)

Artist’s Name: Nureen Fifi Aufa Mohd Zaini
Artist’s Age: 9
Title: Flowers And Trees
Country: Malaysia

(68)

Artist’s Name: Nur Amirah Amri
Artist’s Age: 11
Title: Missing My Rabbit On A Rainy Night
Country: Malaysia

(69)

Artist’s Name: Muhd Ehsan Zubaidi
Artist’s Age: 9
Title: Lightning Strikes A Paddy Field
Country: Malaysia

(70)

Artist’s Name: Muhammad Danish Saidar
Artist’s Age: 10
Title: Loving Animals
Country: Malaysia

(71)

Artist’s Name: Ahmad Aliff Akmal Shahrul Anuar
Artist’s Age: 11
Title: Beautiful Colors
Country: Malaysia

(72)

Artist’s Name: Syed Ahmad Muaz Syed Zainal Abidin Khilmi
Artist’s Age: 10
Title: My Farm Animals
Country: Malaysia

(73)

Artist’s Name: Muhammad Darwish Saidar
Artist’s Age: 9
Title: The Accident
Country: Malaysia

(74)

Artist’s Name: Muhammad Lukman Arif Abdul Razak
Artist’s Age: 11
Title: My House
Country: Malaysia

(76)

• Entrants Name: Samantha Ray
• Age: 7
• Title: Crazy Night
• From: Australia

(77)

• Entrants Name: Luke Ray
• Age: 8
• Title: Where I Live from Space
• From: Australia

(78)

• Entrants Name: Josh Ray
• Age: 11
• Title: The adventures of a little girls lost teddy
• From: Australia

(79)

• Artist’s Name:  Katie Chu-Fong
• Artist’s Age:   7
• Title of the Drawing:  How the tuatara came to live on land
• Country where the artist lives: New Zealand

Once there was a tuatara and a shark named Mango, both of them lived in the sea. The tuatara was bigger than the tuataras we have nowadays. It was gigantic.  If you had the smallest of medium-sized house, it would be about the size of your house. Now, the tuatara and Mango liked to eat people for their breakfast. One day the tuatara saw a waka with four fishermen in it, being rowed off the shore. So he reported it to Mango. Mango said “I don’t want to miss my breakfast.”  So the tuatara boldly went up under the waka and lifted his back so the waka tipped over to its side. Instantly, Mango gobbled up all four fishermen. After tuatara had sent the waka flying away, he realized that Mango had eaten all the fishermen. Tuatara said “You’ve eaten all the fishermen.”  “I’m sorry,” said Mango but there are some men up there on the shore. So the tuatara swam to the shore and as soon as the men saw tuatara coming, they ran away. Mango said “Come back tuatara,” but the tuatara replied “It’s much nicer up here. I think I’ll stay up here.”

So that’s how the tuatara came to live on land.

(80)

• Artist’s Name:  Melissa Chu-Fong
• Artist’s age:   12
• Title of the Drawing:   RMS Titanic
• Country where the artist lives: New Zealand

My picture shows the Titanic setting off from Southampton being pulled out to the ocean by a tug boat.  It set sail on its first and last voyage to America from Southampton, England. It carried many wealthy families and lower class passengers. Tragically, it struck an iceberg and sank at 2.20am on the 12th of April, 1912.

(81)

• Name: Nerise Barnes
• Age: 10 (then 9)
• Title: Cat Outside
• Country: Aotearoa (New Zealand)

(82)

• title: Walk in the woods with surprise
• artist’s’ name: Davide Lanconelli
• age: 8
• country: Italy

(83)

• title: “Christmas at farm”
• artist’s’ name: Linda Lanconelli 
• age: 6
• country: Italy 

(84)

• artist name: Giulia Santandrea
• age: 7
• country: Italy
• Title: Grape rabbit

(85)

• Artist’s nam: Suran Gao
• Artist’s age: 4
• Title of the drawing: My Park
• Country where the artist lives: USA

(86)

• Name: Cole Barnes
• Age: 8
• Title: Captain Duck
• Country: Aotearoa (New Zealand)

(87)

• Artist’s Name: Alejandro Michel Garcia
• Artist’s Age: 3 Years
• Title of the Drawing: La Granja (The Farm)
• Country: Bolivia

Alejandro junto con sus compañeros del kinder “Mi Casita” visitaron lagranja “Victoria” yahi disfrutaron viendo y tocando a los animales, este es un paseo que sigue vivo en la memoria de Alejandro, y disfruta contando su experiencia a su familia.

(88)

• Artist’s Name: Sebastian Michel Ayala
• Artist’ Age: 8 Years
• Title of the Drawing: La Banda (The Band)
• Country: Bolivia

A mi y a mi hermano nos gusta jugar con los instrumentos musicales, y formar una banda de música, yo toco la flauta y mi hermanito toca el xilofono, Cuando sea grande quiero tocar la bateria.

(89)

• Name of Artist:  Hannah Martin
• Age  of Artist:   11
• Title of Drawing: Tux_Daydreaming
• Country: USA

(90)

• Artist’s Name:  Ian Chu-Fong
• Artist’s age:  10
• Title of the Drawing:  How the Kiwi lost it’s wings
• Country: New Zealand

(91)

• Artist’s name: Sthuti Choudhary
• Artist’s age: 11yrs
• Title of the drawing: Silent Message
• Country where the artist lives: India

(92)

• Name of Artist:  Caelan Jegathesan-Lamb
• Age of Artisit: 7
• Title of Drawing: ‘Deltora Culture Sign’
• Country: Austrialia

(93)

• Artist: Faye Wettstein
• Age: 6
• Title: A House for People
• Country: USA

(94)

• Artist Name: Aaryan   Pillai
• Age: 10 years
• Title of Drawing: A day at the Beach
• Country: India

(95)

•  The artist’s’ name: Helio Giuseppe Puglielli Melo
• The artist’s age: 10
• The title of drawing: The Penguins’ Beach
• The country where the artist lives: Brazil

(96)

• Artist: Gabriela Kahn
• Age: 7
• Title of picture: Super Dog
• Country: Ecuador

(97)

• the artist’s’ name: Gwendolyn Bossuyt
• the artist’s age: 8 years
• the title of drawing : Spider on a web with purple northern lights
• the country where the artist lives: Finland

(98)

• My name is Maha Al-Dharrab.
• I’m 7 years old.
• I’m from Saudi Arabia.
• This is my drawing:  حلة إلى مدينة الملاهي”

(99)

• Artisit name: Boglarka Tunde Peter
• Age of Artist: 12
• Name of drawing: Lion King-Hakuna Matata
• Country: Romania

(100)

• Artist: Alex Wettstein:
• Age: 3
• Title: Rain and Train Tracks in the Tornado
• Country: USA

(101)

• Artist name: Christian Obertin-Kneubuehl
• Age of Artisit: 8 years old
• Title of drawing: Snowmen
• County: United States of America

(102)

• Artist Name: Ashwini Dongre
• Age: 12 years
• Title of Drawing: When I will go back Home in the village this is what i will get to see
• Country: India

(103)

• Artist Name: Ashwini Dongre
• Age: 12 years
• Title of Drawing: When I will go back Home in the village this is what i will get to see
• Country: India

(104)

•  Artist Name: Hetvi Joshi
• Age: 9 years
• Title of Drawing: Flowers bow down by the pressure of the rain, the way we bow down to nature’s forces
• Country: India

(105)

• Artist Name: Khushboo Thakkar
• Age: 10   years
• Title of Drawing: View from my Window
• Country: India

(106)

• Artist Name: Mausam  Nakarja  
• Age: 8 years
• Title of Drawing: The Thirsty Crow
• Country: India

(107)

• Artist Name: Priyanka Gangani
• Age: 11 years
• Title of Drawing: A rainy Day at our center
• Country: India

(108)

• Artist Name: Vishakha Tailor
• Age: 10 years
• Title of Drawing: SunSet
• Country: India

- NO MORE ENTRIES -

Your Android device is not only good for snapping photos and sharing them with others. Using the right apps, you can turn it into a handy photographic companion which can handle a wide range of photography-related tasks. And the best part is that some of the best photography-related apps won’t cost you a dime.

Take, for example, the Golden Hour Photos app. As the name suggests, this tool can tell you precisely when the sun is slightly above or below the horizon and gives great light. The app can do that for any day and any location, so you can plan your photographic trips accordingly. In addition to that, Golden Hour Photos provides an overview of relevant weather conditions such as cloud coverage and visibility. In short, if you shoot a lot outdoors, this app is a must-have.

Depth of Field Calculator  is another nifty utility which lets you calculate depth of field based on several parameters like camera model, aperture, focal length, and distance to the subject. This functionality can be useful especially when you work with macro photography where you often deal with very narrow depth of field. Using the app is as easy as it gets: specify the required parameters and press the Calculate button. This gives you detailed info about the calculated depth of field, including near and far limits as well as hyperfocal distance. If you have trouble visualizing these numbers, press the Diagram button, and the app displays an easy-to-understand chart along with a few additional bits of info such as circle of confusion and flash guided number.

While Golden Hour Photos and Depth of Field Calculator are basically one-trick ponies, the PHOforPHO app offers a set of handy photographic features. It comes with its own hyperfocal  distance and depth of field calculators, a tool for calculating EV value for multiple exposures (handy when taking multiple shots for producing an HDR image), and a dedicated exposure calculator. The latter can come in handy for calculating exposure for low-light photography, finding correct exposure when using ND filters, and converting between different ISO and aperture combinations. The clever part is that the app can pass the calculated exposure time to the built-in timer which you can use to correctly expose your photos. PHOforPHO can also obtain the geographical coordinates of your current location and display it using Google Maps. And using the Distance Meter feature, you can measure the distance between two geographical points. Finally, PHOforPHO integrates nicely with the Catch note-taking app, so you can quickly access and view your notes.

The Photo Tools app is a true smorgasbord of genuinely useful photographic tools. Similar to PHOforPHO, Photo Tools comes with a depth of field and hyperfocal distance calculator, a tool for calculating EV value for multiple exposures, and a location info tool. Photo Tools also includes the Blue & Golden Hour Calculator, so it can replace the Golden Hour Photos app. In addition to that, Photo Tools includes a flash exposure calculator, a minimal shutter speed calculator, a moon phase and exposure calculator, and even an exotic bellows extension calculator. And the list of features doesn’t stop here. The Sunny 16 (EV) calculator can be used to figure out the correct aperture and shutter speed for given weather conditions. This can be useful when you are working in manual mode or using an analog camera without metering capabilities. You can use the Level Indicator tool to turn your Android device into a handy level tool for positioning your camera. The Check Lists feature lets you create and maintain lists, while the Notepad tool lets you jot down notes without leaving the convenience of the app. Finally, there is also a Gray card tool, a photo enlargement calculator, and a sharpening radius estimator. Photo Tools even includes a collection of photos you can use for inspiration.

Finally, if you deal with complex lightning setups, you will find the Lighting Studio app  an indispensable tool in your arsenal. It allows you to create diagrams of lighting setups, and it offers a wide range of objects for you to use: from strobes and backdrops to camera models and lighting sources. You can save diagrams as bitmap images or share them with others using your Android device’s sharing capabilities.

BY DMITRI POPOV

Read Opensource for photography

The vector editor Inkscape is what some might call a best-kept-secret among open source projects — in part, because few people outside the graphic design community have any experience working with vector artwork; also, in part, because it’s so powerful that it can seem intimidating at first blush. Here are a collection of Inkscape resources you may find helpful in learning Inkscape and in expanding your skill set.

INFORMATIONAL RESOURCES

Documentation and manuals

The official Inkscape documentation is the place to start if you’re new to the program. The site links to official tutorials in more than twenty languages, and to the wiki-based reference for the app commands, tools, and features.

But don’t stop there! The FLOSSManuals book on Inkscape is another first-rate introduction to working with the toolbox, Inkscape’s paths, text, object manipulation, and effects.

Also a worthy starting point is Tavmjong Bah’s Inkscape: Guide to a Vector Drawing Program. Like the FLOSSManuals book, it takes a systematic approach to Inkscape’s features — including understanding how primitives like paths, objects, and bitmaps interact with each other. Both of these guides are completely free, and they are both works-in-progress that are updated regularly.

Finally, the Inkscape wiki has a special introductory section entitled Inkscape for Adobe Illustrator users that sheds light on the similarities, differences, and special features of Inkscape for people who know vector artwork but simply aren’t familiar with the tool.

Tutorials

While the links in the first section attempt to be comprehensive guides to using Inkscape, there is a lot more information contained in smaller, focused tutorials that walk through a particular editing task or effect.

Though you can search for tutorials with any Web search engine, the best place to start is probably The Inkscape Tutorials Blog, which publishes a regular feed of detailed tutorials, with step-by-step instructions. The publication schedule isn’t fixed, with most entries sourced from individuals’ blogs that you would otherwise have to hunt down on your own, but the archive contains a library of high-quality content.

Fedora Project artist Nicu Buculei also publishes a blog focused on tutorials, which you’ll find at howto.nicubunu.ro. Many of Buculei’s tutorials jump back and forth between Inkscape and other free software tools like GIMP, so you’ll want to look into those too, if you haven’t already.

Next, you should pay regular visits to the Tricks & Tutorials section on InkscapeForum.com, where readers post links to tutorials and write their own. As you might expect on a web forum, the discussion following the initial post on a particular tutorial thread is often as enlightening as the tutorial itself.

In addition to the list in the official documentation above, the Inkscape wiki has a Tutorials and Help page, which not only lists known tutorials in multiple languages, but contains a “tutorial ideas” section where people post topics they would like to see documented — and others often reply by posting a link to a completed tutorial.

Inkscape has grown in popularity enough that third-party tutorial link sites have started adding it as a category, and this is another good way to find new tutorial content. Tutorial-index.com and Pixel2Life both have dedicated Inkscape sections.

Last but certainly not least, it never hurts to do a blog search on the topic of Inkscape Tutorials — you’ll frequently discover individual posts where an author curates a list of high-quality tutorials, even if that isn’t the focus of the blog as a whole. For example, 35 Tutorials to create amazing Vector Graphics using Inkscape and 15 Fantastic Inkscape Tutorials for Creating Awesome Vector Art both come from general-purpose blogs.

Videos

A special mention is probably deserved for video tutorials, which can offer a very different approach to communicating how to implement a particular technique. Here, the clear leader is screencasters.heathenx.org — although, as with written tutorials, you can apply the same rules and find other excellent content at other sites, such as th3techies.com.

Blogs

In addition to dedicated tutorials, if you are serious about learning Inkscape there are a several well-written Inkscape blogs worth following. The list includes the blogs of several artists and authors whose work regularly appears in the tutorial and manual sections, such as Tavmjong Bah’s blog and Nicu Buculei’s blog. Also worth subscribing to are GrimeGraphics and the #Inkscapers group on DeviantArt.

You should also check out Planet Inkscape, which aggregates the blog feeds of more than a dozen Inkscape developers and artists — not only is it the best way to learn about new Inkscape features, but most of the developers are Inkscape users as well, so they frequently have creative content to share.

Finally, take a look at Libre Graphics World, an independent news site maintained by photographer Alexandre Prokoudine. LGW covers all aspects of open source graphics, including not just vector design but raster graphics, photography, 3-D, typography, and much more. But even if all you cared about was Inkscape, it is often the first place to read about Inkscape news, reviews of new releases, and interviews with developers.

Forums

Of course, nothing beats interactive discussion with other artists. For this, you need to go to InkscapeForum.com. On top of the tutorial board mentioned earlier, this is the place to be to ask questions, showcase artwork, get tips and help from other Inkscape users, and learn what’s new-and-upcoming in Inkscape development.

Another important discussion site to check out is the . Like the LGW news site, it is focused on more than just Inkscape alone, but it has a dedicated vector graphics discussion board for Inkscape and similar programs.

Brush resources
Aside from instructional resources like tutorials, another way to expand your Inkscape skills is by picking up new content and tools. In the Illustrator circles, for example, you’ll find a lot of discussion about sharing brushes. That’s because Illustrator supports using custom brush shapes, which users can copy and exchange with one another.

Inkscape does not use the same approach, but you can achieve many of the same results with Inkscape’s paths, tiled clones, and raster images. The Wikihow article Use Brushes in Inkscape explains the different techniques and shows examples of each.

A more in-depth explanation of Inkscape brush behavior can be found in Buculei’s Grungy Brush Tips and Tips for using brushes in Inkscape. This way you can turn any image — vector or raster-based — into an Inkscape brush.

TOOLS AND CONTENT RESOURCES

Color palette and swatch resources

Inkscape supports user-switchable color palettes (and is moving to support swatch books for gradients and other texture samples on a per-document basis). But you’re not limited to just those that ship with the Inkscape binary.

You can import palettes from other open source apps like GIMP. This post explains how, including how to find good GIMP palettes, and there is even a video demonstrating how it works.

You can also design color schemes with Agave and use them in Inkscape, or import them from other formats with SwatchBooker and save them for use in Inkscape.

There are even cool tricks you can employ like generating a color palette based on a raster image such as a photograph, then saving it locally.

Scripts, plugins, and extensions

Some of Inkscape’s most impressive features come from its extensibility with plugins and user-written scripts. The definitive guide to finding Inkscape extensions is the Extension repository on the project’s wiki. There is also an Extensions wiki category that occasionally catches other pages you will want to see. There are around fifty extensions currently listed.

Scripts are a little different than extensions; for one thing they are easier to write, and you can use common languages like Python to create your own. Here again the wiki has a guide to getting started, plus a detailed tutorial on using Python.

Often new Inkscape releases roll what used to be extensions into the official application as new effects, so you can find a lot of helpful tips on new extension in the Effects reference — which is also a great way to learn about the tons of different special effect functions Inkscape supports.

The Inkscape Resources section on InkscapeForum.com is another essential place to look for scripts and extensions. Forum readers regularly post new work that they themselves have created, plus link to scripts and extensions found elsewhere. For example, you can find a extension to export TIFF and PDF output in CMYK color spaces, and an extension that replaces fonts within an Inkscape document.

Art resources

Most of what we have talked about already is very Inkscape-centric, if not outright Inkscape-specific. But there are far more design resources out there for you than just those created for this application in particular.

For example, the Open Clip Art Library is an online community of user-created artwork — in most cases, the term “clip art” is a little misleading; we’re talking about high-quality designs and graphical elements, not icons. All of the content is free to use under public domain terms.

Likewise, the Open Font Library is a resource site for typography available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license; you can search for fonts to use in any of your projects without fear of running into licensing trouble.

But the “free culture” projects aren’t the only sites you’ll want to visit. Sites like Dezignus.com also focus on creating and sharing design elements like brushes, textures, backgrounds, and other vector artwork. Thanks to Inkscape’s ability to import almost any graphics format on the planet, you can be sure that these free resources are compatible.

The same goes for most of the rest of the free design resource sites on the Web today. Designer blogs and forums often post lists of new and popular art resources, like 14 Free vector art resource sites on TheGraphicMac — but guess what; none of them are Mac-specific. The same goes for most if not all of the sites in SpeckyBoy’s 49 Amazing Resources for Free Vector Graphics — you don’t just have to look at them for inspiration; you can download what you need.

SVG tutorials

Finally, Inkscape uses the W3C’s standard Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) as its file format, so there are plenty of good SVG resources and tutorials. A good place to start is either W3School’s SVG Tutorial or SVGBasics.com. Both offer a good introduction to the format and what it can do.

You can also look for more specific tutorials, much like you would with Inkscape itself. LearnSVG.com has a broad selection, as do independent sites and bloggers. KenLinDev has an entire section, including working with SVG filters, and there are lots of good one-shot tutorials, such as Shelley Powers’ multi-part series on SVG in flexible design.

BY NATHAN WILLIS

1. Install WordPress

Before you grab and install WordPress on your server or hosted Web space, make sure you have the required components: the Apache Web server, PHP, and the MySQL database server. Also, you need to create a MySQL database for use with WordPress. Once you’ve done that, download the latest release of WordPress. Unpack the downloaded archive and rename the wp-config-sample.php file to wp-config.php. Open the wp-config.php file in a text editor and specify the required database connection info. Save the file and move the contents of the wordpress directory to the document root of your server. Point your browser to http://127.0.0.1/wp-admin/install.php (replace 127.0.0.1 with the actual IP address of your server) and complete the installation. For a more detailed description of installing WordPress, visit http://codex.wordpress.org/Installing_WordPress. Finally, create the wp-content/uploads directory and make it writable by the server. This directory will be used for uploading and storing your photos. Log in to your WordPress installation, switch to the administrative interface, and tweak the blog’s settings to your liking.

2. Install a Photoblogging Theme

Next, you should install a photoblog-friendly WordPress theme. You can find dozens of free and commercial WordPress themes on the Web, but for starters, you might want to try the Cleanr theme. To install the theme, download and unpack it, then move the resulting cleanr folder to the wp-content/themes directory. In the administrative interface of your blog, switch to the Appearance | Themes section and activate the newly-added theme.

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3. Install Plugins 

The official WordPress plugin repository features hundreds of nifty modules which you can use to extend your photoblog’s default functionality. For example, the Flickr Photos plugin allows you to pull photos from your Flickr photostream and display them on your photoblog. And if you want to display your latest tweets from your Twitter account, you can do so using the Twitter Widget plugin. No matter which plugins you choose to add to your photoblog, the installation and activation procedure is the same. Download and unpack the desired plugin, then move the resulting folder to the wp-content/plugins directory. In the administrative interface of your blog, switch to the Plugins section and activate the added plugin. Depending on the plugin, you might also need to configure its settings. For example, to make use of the Flickr Photos plugin, you have to switch to the Appearance | Widgets section, add the Simple Flickr Photos widget to the sidebar, and then specify the required plugin settings.

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4. Install the WordPress App

The WordPress app for Android and iPhone/iPod can come in handy not only when you need to tweak your photoblog’s settings, but also when you want to publish a photo while on the move. If you are using an Android device, publishing a photo on your blog using WordPress couldn’t be easier. Assuming that the app is installed and configured on your device, find the photo you want to publish (you can use the built-in Gallery app or a third-party file manager for that), choose Share and select the WordPress item. This creates a new blog post with the photo attached to it. Add a title, description, and tags, select Publish from the Status drop-down list, and press the Upload Now button to publish the photo.

BY DMITRI POPOV

See Photography with Open Source

Are you the resident computer expert among your family or friends? If so, there may come a time this holiday season where at some point between dinner and dessert someone asks you to troubleshoot their ailing computer. Take a few minutes to get familiar with these free, open source repair tools and load them on a USB flash drive. You can diagnose and fix many pesky computer problems in the time it takes to clear the dinner table, and look like a hero by the time coffee is served.

ClamWin – This software is one of the most popular free antivirus applications you’ll find — and with good reason. It’s packed with features like a virus scanning scheduler, standalone scanner just for Windows Explorer, and a plugin that lets you scan Microsoft Outlook emails before opening. To make sure your virus database is always up-to-date, ClamWin automatically downloads the latest virus data so you don’t have to remember. Windows only.

John the Ripper – Tasked with getting an unused computer up and running but stymied by long-forgotten system passwords blocking your every move? This password cracker sniffs out passwords and recommends new ones that aren’t as easily cracked by software of this type. The community version of this app is free and requires file extraction and compiling, but a pro version that does the legwork for you is available for a fee. Image: Youngester Windows, Mac OS X, Linux.

PC Decrapifier – Getting a brand new Windows-based computer is exciting but the dealing with all the pre-installed junk it comes with isn’t. Run this fabulous little tool to remove annoying trialware and pesky setup files for apps you never plan to use. Once downloaded and opened, PC Decrapifier displays a list of files it can nuke on your behalf but won’t actually remove anything until you give it the green light. Windows 7, Windows XP, Vista.

Clonezilla Live – Probably one of the handiest free tools out there, this amazing software lets you backup and restore computer data in a snap. Instead of going through the hassle of moving data to portable hard drives, repartitioning the drive, reinstalling the original operating system, and transferring everything back to the computer, just use Clonezilla to manage the process in a few easy steps. Burn the app onto a CD or carry it around on a USB flash drive so its handy whenever you need it. Windows, Mac OS X, Linux.

Magical Jelly Bean Key Finder – Though this tool isn’t open source, it is free and so handy that it’s worth a mention. If you’ve ever needed (and not been able to find) the product key to a Windows installation, you know how time consuming it can be to track it down. Until you do, though, it’s impossible to talk to Windows tech support or troubleshoot many issues on your own. Use this tiny tool to search out the key and copy it to the clipboard, a text file, or print it so you can get on with your life. Magical! Windows only.

SystemRescueCd – A system crash is enough to bring a tear to anyone’s eye. If you’ve been religious about backing up your data, that’s good news — but you still need to repair your system before restoring everything. Use this tool to create and edit partitions on your hard disk, configure the network, test the memory, and more. Run it from a CD to backup data stored on a Windows computer that won’t boot anymore, or run it from a USB flash drive on a computer without a working CD drive. Linux and Windows.

Corruption Corrector – Corrupted files are a huge pain in the neck, especially when you’ve downloaded several copies of the same file and discover different parts of each file are corrupt. With this cool tool, it’s possible to combine the useable bytes from each file into a single working copy. Windows, Mac OS X, Linux.

Wireshark – Sometimes what looks like a computer problem actually turns out to be a network issue. Use Wireshark to take a look at network packets so you can diagnose network troubles. Advanced users can also get detailed protocol information, filter packets for granular information, and search packets based on specific criteria. Windows and Linux.

What’s your go-to PC repair tool you never troubleshoot without? Let us know in the comments.

BY LISA HOOVER